Dear Bollywood, mind your language (and accent!)

The first thing that impressed me in 'Shor In The City' was the immaculate American accent of Abhay (played by Sendhil Ramamurthy). Ofcourse Sendhil being an American actor helps but the point is that his accent brought to life the NRI character he was playing. Compare that to the American NRI that Abhishek Bachchan played in 'Delhi 6'! Abhishek's accent was limited to rolling his 'R's and that too for about first 5 minutes.

Another standout example from the same film is that of 'Sawan Murthy', a young cricketer who belongs to AP but is in Mumbai from past several years. He speaks fluent Hindi but still has got that tinge of unmistakable Telugu accent.

Talking of contrast. In Ashutosh Gowariker's 'Swades' the poor farmer who (whose home Mohan visits) speaks not only extremely pure but even poetic Hindi, strikes extremely jarring note in otherwise spotless movie. Even his most perfect film to-date 'Lagaan' was sort of inaccurate on this front with characters in 'central India' speaking Awadhi dialogues but it went on fine with the setting of the story and nobody complained. Similarly in RGV's 'Jungle' even though the forest was based somewhere in South India, the bandits spoke in Haryanvi(!) but it was passable.

The importance of correct language and accent can not be overstated but due to some unfathomable reason our mainstream movie makers prefer to take us, the viewers, in a world where people speak chaste Hindi and are completely unaffected by their surroundings and the people living in those surroundings. Wherever they may be.

So in 'Patiala House' even though Bau Ji's whole family has lived and grown up in Britain, they still speak that Punjabi mixed Hindi which Karan Johar made trendy in his NRI films. And in Priyadarshan's shameful remake (if they gave due credits)/ripoff(if they didn't!) of 'Children Of Heaven', 'Bumm Bumm Bole' the setting was definitely a place where they don't speak that good Hindi. (But to be fair in Priyadarshan's asylum of movie making language is perhaps last thing to worry about!)

Can you imagine how depleted would 'Peepli Live' be if Nattha and his village folks, specially Amma ji, didn't talk in that characteristic western U.P. accent, or if the Deccan accent is taken out of the dialogues from 'Well Done Abba'? Or the Himachali taken out of 'The Blue Umbrella'?

Perhaps in mainstream Bollywood, such things as correct pronunciation and proper dialect are somethings not to be fussed about much. Perhaps they still think that public to hero ko 'dekhne' aati hai!

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The ugly face of Indians

I have a reputation for not abusing, yet if right now I feel like hurling choicest of expletives at Indians, no one in general, you may understand the mental state I am in after reading this shocking tale of insensitivity of Indians, and no I am not talking about Shivraj Patil and his hunchmen.

"Passengers sqeeze life out of child" (wrong spelling of 'Squeeze' is not a typo by me, its by paper, that too for a front page news) screams the headline on New Indian Express (Hyderabad, 16th May). A seven year child, Aishwarya, traveling with her sisters and parents in general compartment of Egmore-Guwahati Express died due to suffocation and scorching heat in the compartment.

Also Read: TTE throws woman, kids from train

Her parents tried saving the children from "constant pushing and shoving from insensitive fellow passengers" but Aishwarya started vomiting and ran up high temperatures. The 108 Emergency Helpline Ambulance that was called by her father lacked first-aid facilities and child could not be saved.

Do you know the sensation of being choked? Being crushed from all sides and struggling for a little air to breathe? I know, because I experienced it once when I was a child and went to a religious fair with my mother and aunty. Just imagine that 7 year old child struggling to have a little fresh air and dieing every moment till that moment which ended her sufferings for ever. Just imagine the grief of a family which lost a child during a few hours journey!

Add to that the insensitivity of people around you. Constantly shoving and pushing around. We all love children of our co passengers until we have to share our seat with them!

What kind of people we Indians have become? We have been known for ugly behavior, spitting and urinating in public, but I am really anguished by this new face of insensitive Indian. Given a chance of being safe from any punishment (which a mob gives us amply) we will display our worst behavior. Do you know these days every time I visit rediff.com, I spend more time marking messages as abuse rather than reading articles. Worst kind of abusive, libelous and irrelevant messages are written on Rediff's message boards by us. Why? Why this desire of sadistic pleasure?

