CIBIL report and Bank Loans

With the current economic crises and cash crunch, banks are very careful about lending money. They closely watch the credit history of the person or organisation which has applied for loan and CIBIL (Credit Information Bureau of Indian Ltd) is quite helpful to get the credit history of the person and organisation. A littel default can also be reported by the bank and can spoil the rating of the person. With the increasing defaults in payments, this facility is really useful for the banks and financial institutions for lending money.

But there is another side of the story. This is my personal experience and extremely bitter.

Tanay is very prompt in his all payments - be it loan instalment or the credit card payment. I have never seen him late by even a day. Sometimes when there is a wrong charge mentioned in the statement and I ask him to ignore the statement by saying - When you know it is incorrect just forget and don't make payment, but he talks to the bank to make all the correction at their end too.

Few months back We applied for the housing loan transfer but they simply rejected our application without mentioning proper reason of that. We too ignored as it was not very important for us. Later, Tanay applied for Citi bank card and that too got rejected, this time Tanay was upset but I told him to forget about it as he is already having many credit cards. Finally one day, An executive from American Express approached and this time again Tanay filled the application for platinum card but to our utter surprise, his application was again rejected. We both worked with American Express few years back and therefore they have attached the CIBIL report alongwith the rejection letter where we found about our credit history.

It was not only shocking but frustrating to see that no more information was provided except a default of Rs. 2000 with some bank without mentioning bank name or credit card no. by which we could have got more information. I started surfing about CIBIL and wrote a mail to them. They sent us the bank name and credit card no. After many reminders we found from the bank that was annual fee of the credit card which we have already surrendered to the bank 5 year back and sent the card in two pieces back to the bank. I remember this distinctly because I came to know about Jay Nagar post office for this context only. But I never got a clearance letter from the bank and I never bothered about it as it was not important for us.

After CIBIL report we contacted the bank and wrote approx 20 reminder mails and many calls and visits to the bank, they still charged us Rs. 1300 for the settlement and wrote back an apology letter for the wrong reporting to CIBIL.

There is another charge with other bank and after investigation we found it is about another credit card which we had surrendered in 2002 in Delhi. We never got any reminder letter from the bank about annual charges as we stayed in the same house for another 2 years. There is another annual fee of Rs. 1000 shown pending, which is now Rs. 14000 with late fee charges. Who should be blamed for these charges. At least CIBIL should not believe blindly on bank's report and should see that the charge are not the annual fee on which no purchases are made since then. We are still writing mails to this bank and only god knows when this will be cleared and how much more effort will go behind this. Our CIBIL report has shown credit limit as 93 lacs and just with few thousands, it has shown negative credit rating.

These services are good for lending money but with every right there is lot of responsibility attached and in this case, banks should be extremely careful before reporting any rating to CIBIL and likewise CIBIL should also check the transactions of the default payments.

कुछ बातें हिन्दी में

मुझे ब्लाग लिखने में मजा आने लगा है और अपनी भावनाएँ प्रकट करने का इससे अच्छा तरीका क्या हो सकता है। अब तो रोज एक नये विषय पर अपने विचार लिखना अच्छा लगता है। कभी कभी बच्चों की बातें भी लिखने को उकसाती हैं। हिन्दी में अभिव्यक्ति भी इसी की कोशिश है।

आज सुबह सैर पर जाते हुए पहली बार मैने 'Luck by chance' का 'सपनों से भरे नैना' गाना पूरा सुना। सुनकर बहुत अच्छा लगा। ये लेखक भी जादुगर होते हैं कितनी गहरी बातें इतनी सहजता से कह जाते हैं। सुख और चैन के अंतर को बहुत सही बताया गया है। जावेद अख्तर ने बहुत सुन्दर गीत लिखा है। हम जितने चाहे बाहरी दुनिया में सुख ढूंढ लें लेकिन चैन हमें अपने अंदर ही मिलेगा और उसका मिलना भी हमारे अपने ही बस में है। हम कहीं चैन लेना चाहते भी हैं या सब कुछ बाहर ही ढूंढ रहे हैं। सपने कभी खत्म नहीं होते और होने भी नही चाहिए वरना जीवन रुक जाएगा लेकिन सपनों के पीछे वर्तमान को भोगना नही छोड़ देना चाहिए।

अब तो इंतज़ार है इस मूवी को देखने का......

Jaaved Akhtar is a great writer....hats off to him :) and I like Farhan Akhtar a lot, specially after watching 'Oye! its Friday' :)

Weekend spent with the family and friends

This was a long weekend with Rupublic Day holiday on Monday and we had great time with family and some layout friends.

On Saturday, Manas was busy in his school for Rupublic Day preparations and Tanay, Ajay and I played badminton and later Tanay and Ajay went for swimming also. Ajay was so confident and happy to be with his parents alone. I realised how important to spend sometime alone with the kids seperately. In the evening, we went out for Go-karting and dinner at Country Club with some layout friends. Manas and Ajay did go-karting first time and they were very happy and excited. Dinner at Country club was also great. Kids played a lot and it was great fun.

