ChinmayC Blog

No doubt, the EMI has been an integral part of modern living. The home loans , the car loans and the like are meaningless without the EMI tenures and installment calculations . However, of late, the Credit Card issuing banks seem to have gone crazy over marketing of the EMIs. Even for spends as low as a thousand bucks you get the message to 'convert'. They make it overpoweringly easy for you--just click yes and select the tenure, and it's done! Not only that! If your card bill consists of quite a few EMIs, some banks even give you the option of paying your bill in EMIs too! Yes! At certain times it's very useful to be able to split up a good amount, like when buying a consumer durable , into easy installments; but it gets downright irritating if you're reminded (repeatedly) to 'convert' for every possible spend.  It's obviously very profitable for the banks who at the present tumultuous times seem to believe that 'tiny drops can make the ocean...

It’s only natural that in today’s digital world readers as well as writers know about many writers/authors, particularly those having international bestsellers, without even reading their books. Same here! One such author is James Patterson who has been a prolific writer of numerous novels quite a few of which are bestselling ones, although I’m yet to read any of his books. Now, why am I talking about this author? So suddenly and without any reference to the context? Nope! There’s indeed a reference and a very interesting one at that! I’ve received an email from him! James Patterson! I discovered that while checking the spam before deleting forever the mails inside! The name is there in full with a some added letters/numbers to it and, of course, sent from a Gmail account, as is the norm. From my experience for the last few years I immediately knew it was a scammer or a con book promoter. That it was directed to the Spam could well be due to my action over the years to mark so many...

  The contrast and the irony of a writer! Several years back I celebrated the achievement of a million views of the previous version of this blog. I just did the formality for formality’s sake as I was well aware of the real scenario. I started my blog in all sincerity and the zeal of a writer enthralled by the coming of a desktop to my writing table and the exciting opportunities of writing online. Back in 2006 when I had my personal computer I started contributing articles/stories/snippets to many of the online magazines and article directories. Then I started my blog the next year and for two years or so found little time to do justice to it. I really opened up from around 2010 and by that time views were increasing. I consider the year of 2012 to be the most productive when I think I wrote blogposts almost every day. At that time Google was having a very prestigious page-rank algorithm . The page-rank number for my blog was zero at first, then 2 and then it climbed to a respect...

Can't really blame anyone! It's a universal tendency of the Sapiens to covet for the fast buck and try to make it by all means anytime anywhere. However, in the digi-modern era this tendency has become fully class barriers neutral--meaning all from the micro/petty operators to the biggest of all tycoons and also including even government agencies and PSUs tend to make hay with the fast buck. Although individual profit or commission has been the real motive, greed of the lowest order has mostly penetrated the urge, making it overpowering for the makers and scarily irritating for the gullible customers.  Even if you are a regularly-paying good customer the agents from the paanwallahs to the giant service providers keep on pestering you to consider various 'offers' that help them make the fast buck and irritate you to no small extent. Asking for 'feedback' is another way to egg you on. You may think you've paid full for the service and have no time to enter...

Well! What the heck! Invisibility is infinite because our own God Himself is invisible! Some scientists say that even ZERO is a concept akin to being infinite! Therefore, both ways, it’s only great to be invisible! While God hides Himself behind whatever you don’t need to know, He has created the humans that are immensely visible; once you’re born as one you cannot hide anywhere in the universe until you drop dead in which case you’re either burnt to ashes or buried under, making you finally invisible as far as the ‘real you’ is concerned, because you continue to exist virtually in family albums and the social media, and if you happen to be a huge celebrity you continue to have an extremely dominant virtual existence till perhaps when earth itself gets obliterated. However, problems are more obnoxious when you and other ordinary mortals like us are kicking alive! Even if you wish to disappear instantly from all human views, like Sita in Ramayana did, you fail to accomplish that. In thi...

This is indeed a huge relief! Like the Pandavas in Mahabharata had to undergo an Agyatvas (incognito exile) we're too having a similar phase without, of course, any kind of force or politics being applied in our case! We don't know how long this Agyatvas is going to last. But it was necessary to outsmart all those bots, malevolent elements, casual surfers and so on from visiting our erstwhile site uninvited and always with malafide intentions. They can no longer spot us and harm our virtual platform. All of my social media accounts have also been deactivated, because I was convinced that these spaces attract more enemies than friends, and also the extremely dangerous species of disguised friends, apart from the arrows of the malevolent fraudsters. No visitors, no issues; no readers, no cramps! Amen! 

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...

“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...

Such in-a-soup stories need to be told, because they mostly are about all those faceless people who normally have no voice. It doesn’t matter if the stories were my personal ones or somebody else’s. As you must be aware a writer or a storyteller has the choice of being the narrator in the first person or in the third person, and in post-modern storytelling even in the second person. Well, right? As you also must’ve been aware all the time that several essential services like banking were spared during the pandemic lockdowns, and as far as services at the bank branches are concerned the pandemic hit them real hard with thousands of their staff members getting the infection leading to manpower shortages which was really unfortunate. However, the pandemic had a definitive role in making online transactions a way of life, forcing even the traditionally manual-obsessed customers go for online activities. Therefore, when I discovered a bank failing even in that minimum of online presence I h...

India Post over the recent days has been observing various URLs/Websites getting circulated in social media such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and through emails / SMS containing tiny URLs/ Short URLs, claiming to be providing Government Subsidies through certain surveys, quizzes.   We wish to inform the citizens of the Country that India Post is not involved in any such activities like announcing Subsidies, Bonus or Prizes based on Surveys etc. Public receiving such notifications/messages /emails are requested not to believe or respond to such fake and spurious messages or share any personal details.   It is also requested to not share any personally identifiable information such as date of birth, Account numbers, mobile numbers, place of Birth & OTP etc. India Post though is taking necessary  action to prevent these URLs / links / Websites to be taken down through various prevention mechanisms.    Public at large is once again requested not to b...

While the opposition political parties of India have been clueless about what to stand for and how to stand for, the ruling political party with its huge majority or a brute majority have been getting used to rushing through the bills in Parliament of which the prime example had been the Three Farm Laws in 2020 pandemic times (had to be repealed last month due to sustained opposition by the farmers) along with other examples, especially after the party’s second landslide in 2019. ‘Rushing through’ essentially means getting the bills passed in a hurry with mostly voice votes rendering ‘debate’ a mere formality. Yesterday, Monday the 20 th of December 2021, the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill-2021 was passed by the Lok Sabha without any debate despite strong opposition to the move. Today, the Bill has also been passed by the Rajya Sabha amid an opposition walkout, and with the Presidential assent being only a formality this move to link the Aadhaar Card to the Voter ID is set to become a...

I remember taking my father, most probably in 1989, to his pension issuing bank branch thinking that he must have had some banking business to do. Arriving at the branch we entered the chamber of the bank manager whom my father knew well. After the customary ‘hi, Hellos’ there followed a casual chat, and then we left. I was curious as I saw none of the usual withdrawals or deposits or anything of the banking sort done there. So, I asked my father what was the purpose of the visit to which my father, with an ironic smile, said that he had to ‘show his face’ to the bank proving that he was still alive and kicking. Yes, every retiring or superannuating person from central or state governments or any other government organizations in India (I’m not aware of procedures followed in other countries) have to ‘show his/her fact’ to the issuing bank in the month of November every year mandatorily so that his/her pension is not interrupted. This is called Life Certificate to guarantee the contin...