Wishes to God

Hi there…!

I am not sure if there will be a recipient but I will write on anyways. A lot of people tell me to have faith and not ask the obvious question. I am not however very inclined to ask the usual and easy wishes that I hear most people ask about - health, wealth and kids; I think I can manage those without a whole lot of assistance. I believe in challenges and therefore I challenge thee grant me these four wishes for which there seem to be no respectable solution. Solve me these problems and I promise I will become a believer in every sense. I have tried every avenue possibly available and have not been able to find the solutions myself, so I am not asking for an effortless handout.

Wish 1: Rid me from taxes

I (with a lot of help from my parents) have paid through 21 years of education and work extremely hard (well, I have readers who know me otherwise!) to earn me the ability to take home some money. And I swear there is a lot of hard work that has gone and does go almost everyday into being where I have been able to climb. And I am very seriously offended to have to share my income to support public servants who do not serve any purpose towards the betterment of my quality of life. The road in front of my house is broken, shattered and abused to such an extent that, were it a man, Tolstoy could have written a dark epic on him. And it’s being abused through the season of rain with no interest expressed by any of the authorities I pay taxes to. And then there are bad roads everywhere as one example.

I get all the trash political talk about inclusive growth and everything but the fact is that I think if I pay higher money for the goods I purchase (food and other stuff that is subsidized at the source of production), growth will be more inclusive than me paying higher taxes on my car, house, income and everything I buy. Very soon I foresee, we will end up paying Life Tax for the privilege of being able to live and breathe.

I do not want to pay taxes, please.

Wish 2: Rid me of bad customer service 

My wife went to Reliance to buy broadband internet (or whatever passes for broadband here!). And she called about three times afterwards in addition to three visits to their swanky shop. The six very polite “We will get back to you”s never materialized into a broadband connection. I called AT&T (unrelated problem) some days later, two lengthy chat and 2 voice conversations with customer care I was still not able to get what I needed. I walked into a retail outlet and asked for a specific brand of cooking oil and was met with such scorn as though I had asked of the devil himself.

Customer Service is almost, as a universal concept, always screwed up these days; unless you are in the minority that go the picture perfect path through consumption of a service!

I would pay more for someone with the fundamental understanding that Customer Service is about caring for the customer and not obliging him with service. It’s not charity and I am not asking for subsidy.

I am at the stage where I would pay unreasonably for one layer of service that says, “I am sorry for your inconvenience” and did something to alleviate it (it’s easy to say sorry! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT). God please, can I have some good customer service.

Wish 3: Rid me of TV commercials

I have almost begun to dread the experience of sitting to watch TV. For every 15 minutes of content there is about 20 minutes of arbitrary advertising that makes for an extremely poor viewing experience and the only entertainment is limited to the rare good commercial for the first view. For example, I love the new Hero Honda commercial but then only a couple of times, not very 10 minutes.

And I am not interested in soaps, detergents and online fashion websites that do not carry my size. Please rid the TV of commercials and make it, once again, a good way of wasting time.

Wish 4: Give us some corrupt and efficient politicians

The fact is that politicians cannot be honest. It’s just not a profession in which you can succeed to do any good and be honest. So I am not going to ask for that honest and true to his word politician – Mamata Bannerjee may be a blessing from God but I would rather have a dishonest political leader who does some good for the country than an honest politician who does no good because he or she is spending most of the time defending the given seat of power from corruption.

I am ok to bribe if some good comes of it. Hard work deserves some forms of payment, salary, bribe or illegally in kind. What we need today, really, are leaders who are efficient in executing progress – BFD if they get some of the kickbacks. I say they deserve it.

God give us some efficient leaders who can aid progress even if the cost is some not so white income!