Sunday was all rest time for the whole family and on Monday Manas and Ajay went for Republic Day celebrations to the school. Here are some pics of Manas from the celebration :) Later all four of us went for badminton in the clubhouse. Tanay and Ajay were partners for double game and we thoroughly enjoyed. Ajji could play much better than Manas :). Manas and I lost the first game but it was great fun. After this we had played some singles and enjoyed together. Kids are growing and becoming our friends now. We all enjoy all kind of sports as a family which is not only enjoyable but quite satisfying :)

Some beautiful quotes I picked up and loved to mentioned on my blog:

The higher a man gets, the smaller he seems to those who cannot fly.
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 - 1900)
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the
public and have no self.
Cyrilla Connelly
I was brought up to believe that how I saw myself was more important than
how others saw me.
Anwar el-Sadat
Egyptian politician (1918 - 1981)
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule
of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
Frederick Douglas
It really doesn’t matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven.
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. You have things to do and you want
to move on.
Anonymous author
Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.
Janis Joplin
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in
harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

Some photographs of Manas's activities in the school

Drawing a line in relationships

Since last few days I am experiencing a turbulence in some of my relationships and started wondering 'Where to draw a line in the relationship'. I am very emotional and sensitive for my friends and care a lot about them. Being an active member of the society I love to do something different and that boost my morale too. I remember those days when I was extremely busy with my family and job in the school but still was able to spare time for the layout activities - arranging parties, doing accounts maintenance of the association or attending various meetings related to the welfare of the layout. But, off late things are changed and insisted me to retrospect where I went wrong. In last few months I lost few 'friends' may be they were there only for my good times only.
I have been talking to people and I always loved it but recently I am unable to understand and draw a line, so that I respect my privacy and let others also do the same. This feeling is making me even more introvert and unsure about my conduct. Yesterday one of my friend whom I like talking, called me at 12:30am without any important thing to discuss, very unusual and hurtful. I don't like people calling me after 10pm as that is my family or personal time, and this made me thinking - Am I giving lot of liberty to my friends???

BARACK H OBAMA - The New President of US

Yesterday we watched the oath ceremony and speech of the new President of US, Mr. Barack Obama. Initially his facial expressions were quite nervous and then with pride he gave a long speech about being friendly with all the peaceful countries and some other points too..

It took me a year before during olympic session of China. Abhinav Bindra won the first individual gold medal in shooting, and then India had all the hopes on its wrestlers and boxers. Just a day before the final match, all the boxer and wrestlers were put into so much pressure of 'HOPE' of India to win more golds and ultimately they could not take that pressure and satisfied with Bronze or silver medals. All the news channels were gathered in their homes and raised the expectation of the families too. I felt that this all could have waited for one more day. May be they might not have been in that tremendous pressure of expectations and would have given their best performance without any pressure.
Same thing is happenning with Obama. All the country and world are showing lot of expectations as he only will solve all the problems of economy, hatred and terrorism. It never happens, he might give direction or maximum he can give his policies but with these many hopes and pressure, I think, he first have to make himself calm to see through those expectations. Things will move slowly and steadily if Mr. Obama will get the support of the people and not only their expectations....

Tatkal booking in IRCTC - Benefit for the public and we also have some responsibility

Yesterday I read the news about Indian Railways income through TATKAL scheme, where tickets can be booked online 5 days before the journey. The revenue has reached upto Rs. 300 crores all over the country. Under this scheme, few trains have some reserved tickets quota which gets released on 5 days prior to the journey date and it can be booked by paying some additional cost ( Rs. 150 to Rs. 300) over the ticket charges.
Personally we have been benefitted by this scheme many a times and thankful to IRCTC online booking which can be done from home. It is an excellent scheme which reduces the burden and sometimes we can plan travel in a short time. Being away from the family in Delhi it is always a security which IRCTC has provided to us. Whenever we have some waitlisted ticket then we check the status 5 days prior to the journey and if not confirmed then book the same in Tatkal quota.
But we should understand the other side picture also and if we have some tickets booked in advance then all the unwanted tickets should get cancelled 5 days prior to the journey date so all the wait listed passengers should know the actual status on time and can book the tickets accordingly in TATKAL quota. If we cancel the ticket later then it will have no benefit to the waitlisted passenger as they book it through TATKAL quota.
Personally I experienced it twice that I booked the tickets in Tatkal quota and later my waitlisted ticket also got confirmed. It was frustrating but can't help. Although this is not the only reason as IRCTC also release quota of some tickets once all the Tatkal booking is completed till the end date and sometimes it gets confirmed while preparing the chart.
But all said and done, Tatkal is a good attempt from Indian railways and we should reap all the benefits of this. As a citizen we all can understand our responsibility and cancel all the unwanted tickets 5 days prior to the journey date :-)

P Chidambaram's view on Pak's procrastination views

So finally P Chidambaram has the same view as me and Tanay are discussing since many days. It is approx. 2 months now since Pakistan is denying on the proofs and taking it as mere information. It is not only saddening but frustrating also for the Indian Govt and other people having the same view.

Our neighbouring country is smart enough to avoid all the pressures and keep everyone in utter confusion. No proof is sufficient unless there is a willingness of action. After Kandhar hijack issue, it is clear that Maulana Masood Azhar is staying in Pakistan and enjoying his freedom. There is no proof needed in that case but nothing has happened and safe shelter is provided by ISI and Pak official. Many a times in the news this issue was discussed but all in vein. What's the use and what are we scared off. The only problem is that we are a peaceloving country and Pak is taking all the benefits of that. I am very happy to see PC's view of snaping all the ties, be it business, tourism, art or music or any other emotional ties of people. All should be cut off unless Islamabad takes a firm action on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Not only India but all the countries having same opinion on terror attack should not entertain any Pak national in their country. This will pressurise Pak Govt through its own people to take action at the earliest. As of now there is no deadline assigned for the action by the Indian Govt. but I hope this will help to take the issue one step ahead.

Our vacation in Kodaikanal - December 20-24, 2008

Some memories of Kodaikanal. Although not as pictureseque as Munnar but we had great fun near Kodai Lake. I cycled after 20 years and really had great fun. Manas and ajay had horse riding, cycling and boating. Here are some pics too