Yesterday I went to the Bangalore One* office at Rajajinagar in Bangalore, with my wife and daughters to get our Aadhaar (Social ID) Cards updated .
Usually there is a long waiting time due to a lot of people availing services, but yesterday we were very lucky to have only two other people in line ahead of us. As we waited for our turn we noticed that the lady serving at the Aadhaar counter was getting quite frustrated as the customer she was serving had a continuous list of arguments even after the service he was looking for was completed. While we could not understand what exactly was being said in Kannada, the local language, the volley of arguments and responses went on for a good five minutes until finally the gentleman left. It was our turn next. The lady at the counter vented for a couple of minutes to her colleague on the next counter, wiped her face with her scarf and heaved a sigh of relief. As she picked up our application form, she looked at us, and we just smiled at her…just a simple, warm smile, that said "we understand". And she smiled back!
She went about updating the details in our application form. In spite of multiple retakes required to enter the biometric data, she smiled through the entire process and patiently reassured us that there was nothing to worry about. The whole process felt light and effortless.
Though it is quite rare in our super-busy and efficiency-hungry world, sometimes all it takes for us to connect with a complete stranger is to just acknowledge the human being behind the role and the face. Yesterday a genuine understanding smile is all it took for us to connect as humans!
[*Bangalore One is an excellent initiative of the Local City Government to get the common administrative services such as Aadhaar Enrolment and Updates, payment of water, electricity bills, phone bills, filing of returns, property tax, application for Govt jobs, police verification services, etc. done as smoothly as possible. There are about 100+ such centers within Bangalore City to provide these services within a short distance]
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