What is happening to India? What is happening to Indians?

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How I got refund from Ezeego1.com

It all started in September last year.

On September 7th, I booked an Indian ticket (Flight IC 940) using ezeego1.com (Booking Ref. No.: EZR-2007-89284/A) for traveling on 12th November, from Delhi to Hyderabad. The ticket which was bought under an offer from ezeego1.com and SBI Credit Cards cost me 3215 Rs.

On the morning of 12th November, something that I had always read about and heard happening with others, happened with me. Indian had done overboarding on their plane! Simply put they had sold more tickets than the capacity of the plane. I was shocked. This kind of thing which was always associated with low cost airlines, specially Air Deccan (now Deccan) was being done by state owned full-fledged airline. I was not alone however, there were others who were dumped even though they had purchased tickets. Passengers were shouting for information and their boarding passes and both of them were hard to come by. Indian officials were deliberately absent from the counter and one official appeared after some time only to tell us that the plane was on runway and noway we could be accommodated in this flight.

He said that Indian would accommodate us on the next flight which was after 2 hours. However I had a training to attend in Hyderabad and I didn't want to wait two more hours on the airport. I asked him for refund, which he agreed to give most willingly. He signed on my ticket and told that my money would be refunded through my travel agents (in my case ezeego1.com). I had to go to cancellation counter and get my Flight PNR No. set to status 'Denied Boarding'. Here I made a mistake which could have delayed the refund process if not jeopardize it totally; I had taken official's signature on the ticket but there was no official stamp from the airline!

And as (bad) luck would have it, that morning (which was the Monday after Diwali weekend) there was no seat available in ANY flight except SpiceJet, who were selling it more than 6000! Immediately I cursed my short tempered decision of not taking the next Indian flight. I was just going to pay the double of my flight cost. But I had no other option and had to board the SpiceJet flight. I reached Hyderabad at 11 am only to be greeted by my manager's SMS that training had been postponed to next week!

Now began my efforts of getting refund from ezeego1.com. I followed the steps mentioned on their website and sent them the scanned copy of the ticket, signed by Indian Official at the Delhi Airport at email address specified by them: cancellation@ezeego1.com. (According to their rules, the ticket should have been stamped by flight official from the source airport, which my ticket was lacking. And I was afraid of this!)

I got no response from their side and mailed again at complaints@ezeego1.com telling them the whole case and also at enquiry@ezeego1.com asking them the status of my complaint. No responses again.

I also filled the cancellation request form given on the site and got an automated reply acknowledging my request. After this a few days later I talked to their customer care person who asked me to fill the cancellation
form again (even though I told her that I have filled it and got acknowledgment also). She told that it will take 21 days to refund the money and I waited for about a month again after filling the form again. Talking to their customer care is an achievement in itself since you keep on getting message 'All out executives are busy. Please hold the call'. I held the call for 15 minutes maximum before my patience ran out. (During those days only I read a complaint in TOI, Hyderabad that he was made to hold the call for 80 minutes!!! However now this problem has reduced to great extent.)

When I got no response again I talked to the customer care and repeated whole story and was promised that I would be contacted in 48 hours by ezeego1.com, but that did not happen. The same thing happened when I
called them up again on Friday 21/12/07. I sent them a mail again threatening of dragging them to court, but got no reply.

Finally I registered my complaint with CORE (Consumer Online Resources and Empowerment) center, telling them whole story. An endless wait started again as CORE website doesn't give you facility to track your complaint. Then on Jan 17th, a mail addressed to "The Managing Director, Ezeego1 Travels & Tours Pvt. Ltd" and copied to me appeared in my mail box.

And when I had nearly forgotten this mail, on Feb 2nd a mail came from an Ezeego1.com executive informing me about refund of the money!

Finally I had succeeded in getting my own money back.

PS: Just now I got a call from ezeego1.com. The executive had read this review and inquired if my issue got resolved and apologized for the inconvenience.

Good. But I would have liked if they were responsive when I needed them most.

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