$5.50 an hour, plus tips
What I love about this spelling-challenged bookshelf label at Crossword Juhu is that the correction lies the princely distance of one inch north.
… on my last trip to the Nalanda bookshop at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai, I found The 9/11 Commission Report under Fiction. Or maybe that was a political gesture. [Link]
Any young, minimally educated Indian can now get easy jobs in the BPO industry that pay far more than what Crossword can afford for its sales staff. As a result, [CEO] Sriram used to find it almost impossible to hire attendants who actually knew anything about books. [Link]
on Thursday, January 25th, 2007, 8:15 am in Business, Humor, Literature › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
Good God…but whoever said that Crossword knew ANYTHING about books? Talking to their staff is an insult to a book-lover’s intelligence.
Actual conversation: “Do you have any Borges?”
Blank look.
“Jorge Luis Borges… classics… Argentinian… odd short stories…”
Blank look. “Saar, you can try our shop in Malad.” This is the standard answer for any book they don’t have, which is most, because Malad is as far as humanly possible from central city while still being Bombay on a technicality.
What used to be the outer suburbs is now where all the action is. Considering Malad as just “technically” part of Bombay is a very old school point of view…just a step behind firangis who think indians ride their elephants to work, to escape the wild animals roaming on the city streets.
We ate at restaurants that listed “Banana Spillits” and various types of “Chaineese Food”. Petrol trucks warned us that the contents are “Infallable”.
It’s amazing that the likes of illiterate Crosswords employees made my food and managed fuel delivery to homes and vehicles. I was almost convinced that they were competent at running a country.
The restaurant waitstaff enjoyed the visit from the foreigner who visited his birth country and ordered a thali in a barely coherent dialect. The sense of class and my place was certainly challenged.
But, I was quickly comforted with the thought that people who can’t spell in a foreign language or haven’t read every Argentinian writer can’t possibly know where I belong. After all, we’re the ones with the elite educations who have managed to learn ridicule in place of tolerance. It’s just easier and more effective. It excuses every shortcoming.
I can’t explain why my Indian heritage and American education still allowed their English to be better than my Hindi.
But, it doesn’t matter.
Innit?
Well done, Francisco, very funny! But it’s a bookstore, not a cocktail party– this is their domain of expertise. Any Indian autorick driver can tear down and rebuild his engine, any Indian mobilewallah can disassemble a phone and show you the secret codes in three seconds flat, and any book chain salesperson should know the names of the classics. The fault is probably Crossword’s selection rather than the employee.
Therein lies the rub. An engine has objective characteristics to master. The “Classics”, not so much. What is a classic to you as an American is different from what is a classic to the indian readership.
I’ll bet they know where the Enid Blyton books are ;)
And Ayn Rand!
All this hating on Indians who like Rand is nonsensical, I guess Indians like Rand for the same reasons that Alan Greenspan likes her.