When I Got Conned: Using the Simplest Trick in the Book

Last night when I landed in Mumbai after a week long vacation with my family on the occasion of Diwali, I was lost in the memories of time spent with my family after a gap of a year. As soon as I came out of the terminal I found an empty taxi on the road and I stopped it. The conversation that followed was as follows:

Me: Powai?

Driver: Haan.

At this point I got inside the taxi.

Driver: Powai mein kahan?

Me: Hiranandani.

Taxi driver moved the taxi behind then moved it forward and stopped it in the same position. (Now I think it could be some kind of a signal to his partner.)

After stopping the taxi, driver turned around and asked me: Aapne parchi li?

Me: Kaisi parchi?

Driver: Ye prepaid wali taxi hai?

Me: Ab parchi lene to main nahi ja raha, itni samasya hai to main utar jata hun.

While I was about to get out of the taxi, another man entered the taxi and sat beside the driver in the front seat.

Con man: (to the driver) Kya hua?

Driver: Inhone parchi nahi li.

Con man: Kahan jana hai?

Driver: Hiranandani.

Con man: Arrey sawari bitha ke utarte nahi hain. Main paise deta hun chhod ke aa ja.

Con man: (handing over a 1000 Rs note to the driver) Ye lo 500 Rs le lo, gas bhara lena aur sir to chhod aao.

Driver: Chhutte do.

Con man: (to me) Aapke paas change hai?

I promptly took out two 500 Rs notes and handed over to the man in exchange of the 1000 Rs. While I looked down to keep the 1000 Rs note in my wallet, the con man exchanged the 500 Rs with two 100 Rs notes.

Con man: Sir, 1000 Rs diye maine.

Me: Haan, to maine diye to do 500.

The con man showed the two 100 Rs notes in his hand to me. At this point I realized I have been cornered and these guys have conned me off 800 Rs but I was not is a position and mood to fight with two guys over 800 Rs, so I decided to get rid of the taxi and pick another one. Even after all this the con man had the guts to ask me, "250 Rs de do chhod aayega."

After leaving the taxi I do not know what I did was the best thing to do at that point or I could have handled the situation better. This incident has made me more alert though. I am posting this so that others reading this also are alert and avoid getting caught in such situation. It's not the money gone which hurts, that's not that big an amount, it's the thought that you were outsmarted that hurts more.

Welcome to Goa, Singham!

When I watched the trailer of Singham, first thought in my head was, "Is Ajay Dvgan (or is it Devgn? I hate these numerologists giving weird suggestion to our actors) playing Sunny Deol in this movie? (since all Sunny gets to work on these days are his family home videos)" Since Rohit Shetty is the director, you are bound to see some flying four wheelers without any apparent reason. Devgn's dance (making claws with his fingers) in the title song reminded me of Mithun's Cheetah. So I kind of knew what to expect from this movie.



The movie starts with Inspector Kadam committing suicide after being implicated in a corruption case and his wife claiming that the man behind all this is Jayakant Shikre. Then the movie sifts to a small village called Shivgarh, where Bajirao Singham is running to local police station is his own way and being loved and respected in the entire village for the great work he is doing. It all changes when he hurts Shirke's ego. Shirke gets him transferred to the same police station where Kadam committed suicide. Singham takes time to adjust to the change and when he does adjust all logic is forgotten. He does whatever he want, which includes verbally bashing his senior in public, beating up a minister in his office, convincing all the corrupt and timid policemen in Goa to turn honest and brave with his speech (he must be invited for one such speech in our parliament, that would save Anna from fasting), last but not the least abusing Newton by defying all three laws of motion. We also get to learn that Singham and gravity cannot stay together, so when Singham is transferred to Goa, gravity quietly leaves town may be to save it from the embarrassment of being insulted by Singham. In the end in a highly dramatic climax we get to see entire police force working together to get rid of one corrupt politician wonderfully played by Prakash Raj.



Later I learned that it is remake of a South Indian movie so it was stupid of me to expect the existence of gravity in the movie, since gravity left South India long ago (cannot attach a time line to it since carbon dating has failed to estimate Rajnikanth's age, he was found to be older than carbon). The entire story can be said in one dialog repeated many times by Shikre, "Kuchh bhi karna, mera ego hurt mat karna." The entire movie is the consequence of Singham hurting Shikre's ego. Prakash Raj is brilliant as Shikre and Devgn is playing Sunny Deol, how difficult can that be. Oh there is Sonali Kulkarni also along with the lead Kajal as Kavya, however I am still thinking about the significance of their presence in the movie. The movie was about Singham representing pure good vs Shikre representing pure evil. Songs are unnecessary and could have been avoided to make the movie shorter. Overall it was an entertaining watch.

Corporate Jadugar: Time Manipulation

We are always told so many things about time being constant, you have to follow time, it doesn't follow you and so on. Now such fundamentals are for us mere mortals. For our magicians they do not apply because they have mastered the art of manipulating time in their favour.



Following example will illustrate the way these masters of the corporate world play with time.



In case you write a mail to Mr X and he does not reply to you in lets days 2 days, you will escalate the case to his boss. Now X is smart. He does something which in the face of it will look very normal and logical thing to do, but in doing so he is actually creating time for himself that nobody takes note of.



X forwards your mail to one of his subordinates Mr. Y, marking all the concerned parties and asks him to action on that particular actionable. Now if Y does not revert in next 2 days, what will you do? Well, you will write a follow up mail to Y, because you have never written to him before. If Y doesn't revert even then, you will write back to X after 2 days asking for his intervention. Subsequently after 2 more days if X does not revert you will escalate to his boss.



If you analyze the above event closely, you would see the escalation that would have happened 2 days from the day you wrote to X will now happen after 6 days, so he actually created 4 more days for himself by doing something very simple seemingly harmless thing which did not require any significant effort on his part.



While everyone was too busy looking at the end point X quietly shifted the starting line behind. :D