Getting my ipod repaired in Hyderabad

You can jolly well understand how upset I got when just three months after having bought my expensive flashy 30 gb Videopod, it stopped working! Yeah, just like that, without as much as a warning or a whimper. It had been on low battery the last time I saw it, so I had switched it off and kept in inside. When I pulled it out now, it said something like "please wait...battery too low!" I plugged it into the comp and left it to charge, but it just wouldn't. I went on the apple site and it gave me some supposedly standard troubleshooting steps that sounded pretty convincing. But after all the pressing the centre button and menu with it and jumping to centre and play, and what not, nothing would happen...what did happen was, it gave me the dreaded "sad ipod" icon. Pretty ironic this was, going by the fact that it reflected my feelings at that point pretty accurately.
I was quite perturbed by now, going around asking friends and visiting blogs...the only tips I picked up from the blogs was that I should whack my ipod around a few times, or just let it drop on the floor! Can you believe that...drop a 3-month young videopod on the floor?! Ridiculous, I say! (p.s- In heights of desperation, I did give it a few tentative light knocks, hoping it would spurt back to life somehow).
I had almost succumbed into depression over my poor luck with gadgets, and that I may have to send it to the US or at least have to take it to Bangalore, which I had heard had an Apple store. However, just looking around vaguely on the apple.co.in site, I landed on the page for the service centre search. And, guess what, I struck gold! Hyderabad actually did have a service centre.
So, the very next morning, I went looking for the 'promised store' that would put an end to my pod-miseries. Inside a lane near a busy crossing called Ameerpet, i found the mentioned address, but hey, where was this store? I looked around, asked around and then gave a ring on the store number. Guess what, it was a small flat hidden somewhere in the bowels of a big residential complex. This got me so scared that when they took my pod and gave a receipt, asking me to wait for a call, I was imagining the worst--maybe I'm never gonna get to see my dear ipod again, and next time I come here, I'm just gonna see an empty flat (too much movies, I know)!
But hey, I did get a call, and in two days as they had promised. As soon as office was over on Wednesday, I was rushing towards Ameerpet in a cab, battling through the messyoffice-time traffic of Hyderabad. What awaited me there was quite a pleasant surprise. They had fixed my ipod and got it into perfect condition ( read, Sarit was ecstatic), and whats more, he had replaced the case as well. It looked as good as new (read, Sarit super ecstatic), with a new protection covering and a new serial number.
And, once again, I have to acknowledge that I am blown by Apple's service! It's something ordering your pod online and getting it delivered within 24 hours where they promise 4 days; but it is simply incredible to have your ipod perfectly serviced and revamped in a small residential-flat version Apple service centre in the middle of the circus-like madness of Ameerpet, Hyderabad!
Moral of the story: A fantastic and novel experience in customer satisfaction.

...that rocks the cradle

Beauty empowered

In pursuit of Life

Flame

Ciefl by night

Shades of the city: Hyderabad

Bee's view

Perspective

Community: A transferred epithet

A Community is a group of people living in one place, having common profession, or, common platform of existence.

The flock of hens kept together in a Bazaar here serves as a representative. ‘Flock’ has a definite semblance of community, but the one here does not convey the image of a natural community— the hens haven’t assembled because of instinctive affinity that creatures of the same species have. These are beings brought together by forces over which they have no control. There are hens here cramped together on the ground; there are others in box-shaped cages rising up in storeys. The most striking feature of this community is its unawareness of the crisis of its situation. They are peaceful, not feeling the need for a change, which is necessary for their survival. They are not living; they are just being there, moving with time— in an inertia of existence.

We all belong to a similar community— we the people of the busy cities and apparently ‘meaningful’ busy lives. We lead life like the enactment of an ever-repeating play, going through day, then night, then the same old day again, and on and on. We are also not a natural community—circumstance bring us together—the need to work, study, earn— the need to ‘peck’ out food like the hens. Look around from your ‘box-shaped’ concrete storeys – do you see the numerous poor cramped together on the footpaths? You don’t? Maybe even the hens in the boxes think they are higher than the ones below them. Aren’t we all oblivious of our inertial existences?

We are this universal community which has forgotten that life is not about leading it out to the end monotonously, but about having some excitement too. We exist in the transferred epithet of the hens’ inertia, not attempting even a departure from it through the scope of the open-window in the hen-cage. I am not a pessimist who says that this society is meaningless. Men must work and earn to live but these must only be the means and not the purpose of life. The open-window must sometime be taken to explore the meaning of life.
By--

Sarit

Dawning Dusk

The setting sun spread its burning rays
(Now) Relief breathed as another day ends.
I craned up my neck to gaze outside
But the half-closed window shut the light;
Only solitude silently was gushed in.
As the hot breeze blew through the blinds, thin
I heard only a crow crack out;
Waiting to hear a noiseless sound.
Not a car, not a bus passed
Was it only the truth I yearned?
I will wait and eternally wait
Only a sigh comes out -- No escape!
By--
J