मेघदूत: "नीचैर्गच्छत्युपरि च दशा चक्रनेमिक्रमेण"

समर्थ शिष्या अक्का : "स्वामीच्या कृपाप्रसादे हे सर्व नश्वर आहे असे समजले. पण या नश्वरात तमाशा बहुत आहे."

G C Lichtenberg: “It is as if our languages were confounded: when we want a thought, they bring us a word; when we ask for a word, they give us a dash; and when we expect a dash, there comes a piece of bawdy.”

C. P. Cavafy: "I’d rather look at things than speak about them."

Martin Amis: “Gogol is funny, Tolstoy in his merciless clarity is funny, and Dostoyevsky, funnily enough, is very funny indeed; moreover, the final generation of Russian literature, before it was destroyed by Lenin and Stalin, remained emphatically comic — Bunin, Bely, Bulgakov, Zamyatin. The novel is comic because life is comic (until the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act);...”

सदानंद रेगे: "... पण तुकारामाची गाथा ज्या धुंदीनं आजपर्यंत वाचली जात होती ती धुंदी माझ्याकडे नाहीय. ती मला येऊच शकत नाही याचं कारण स्वभावतःच मी नास्तिक आहे."

".. त्यामुळं आपण त्या दारिद्र्याच्या अनुभवापलीकडे जाऊच शकत नाही. तुम्ही जर अलीकडची सगळी पुस्तके पाहिलीत...तर त्यांच्यामध्ये त्याच्याखेरीज दुसरं काही नाहीच आहे. म्हणजे माणसांच्या नात्यानात्यांतील जी सूक्ष्मता आहे ती क्वचित चितारलेली तुम्हाला दिसेल. कारण हा जो अनुभव आहे... आपले जे अनुभव आहेत ते ढोबळ प्रकारचे आहेत....."

Kenneth Goldsmith: "In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.”1 I’ve come to embrace Huebler’s ideas, though it might be retooled as “The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing today: faced with an unprecedented amount of available text, the problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, how I parse it, how I organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours."

Tom Wolfe: "The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’"

विलास सारंग: "… इ. स. 1000 नंतर ज्या प्रकारची संस्कृती रुढ झाली , त्यामध्ये साधारणत्व व विश्वात्मकता हे गुण प्राय: लुप्त झाले...आपली संस्कृती अकाली विश्वात्मक साधारणतेला मुकली आहे."

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Corporates beware! Consumers are fighting back

My irritation with our service providers is increasing by the day.

During last several months of 2006-07, I have been pissed off by ICICI Bank, Books Today (India Today group), Reliance Communications, Standard Chartered Bank, DSK Developers, Birla Mutual Fund, HDFC Mutual Fund, local cable guy and so on.

Mind you issues involved are not minor irritants.

It has become so bad that I have come around to think that perhaps government in India is less irritating than the private sector.

But companies perhaps think I am their best customer because I continue to do business with them!

ELEANOR RANDOLPH writes in NYT March 11, 2007 "A Time and Place for Grousing":

"In today’s global economy, however, there is a totally different culture for complaints. Artful bellyaching has become a survival skill. And, the harder it becomes to complain (“You’re talking to me from Tajikistan?”) and the longer it takes to get satisfaction, the angrier customers become in return. American consumers are so angry that companies are assessing the new level of customer rage. A study by Arizona State University found that 70 per cent of customers who had problems were either extremely or very teed-off as a result of their complaints. Scott Broetzmann, president of Customer Care Measurement and Consulting, which helped with the university analysis, said, “You have to go back more than 40 years (i.e., Ralph Nader’s heyday) to find the acrimony you now have between consumers and businesses.” Although there are many companies that care deeply about customer service, too many consider the consumer complaints desk to be a cost center worthy of cutting. So, consumers are fighting back. Mr. Broetzmann, who helps businesses deal with consumer outrage, says that customers become angrier with every hour spent trying to get relief. (Four hours is the average.) But he also says that many consumers say they would be satisfied with respect or an apology rather than, for example, a replacement iPod."


Artist : James Stevenson The New Yorker 23 Jan 1960
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