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Published: February 24th 2015
Pushkar, Rajasthan India
24th February 2015
“Emotionally we have many problems, but these problems are not actual problems; they are something created; they are problems pointed out by our self-centered ideas or views.”
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind Beginners Mind It had been a pleasant evening entertaining my friend in my room. We had cooked pasta with mushroom and tomato cream sauce and had followed up with a cup of spice
chai. I was putting on some music on my Zenbook ASUS Solid State Hard Drive Ultrabook (I quote all this to bring home my special attachment to my computer of choice these past two years... the decision to buy having been long and arduous for my fickle mind, and the care I had taken travelling across India and Turkey and back being particularly careful with it all the while).
Kchung!..... I had stupidly placed my chai next to my mouse and on reaching for same knocked it all over the keyboard. I was somewhat surprised at my containment of reaction... perhaps because I had a guest.... I did swear to be sure but then just proceeded to tip the laptop upside down to try and get the liquid back out.
Two local computer ‘experts’ and six weeks later, I still did not have a solution and had planned a stopover in Delhi (with it’s famed Nehru Place computer mecca market) to finally have the thing fixed. Yes we will call you in the morning they said, with a diagnosis and quote. But it could take up to a month to get foreign parts. At 12 noon the next day I walked back into the service centre office and the woman at the desk asked ‘They called you?’ Well no, I explained together with a bit of a precious speech about this being just the problem I feared in trying to get personal attention in a timely fashion ... that people make promises they just don’t keep. What to do?
After 10 minutes I got the diagnosis / prognosis. The motherboard was done... and so too the keyboard... meaning that my data on my hard drive would also be gone.... and that to fix the thing would cost me 80,000 rupees plus tax. The expensiveness was due, they said, to the parts not being available in India and needing to be imported. Hm.... I had paid just $1,250 or about 70,000 rupees for it new. Not good... and again I contained myself given I was in the service centre with many other customers... but not completely... they all heard my grief. I collected my sad computer, paid the 250 rupees service charge and was about to leave.
Then a young Indian man sitting waiting for his turn at the service desk said to me in all sincerity as I passed him “Sorry for your loss”. A sobering sentiment which reminded me about how lucky I am... I turned to him with a smile and said back “Well, I still have both my legs so I am lucky, no?”. He smiled.
Then one of those totally serendipitous things happened. I was ready to write off my super ultrabook computer and accept that I needed to just go and spend 35,000 rupees (about Australian $700 or 500 euros) on a decent notebook, when this Indian gentleman about my age who was also leaving the service centre approached me. He thought it unaccetable that the ASUS people had only offered me these ridiculously expensive new replacement options. He said I should not give up on the option of finding a smart young IT whiz in Delhi who would have a go at actually manually fixing my computer.... that I ought not consider the ASUS solution as the only outcome.
He offered to ring someone he knew to be good. We talked on the phone and Bupendra (his IT contact's name) offered to come to the home of the friends where I was staying in Delhi at 2 pm and collect my computer. As promised he did so... on time.... and with a lovely quiet and considerate and patient demeanor, explained that he would do his best to fix the computer. I asked him to take it and keep it while I was in Varanasi for 2 weeks and then if it was fixable I could collect it on my return to Delhi.
How simple all this was. Then, as I was off to catch my train to Varanasi that night, I did have a paranoid thought..... just for a moment.... Here I had given an expensive machine over to a complete stranger... what if the whole thing was a scam? What if ASUS, the gentleman, Bupendra were all in on a sting that had now meant they had a computer that was easily fixable and worth many thousands on the black market.... Easy to have set it all up with false names and promises and so on. What recourse would I have..... absolutely none. Ha. I quickly rid my mind of these thoughts with a smile and even accepted if it were the case, then OK... I still had both my legs.
In Varanasi, my cup boiler, a 60 rupee electic coil device that many travelers have to make
chai in their rooms, failed. It happens. Not for the first time. I went out to the market and bought a new one. Then it occured to me that I was no more upset really with this event than with the whole thing about my computer being broken. Nice and strange. Sixty rupees verses 70,000 rupees. But how relative everything is in the end.
I left it a week before I contacted Bupendra expecting to hear the news that the laptop was indeed deceased. But he assured me it was not yet the case.... that the Delhi elections had meant things had ground to a standstill and he was stil to get time to work on my machine. Another week, after the festival of Shivratri and a few days of back to normal 'working days' I tried again. This time he told me “your computer is fixed”. I was completely surprised. We lined up a time for when I returned to Delhi where he would again personally call around to my friends' place to deliver the computer. It would cost 15,000 rupees. He was a bit embarrassed about the price but said he had to replace the hard drive (soilid state and not cheap) and it had to be imported from China. Then there was a 2,000 rupee work charge (not excessive and he had pre-told me this was the deal if he were able to fix it). In the end he also had been able to recover all my data off the old hard drive.
Not only did he deliver.. but then when I later had problems getting my smartphone to sync, he came the next day again to sort that out for me. Nice guy.... really nice.
And so.... I am back in business.... back in this modern era of full computer connectivity. Back to writing (I hope). It's been an interesting experience without a computer for over three months... even if I cheated on the total experience of doing without by having a smartphone to keep up with emails etc... But interesting still. And not bad. Just different.
And I still have both my legs. I am lucky.
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
A chai coil, a computer and legs--what a lucky guy!
And you got to enjoy that lesson in questioning that melted into trust. How so like India or Peru that some young guy could fix your computer for a fraction of the big guy's costs, which is why I always went to Mexico for car repairs, dentist, etc when I lived in California. I also must admit that I enjoy it when I go to Bolivia and am beyond wifi. It's great to be connected, but it's also a relief to be quiet. So glad all is well. Incidentally, I have a chai coil that I also use for boiling my drinking water, but only found it in one small mountain town. You are lucky that they are so available there.