Beware the Shapes of India!

Indians have the habit of achieving the impossible. It is in their jeans (pun intended). When mathematics was in the doldrums, they invented zero, and they are still experts at zero. When the Americans did not know how far the moon was, it was an Indian who calculated it for them. Infact, I think, he even told them how much petrol to put in their car. Indians are expert at putting the optimum amount of petrol in their cars and then coasting into petrol pumps. Infact since my son has taken to driving my car, I have also become an expert at coasting into petrol pumps.

Matter, for that matter solid matter, was always thought to be static. But, lately, an Indian has succeeded in compressing matter. And another has succeeded in stretching it.

I have to proof for it and will soon forward it to the National Physics Lab for verification and award of honorary degrees to these persons.

I am a sucker for sales and as soon as I see the sign ‘SALDES’ I can’t resist myself. So there was this sale in a huge departmental store in Gurgaon and I went and bought two pairs of trousers, some brand called ‘SHAPES’ and patted myself on the back. I wear a size 36 waist, so I bought two size 36’s, blindly. Because it was a ‘Sale period’ and all modicum of decency is suspended in that duration, both by the customers and the store, my loyalty card was not swiped and the trousers were not accepted for alteration ‘Too much rush sir’.

Two weeks later I again went and managed to give the trousers for alteration. ‘Too much rush sir, collect them after a week’. Anyway, the trousers finally reached my home, altered and all. I wore one of them, sort of OK.

One fine day, or was it a night, I went on an eating and drinking binge. The next morning I decided to wear the second trouser. And I found that I had gained two inches overnight. Good gracious. I went on a crash diet for two days – and regained my old form – all trousers fitting me. Again, after a month I wore the second trouser – goodness, even without the binge I had gained two inches again. But that’s not possible, the human body may be elastic, but only so much.

So I put both trousers on a table, one over the other, and bingo, there was a difference of two inches. So I went to the store again (visit 4) and showed them the two trousers. One nice salesman coolly picked up the smaller trouser, took out his measuring tape and measured it and announced – ‘Sir, it is the correct size, on the other hand it is size 37!!’ These persons are PC Sorcars in the making. So if the smaller one is 37, the bigger should be 39? That had him foxed. ‘Please give me some time, I will look into it’. What will you do by looking ‘into’ it when the truth is staring at you just by looking ‘at’ it?

Anyway, I went to my good friend Google and asked him to search for SHAPES and he came up with something ‘Disappoint India Limited’. Oops, forgot to wear my specs – it’s Designers Point India Limited. Their website proudly says ‘SHAPES has etched a global benchmark in …..’ and leads to much more garbage.

Got their phone number and rang them up and asked them to connect me to Quality Control. ‘We don’t have quality control’ I know you have no quality and obviously no quality control but there must be an office on which the name plate says quality control? ‘No sir’. Anyone else around? ‘No Sir, they usually come in the afternoon’. Your MD’s number ‘Sure Sir’.

And so I rang up Ashwini Anand, the MD of Disappoint India Ltd. ‘I’ll ask someone to get back to you’ It’s more than a month since this conversation and no one has gotten back to me. Maybe after this blog post they will get to me, if not get back to me!

I have a patient who manufactures clothes for GAP and he has a huge room, almost half the size of his factory labeled ‘Broken needles locating equipment’ When I asked him why he said, ‘If one small needle goes in any item, I will have to sell this factory to pay for the damages’. So it means Indians are afraid of foreigners who will sue them, but not of Indians who will not sue them.

And how will a company etch any type of global or even local benchmark if it has no quality or no quality control is the wildest dream. Anyway the salesperson at the departmental store also advised me ‘Sir buy some other brand the next time. These persons are only importing stuff in containers and putting their label on it’. Got it, just like a sophisticated Palika Bazar.

But are we not ourselves responsible for this treatment meted out to us. Because we take everything lying down. ‘Kya fayda hai?’ ‘Kya hoga?’ ‘Kyun apna dimag kharaab karte ho’. Also, even though the Consumer Disputes Fora are in place, still it is cumbersome to approach one. And all the legalities usually just go overhead. And it is not only the Indian companies which are not afraid of Indians, even the foreigners who have opened shop in India have the same attitude – ‘Ke kar lega?’ ‘Ke p**t lega?’ (Obviously translated into curt English). I am doing a study on a leading foreign clothing brand which has outlets in India vis a vis their attitude towards customers in India and abroad. It will be one of my next posts.

Anyway, it took me eight visits to this big, really big store, to get a 'credit note' for the amount I spent which, in India, is no mean achievement and nothing short of climbing the Everest.

When I mentioned this incident to a friend who teaches advertising he said, ‘They don’t need quality control when they have quantity control – of your wallet’

And the icing on the cake was that when I checked the bill, none of the seven items I bought were discounted!!

So, the next time BEWARE THE SHAPES OF INDIA