Tuesday, March 11, 2008

It's a small world!

I am sitting here in Raleigh, NC. My HP laptop screen goes blank all of a sudden. I call up the HP customer care center. The guy sitting there asks routine question, "Sir, may I know your name please". With all the frustration of a broken laptop in the middle of important work and fact that this was the fourth person I was telling my name to during that call, first answer I can think of is "gabbar singh". But past experience of two years with HP has taught me the essence of buddhism. It is long time since I stopped getting angry over stupid questions one after the other. So I tell my name, "Amit Awekar". Strangely the guy on the line asks me to tell my complete name. With temperature in my head nearing the boiling point, I repeat "Amit Awekar". With typical HP coolness he also repeats, "Your full name please sir." What the heck? Is this my old maamaaji or chaachaaji on the phone? But then beggers and HP customers have no choice. I tell my complete name with father's name and I get question from the other end of the line, "Is your family from village XXXXX?" I was surprised. So surprised that the concentration of chemicals causing emotion called surprise in my brain was not so high even after I had seen a footpath in Pune without any street hawkers. So it took me a few seconds to come down to level of responding. It turns out that the guy comes from the same village that my father hails from. The only sweet surprise HP has given me!