Today, on the 15th of August, we celebrate the the completion of 62 years of Indian Independence and I found a WordPress India Logo which just sets up the mood for the ocassion.
WordPress India Logo
Happy Independence Day, fellow Indians 
Photo Courtesy – Allan Fernandes
Back in 2007, Bajaj Allianz announced a new life insurance policy which at that time was worth every bit. The scheme was a single premium policy which they would be investing in the stock market for ten years. Once the policy is matured, the current market value of the premium paid would be returned. The maximum sum insured is Rs. 2.5 Lacs for a single premium of Rs. 25,000.
Considering the market situation at that time, which indeed was in full flow, my dad purchased the policy in the name of my sister. We were introduced to this policy by one of the affiliated banks with Bajaj Allianz, and so, we decided to go ahead with the policy via the bank to help promote its marketing statistics. We paid Rs. 25,000 to the agent present at the bank, completed the initial formalities and thought we’d made a nice deal.
Bajaj Allianz then issued the policy which reached us after 15 days of the date-of-issue due to some delay by the courier service. To our surprise, the maximum sum insured in the policy was just Rs. 50,000. My dad, at that moment did not smell any foul play on the part of Bajaj Allianz. He contacted the agent at the bank about the sum insured and he suggested us to go for a Free Look Cancellation and ask for a new policy.
Here started the problem. According to the norms of Bajaj Allianz, Free Look Cancellation can be availed only 15 days from the date-of-issue and because of the initial delay, we could not avail that. Now, we were left with no option but to keep the policy and live with it.
Now, which fool would pay a single premium of Rs 25,000 for an insured sum of Rs 50,000 for over a period of ten years? Keeping it in an Fixed Deposit would become 4 times in the same period. Moreover, my sister was just 23 at that time and most eligible to get the full sum insured of Rs. 2.5 lacs. My dad then thought something had gone wrong.
My dad asked for the application submitted at the bank. When closely observed, the Bajaj Allianz staff had modified the insured sum of Rs. 2.5 Lacs as Rs. 50,000 and had actually submitted it. Anybody with his naked eye could see that in the 2,50,000 what we had written, a whitener was used over the initial ’2′ and the signature was forged. Note that there was no column in the application to write the sum in words. Cunning Bajaj Allianz.
When the bank was contacted on this matter, they chose to ignore it and said it was upto Bajaj Allianz to handle it. When the topic of forgery was raised, Bajaj Allianz people refused it right away and maintained that the correction was made by us. No person in his right mind would leave the first box empty and start writing from the second box. It was clearly visible that a whitener was used.
My dad was never going to give this up. He then wrote a letter to a higher official in Bajaj Allianz and the subordinates got a whip on their ass. They then offered us a Free Look Cancellation and close the matter, provided we paid Rs. 10,000 as their processing charges. We were given an option to pay for no fault of ours.
Since this was a matter of fraud and forgery, Bajaj Allianz then came up with a proposal that they could insure a sum of 5 times the premium ie Rs. 1.25 Lacs. This was because by the time all this happened, the market had gone down and recession had hit. We were in no mood to accept anything less than what was in the initial brochure.
All this pain, agony and discussion went for over 18 months and Bajaj Allianz had no signs of a compromise without even fearing their credibility of this matter became public. Finally, my Dad contacted a very senior official of the bank and reported the matter to him. The official then took personal interest and discussed the matter with the subordinate-to-CEO of Bajaj Allianz. The application was then sent to forensic laboratory for handwriting verification.
Bingo! The forensic lab gave a report in our favor. Handwriting verification report proved that the signature was forged and Bajaj Allianz had to surrender. Finally, a few days back we received a policy for the full sum insured of Rs. 2.5 Lacs and an email from Bajaj Allianz with the subject “Suspected Scam”. 
This is a lesson for the future for us and everyone who would like have a deal with Bajaj Allianz. At-last truth prevailed.
It was just another day and just another evening when it rained here in Bangalore. But then nobody knew the surprise that awaited just after the rain halted. Clouds cleared within no time and the Sun came out while the atmosphere still contained a few drops of water. Exactly at this time was the Sunset and Oh My God, what an amazing sight it was! The orange and the red spread across the horizon. Two eyes were too less to witness and enjoy those moments. The whole drama unfolded and happened within 10 minutes of time and Harsha managed to take some snaps of this once in a lifetime moment.
You gotta love nature and God’s creations. 4th of June, 2009 is going to stay in my memory for a long long time.
Find the Complete Photo Set here.
