ChinmayC Blog

It has become, particularly after the pandemic-driven desperation, extremely unsavory, unhealthy and irritating to avail of or buy any service or product from any service provider or business unit, ranging from an innocuous cup of tea to medical services, because once you do so which you cannot possibly avoid the marketing hawks of the concerned agencies will keep on bombarding you with text messages, WA posts, emails and also voice interactive or even live voice calls with no deadline for a most desired end, perhaps it's set to continue till the end of you or of the world! They holler and hammer you to rate them, recommend them, fill up feedback forms, take surveys and what not, and of course to continue buying from them. This is aside from the hawks of the bank/insurance/financial agencies who stop at nothing to lure you in, offering cards and personal loans even to hapless senior citizens, and the infuriatingly incessant reminders to pay up regular dues from about a month before...

The calls never stop. They’re ruthlessly regular as always even if you’re going through a huge personal crisis or that you’ve been rendered ineligible for most of the offers in circulation due to various reasons. And I don’t blame the ‘casuals’ desperately trying to augment their measly income with the commissions cum incentives that they hope to earn by getting the customer’s consent for a personal loan or a deposit/investment scheme or a pre-approved credit card. In fact, I always have sympathy and understanding for them; that I get angry most of the times is a part and parcel of the hazardous virtual games being played in abundance nowadays. This time, for a change, it was a male voice that addressed me in all possible politeness. But he sounded weary and lazy, perhaps frustrated by the endless calls from his end since morning without any tangible progress. “Sir, I’m calling from the xyz finance company. If you can spare a moment, please!” For a change, again, I decided not to be...

We’d been growing up with the dictum that ‘everything is fair in love and war’; however, in view of our increasingly awesome experience with the phenomenon of digital marketing we urgently need to revise the dictum to ‘everything is fair in love, war and marketing’, for our own solace. I’m not at all exaggerating this. In spite of being very particular about paying all your dues on time all your life and enjoying a healthy credit score as a result your service providers shall not cease to hound you all the time for payment. They’d start at least a week before the approaching payment-due date and their irksome and utterly useless verbosity will flood all your resources of a digital existence. This ‘logorrhea’ of the post-modern times has become a disease like the good old ‘diarrhea’! The disorder cannot be corrected even if you resort to a digital bank transfer system with specific instructions for the payment on the due date. At most of the times the all-encompassing reminders would ke...

“Hello! Is this Mr. ----?” “Yes, speaking.” “Sir, I’m calling from the Khatak Life Insurance Company…!” “Oh, welcome back! So, you’re giving me a job again, right?” “Well Sir…it’ll be a part-time job…!” “How much salary would you be giving me per month?” “Well…err…Sir! First you’ll have to come to our branch to discuss it over!” “Nah, my dear lady! I won’t come again to any branch of yours. Since you know everything about me please send me the appointment letter!” “Hmm…mmm…um…ugh…ooh…!” “Enjoy your day!” (Cuts the line … Khatak!)   *   “Hello Sir! I’m -----, calling from Khatak Bank. Can I have a minute with you please?” “About what?” “We’re giving you a credit card with a lot of benefits, specially designed for you…!” “So, nowadays you’ve started issuing credit cards to granddads too!” “Pardon Sir?” “What pardon? I know a bit about how you get our phone numbers. Now, once you get my number you have to be knowing a bit about my user profile too, no?” “Your p...

The calls started coming since more than year before my superannuation offering me part-time employment with a monthly salary. I was, naturally, elated getting job offers even before my retirement. The executives always told me I’d have to attend office only 3-4 days a week for only 4-5 hours a day in a managerial capacity, and my job would be to manage a team of young guys. It sounded good, but I told them that with my present employment I cannot have another job or income and so they’ll have to contact me after my retirement. As the month of superannuation neared the calls multiplied including calls from different other companies. I was a little surprised that most of the times the calls were from private life insurance companies —the Kotak Life Insurance (KLI) being the most consistent one. This fact put me a bit off, because I’d been having some kind of loathing all my life for life insurance companies from which you stand to benefit only after you die. However, that was not the c...