British Citizen held for ransacking Post Office

Agreed. We prefer to keep him in our hip pocket (inside purse, with care) than in our heart.

The customs official is fully in his rights to ask you to pay duty on any dutiable item. Or were you carrying an illegal item? I have never (not even in the period from June 1975 to March 1977) been stopped by customs while entering India when I didn't have anything to declare - and I have been travelling in and out of the country for the past 40 years or so.

This happened when I sent a Christmas gift by post from Germany to the United States. That doesn't mean there is any justification in this happening anywhere.

So many logical replies....

Thanks.

It's inevitable that people will eventually lose it in India.

Especially when having deal with the various degrees of waiting, white lies, & hoop jumping coupled with the unsympathetic, deadpan personalities of the various clerks & custodians one has to deal with along the way.

It all can try your patience, seriously eat into your vacation time, & really boil your blood at times.

I don't condone these violent actions but am really surprised it doesn't happen more than it does.

Back in 1997 I boarded a bus at Redfort in Delhi for Gurdaspur where I used to study and I asked the guy atleast three times if the bus would drop me at Gurdaspur main bus stand and he said yes they would drop me at the main bus stand. The whole night went alright and in the morning I saw the bus take a righ turn onto the Pathankot road from Jallandhar and I knew this is not going to Gurdaspur and I asked the conductor what happened to the Gurdaspur plans and he goes we will drop you at Kadiyan ( which is about 15 kilometres from Gurdaspur) and there was nothing I could do so I just sat there thinking what have I done to deserve this treatment and God was there right infront of me briefing me on what to do after getting down from the bus.. Rest my dear friends will be remembered by the bus conductor all his life. I got down with my backpack and got hold of a brick which was readily available as God was on my side and boooom the rear glass on the left hand side was shattered in about 10 seconds and as God was on my side that lovely morning I picked up the same brick and threw at the second glass as well and my soul was already experiencing heavenly pleasures that were unknown to mankind untill then. Driver and conductor came running after me but I had the legs of a cheetah that day and ran for about 300-400 yards at a speed that was unachievable by humans untill then and waved both of them good bye as they stopped following me looking at the speed I was running at. I got a lift on a tractor and reached Gurdaspur in time for my classes

You never know what exactly happened at the postoffice untill you hear the other side of the story

This is very old story rather nationalised banks of india are best in world.Understaffed ,ICICI Bank would make you wait for 45 minutes by giving token in que, in any nationalised bank you have service for passbook updation and balance enquiry across the table.Neither these banks device ways to steal money leaglly from your account, no fine prints.

Are you sure it was not Satan?

True...Now a days the nationalized banks have metamorphosed themselves because of the tough competition in the market with the private banks...isn't it so?

Just 15 years ago, I used to see those lazy fellows over the counter. They would say only one sentence when a customer was not satisfied.....Go...complain against me!!!

But now the situation has really changed...

All are not gifted with the legs of cheetah...

The customer service rift between India & the West can be huge at times.

I also think that some of these government employees et al are afraid to side with the consumer/customer side, appease or got to bat for them - for fear of retribution or damage to their careers.

This is not true for all sectors, some customer service is better than what I have encountered at home .... others still clearly stuck in the 19th century.

I can say the BSNL broad band is giving great service...fault repair within 4hours (internal) and 12hours if external.

You are lucky! "Someone will call you in 24 hours" was my experience, and they seldom did.

Airtel sent an engineer to my house --- last time, within one hour!

Banks? It's a mixed bag, and I've actually had some decent experiences with nationalised banks, and some horrible ones with Axis. Dead internet banking? I got an email from their support over a week after mailing them, and after several calls to our local manager (who disappeared for several days). They had not read past the second paragraph in which I said, "I am using Firefox and Linux". Well, that is par for technical support in many places now, but not even getting an acknowledgement, for a whole week? And no, there is no telephone number to call.

We all have different kinds of experiences in our lives....
Here we share them...
But still, most of the IM'ers don't approve the violence of the foreigner...

Indeed.

This is an interesting and enjoyable thread, for it has aroused fond (yes, FOND (-: memories of Indian post offices.

Pity the occasional dour clerk...or two...or three, sitting in one little dark room, surrounded by heaps of envelopes and packages. No wonder some are dour--they are bored, even if happy to have work.

This is not to say that i don't sympathize with the huge frustration involved in what should be simple transactions. Maybe this lady was pushed over the edge because she already WAS near the edge (as Dhrubatara says) from drugs, or severe stress over something else. This is not to excuse her action--but to try and understand how it can happen, even if wrong.

Best advice: do not enter a post office in India (or many other countries) if you are in a tremendous hurry.

On the bright side, in a gambling mood, I mailed ten postcards to California, from a village below Dharamsala. Imagine the delighted surprise of the recipients and myself, when every one of those postcards arrived at their USA destination in only FIVE DAYS!!!