Profit and Loss is part and parcel of Life, but booking a Tatkal ticket in Indian Railways is a sureshot loss if opt to cancel it. It so happened that my Dad asked me to book a ticket to Hyderabad just 5 days prior to the departure date. Since this is the peak season there was no chance of getting a Confirmed berth. My Dad insisted on booking the ticket in Tatkal which had about 10 available seats.
Indian Railways charge Rs. 150 per ticket as Tatkal charges. So, I had to pay Rs 313 + 150 = Rs 463. Just about 2 hrs later, due to unavoidable circumstances, my Dad told that he would cancel his trip to Hyderabad and asked me to cancel the ticket.
Just as I pressed the cancel ticket button, I got a shocker. 25% of the total fare charged on the ticket would be 25% of Rs 313 = Rs 78.25 is all that was refunded. Now, isn’t this fraud? This is open theft straight from the customer’s pocket.
Cancellation of a ticket booked under Tatkal -
A flat refund of 25% of total fare charged on ticket,excluding Tatkal Charges is granted on cancellation of confirmed Tatkal tickets, which are cancelled up to 24 hrs. before the schedule departure of train.
A hasty decision from the traveller’s side cost him Rs 384.75. Thats a huge loss in just 2 hours 
I strongly feel that this is harsh on the customer for booking a ticket in Tatkal and then cancelling it. It would have been fine if the Railways kept the Tatkal charges for itself, but taking away 75% of the fare is just insane.
Now that the money is gone, nothing much can be done about it. A lesson for the future – Book a wicket in waiting list when your trip is tentative.
Come April and starts off a countdown for yet another (K)Ubuntu Release and this time its Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jakalope. With first inputs from Madhusudan C.S that Jaunty went terribly wrong for him, dented all hopes of another wonderful release. But then, when I had my hands on, I say, the Jaunty is a Gem. Here are my first impressions of Kubuntu 9.04 -
Installer - Minor changes to the installer in timezone selection and partition manager. This time around the partition manager took less than 10 seconds to display the table as against over a minute with the Ibex. The installation process went on smoothly with CD-in to CD-out happened well within 15 minutes. That’s great!
Boot time – AS promised by Mark Shuttleworth, the Jaunty boots at an unbelievable timing of 22 seconds. The benchmark says 21 seconds but then I spend 1 second hitting the Enter Key at the Grub 
With successful installation and a fast boot, JJ was all set, and this time its Kubuntu 9.04 for me.
Desktop Environment – With KDE 4.2.2 as default DE one could not have asked for more. With its world-renowned Ubuntu core and the KDE 4.2 desktop, Kubuntu 9.04 gives users a well-rounded, feature-filled and elegant desktop.
ext 4 – The revolutionary ext4 has been performing well and is showing amazing speeds of data transfer. I now get around 35Mibps as compared to 20Mibps in ext3. Another reason to love GNU/Linux.
Gtk Support – Firefox, Pidgin and ntfs-config are the first and foremost packages I install on a Kubuntu machine. Started firefox and to my surprise it looked beautiful. For a moment I could not believe my eyes. The Qt Curve has been such nicely integrated with GTK applications that they almost seem native. Qt Curve Devs – Take a bow
Display – And yet again displayconfig-gtk is what I miss in this section. Ubuntu, post Gutsy never took my default screen resolution and I had to replace my xorg.conf. Once done, no problems whatsoever. If you have display problems then replace your /etc/X11/xorg.conf with this – http://tr.im/xorg and after a restart you can see the resolution in your display manager. Note – only for those with Intel Graphics.
Audio – Works out of the box and yeah Amarok rocks
Network Management – The old network manager is replaced with the new Plasma Widget. Super Cool! It displays the IP address on mouse hover.
Plasma – Whole lot of improvements to the Plasma and more new innovative widgets which make the Desktop experience more refined. The notification system looks good too.
System Settings – New in System Settings are tools for managing software and printer configuration. Finally, a full fledged KDE alternative to Synaptic Package Manager has arrived. The Kpackagekit ! Search, Install, Add/Remove, Update and edit software sources - all at one place is what Kpackagekit gives you. Awesomeness!
Quassel IRC – Why? What was the need to replace Konversation? I personally did not like Quassel one little bit. The whole look and feel of Quassel seems so foreign. Usability is not easy either. I’m sticking with Konvy.
Digikam – YaY! Digikam has been updated to its first KDE 4 release. This version is not a complete port to KDE 4 technologies (Solid, Phonon…), but it includes major functionality improvements and I’m loving it. Works fine with my Kodak C653.
All-in-all, Kubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jakalope is one such release that has been problem free and its been a long time since I have seen such a stable release. No firefox freezes, no application crashes and no misbehaviours. Guys, Kubuntu 9.04 is out in the wild and is a combination of Speed, Beauty and Innovation.
