People from Bihar are quite hard=working .....

If you want to truly make money in Mumbai, there are hundreds of ways to make it, all you need to do is the hard work and sincerity, Me thinks that Bihari are very enterprising and you see them doing all kinds of odd jobs making our life easier. Auto rickshaw drivers, taxi drivers, street hawkers, carpenters, painters, etc, etc, most of them are Biharis. Had they stayed back in Bihar and worked so hard in their own city, how rich and successful city would Bihar be? But Mumbaite are lucky that we get opportunity to avail of their service. Take for example like these group of Biharis stationed outside post office. The other day, I shopped for my niece some t-shirts, skirts, earrings and some accessories and headed towards the post office. It was drizzling and as soon as I stepped out of the auto, this Bihari smile at me and asked me if he could assist me. He took the packet from my hand and examined the contents and then led me inside the post office to show the contents to the post master. We were then back on the footpath, outside the post office, he dusted a small wooden stool and asked me to remain seated while he would pack it for me. Thus I sat, on a low stool, watching the traffic and the people on the streets and then watching him pack my parcel. Cramped up on his lower seat, with a small bag on his lap, and the broken plastic sheet over his head, up against the wall, barely protecting him from rain, he removed beige colored cloth, measured it around the packet and cut the cloth with razor blade (he didn’t even invest in scissors) and stitched the cloth around the packet. He gave me two forms to fill and guiding me the right way to write the address, stressing the point that both, ‘To’ and ‘From’ addresses should be written on one side of the packet and he stuck the form on the other side. He accompanied me back into the post office, bought stamps and helped me post it…. Quite easily done for a small fee of Rs50 only….

Visiting Post office in Mumbai..Uff!

Few months ago, while I was in Bangkok, I wanted to make a food parcel from the post office. The post office was air-conditioned and very clean and an officer occupied one corner of the room and he helped me pack my food parcel in a box, write address for me and fix the stamps and voila. It was done in ten minutes!! But, I wonder, why it is so difficult to do such simple thing here, in Mumbai? I wanted to send a small packet overseas. I bought envelop for packing, placed the contents into it and went to the post office. The one, closer to my house is a smaller one and they refuse to help me, claiming that I need to wrap it with cloth and go to the other bigger post office. The bigger post office has bigger problems. It is not only dirty and unkempt, but also crowded. There is a separate line for sending parcel and a separate line for buying stamps. The packet had to be wrapped with the cloth, and that service was offered by a man, who is seated on the road, outside the post-office. All these services are exposed to you, one at a time. Tempers fly high, due to frustration of people standing in line and some of them cutting lines. I wait ten minutes for the parcel to be assessed, then take it to the man, outside the post office, and wait on the road. There are many people working on the road side outside the post office, some people are selling envelops, some scanning through mail and some just sitting idle watching the world pass by. I wait patiently on the road as he carefully stitches the packet for me. I come back and wait in line again, only to be told to come back with the stamps of said amount. Wait in another queue to buy stamps and wait again, back at the first window. There is no glue available to stick the stamps on the packets and the tempers fly again, demanding glue! Glue!Glue! People working behind the window are unperturbed by the noise and commotion and they continue to work at snail speed, weighing, chopping a rubber stamp, slowly looking up at aggressive customer, very cool, dilling, dallying..like in those 1955 movies. My parcel takes more than an hour to slip off from my patronage to the other side of the window. Phew!