Off-topic: India notes

Sundry notes unrelated to my normal topics, & unlikely to be of interest to readers outside India.

A pleasant surprise from Bombay police.

On 27 December, I received this SMS that claims to come from MUM POLICE: "If any central government employee demands bribe for any official work in Mumbai & Maharashtra, pls contact SP, CBI, ACB, Mumbai on 9820185123, 22882794."

I've no idea if the message is indeed from local police & whether someone is actually sitting at the other end of phone numbers, but assuming it is - this is the first time I've seen an organ of government hand out a message like this - that too with contact numbers! There may still be hope for a decent administration.

Now when do I get similar numbers for reporting corrupt traffic cops & other public contact points of local administration?

For domestic fliers in India.

Apparently in reaction to Bombay terror attacks, a long list of articles is now banned from commercial airplane cabin baggage. Among the banned articles is Gillette shaving foam bottles larger than 100 ml! I ended up spending additional 10 minutes during checkin due to this.

Also, when flying out of Bombay, old system of physical cabin baggage check (after passing it through X Ray machine) is seems to have been reintroduced. So budget additional check in time.

Kingfisher Airlines.

My first experience with the airline turned out to be less than interesting.

A journey that normally lasts 110 minutes had a Kingfisher flying time of 130 minutes, & that was accelerated time because flight was an hour late! I'm not sure if they're using old aircraft, or optimizing fuel. This is a fact I've never seen advertised - that they have slow moving planes.

Then there was the creaky bus that shuttled us from aircraft to terminal.

I somehow had high expectations because of Vijay Mallya association.

BPL Mobile.

I wonder if they are in some sort of serious trouble? I never had problems with my cell phone till this Diwali. For last 3 months, getting connected has become a rare event - often fails to connect the dialed number; when connected, I or other party can not hear while billing meter keeps ticking! Over a dozen complaints got inane & non-committal answers about vague troubles in ongoing network upgrade; I keep getting the impression that the staff is either not sure of problem, or is not allowed to talk about it.

I wonder if other BPL subscribers in Bombay have also been recently facing this? Are other operators' cell subscribers in Bombay facing similar issues? I haven't had any problem using others phones elsewhere in the country, but my own wasn't receiving calls & was apparently allowing only commercial solicitations as inbound SMSes!