The guiding principle of life in urban India is probably best summed up by the favorite Bangalore slogan “Solpa adjust maadi” which translates to “Please adjust a bit”. This philosophy permeates every part of the daily life here in Bangalore and one is constantly surprised by the extent of adjustments required in even the simplest aspects of living here.

You travel on three lane roads to find that there are actually six vehicles abreast instead of three. In the middle of the confusion, a two-wheeler overtakes from the left and causes more misery – usually in the form of a scrape on the side of the car and zooms away without apology. If you do manage to catch the nincompoop, he merely shrugs and says “solpa adjust maadi” – yeah right!

You order 2 liters of milk from the milkman who gets his supply from the cooperative run dairy. Some of  the time he says he doesn’t have the required amount of milk and gives you at least a half liter less and the rest of the time there is a good chance that the half liter packet contains only 350 ml as I found to my chagrin when I measured out a suspiciously slim looking packet (no there was no leak). The bad thing is that it happened more than once. The good thing is that after considerable argument that guy has agreed that it will never happen again and gave me some extra milk to compensate.

I got my house repainted by Berger. Why Berger? Because Asian Paints didn’t bother to keep to the appointment to come see the house even. Well the Berger contractor seemed all gung ho – after all it was a very pricey deal for him. We knew the rates were inflated but hoped that there would be enough professionalism to balance it out. What happened was rather nightmarish – they splashed so much paint everywhere that even the leaves on the plants were not spared. There was paint everywhere – doors, floors, staircase - in spite of my repeated pleas to cover the surfaces. I literally broke my back cleaning up (since my maid left the job after taking one good look at the house) everyday and had to resort to physiotherapy after painful spasms racked me for days. But I did not make a big deal out of it till the fiasco of my bedroom happened. At the end of the scraping off the old paint session, they applied some kind of crack filling putty and I asked them why it looked so lumpy – they assured me they would sand it thinner and then apply paint. At the end of the paint job, the wall looked like boiled potatoes were lurking everywhere and all the cracks reappeared with some new offspring to add to the number. I told them it was unacceptable. They redid it. The same thing happened. Then they left promising to come back and finish my room. Two months later after dire threats, they came back and this time covered my furniture and windows in dust and paint since they didn’t bother to paper over them. Also they removed three quarters of the offending wall and then redid it – the end result looked like the relief map of South America with black lines highlighting the raised edges. I broke down and told the supervisor that I would seriously hurt him physically if he couldn’t think of a solution that didn’t involve messing up but did result in a normal wall. He was stumped. So I told him to try texture painting to draw the eye away from the mess. He agreed and then went missing for three weeks. I called up the Berger customer care center and complained vociferously that there would be no more “adjust maadi” for me! He came the next day and finished it off in two hours– it looks better but the cracks are still there and I told him that I sincerely hoped I wouldn’t ever have to see him again!

I learn from reading the papers and talking to people that adjusting is the only way to live here. But I don’t agree. Unless you assert that everyone deserves value for their money, that you have a right to expect good service or good roads or adulteration-free goods, you are not doing your bit in society. Why do we accept mediocrity in all its forms in all walks of life instead of asking for, nay demanding perfection? If excellence was the norm instead of the exception, we would not have to needlessly adjust. I understand flexibility is important but bending over backwards to conform is ridiculous.

Take the case of what happened the other morning. My mother had complained to me at least three times about how she felt that the quantity of milk supplied was not a litre and a half as it should be. I of course refused to believe her pointing out that we had Nandini milk being supplied in packets so how could there possibly be such a mistake? But I did ask her to measure the next time so that if it were so I could confront the milkman with proof. She didn’t do that and things were apparently back to normal for a while. Then one day while I was about to open a half litre packet I saw the sadly diminished size of the contents and promptly measured it out to find that it was only 300ml. I called the milk guy who in turn contacted the dairy authorities and replaced the packet with a fresh one free of cost the next day. I asked him how this could’ve happened and he said they mixed non-regulation packs with the regular packets and it could happen to anyone. I pointed out that the pricing was not reduced only the amount and he didn’t bother to answer that one.