As always I check messages on my phone before planning my tasks for the day. The first week of the month is generally meant for routine payments : household help, club bills, grocery bills and of course utilities. Ever since I opted for paperless billing ( saving the world etc) I have to make sure that no bill remains unpaid. No longer is there a stash of bills piling up in the catch all at the entrance console. In fact, I rather miss that old fashioned pile which is now replaced by school bags, parcels that have been delivered or to be given to people who will come and pick them up.

It’s strange but our electricity supplier is also the local public bus provider. So our Electric supply company is called Bombay Electric Supply & Transport Company typically called BEST.

Anyways, this is my new first week of the month routine.

What is most annoying about not getting physical bills, is the frequent reminders ‘to pay before or else’ that keep flashing repeatedly on various interfaces – the mobile phone app of various banks from where the payment is normally carried out, emails and of course the UPI interface.

Funnily enough, while the payment reminders come without fail, the receipts don’t follow suit. So oftentimes, I land up paying twice as happened in the case of the electricity bill. Paying double is always safer than paying late for fear of being disconnected and going through the painful process of reconnecting.

But this week, I found that I had paid the bill twice over for four consecutive months. Now I worried that I was making a payment to the wrong ID and wanted to check out for myself.

So I found the nearest BEST office to find out what was going wrong with my billing and my payment.

Getting there was not as easy as I thought because Google showed two different addresses. Tossing a coin, I went to the one I had visited earlier when I had to sort out a gross overcharge of Rs. 80,000/- thirty years ago!

It was really hot at 11 in the morning and I was already feeling uncomfortable with the strong glare despite my dark glasses. The building looked unkempt and shabby with chipped stairs and rusty railings leading to dark, unmarked behind which sat the sullen clerks. There was no sign of a customer service counter, nor was there any sign of what actually went on in the building.

Some semi-topless men loitering around what looked like the entrance to a toilet stared at me as I approached the building. They were only used to seeing tired old peons and odd job men coming to the building. One of them looked up questioningly and I asked him where the lift was.

Typically he pointed ahead and vaguely said ‘there’. I walked into what was a kitchen smelling of cut onions and went through a staff canteen with a few men chatting over a cup of tea.

Once again, I asked where the billing office was and where the customer care office was and was told they were on the second floor.

As I walked towards the entrance of the lift, which was now in a proper stairway, I was told not to bother because the lift hadn’t been working for the past two weeks. Foolishly, I asked for the phone number of the officer in charge of billing and was met with a shrug and the expected reply ” I don’t know”.

By this time my anger was rising and I went to cage number one. The man refused to look up from his computer and when I finally pushed him to look at me, he said that his job was only to receive payments and not answer any questions.

The man in cage number two gave the same response.

Finally a Breakthrough

Ready to start screaming now, I held my frustration in check and went to the office I should have gone to in the first place – the Headquarters at Colaba.

Here I was pleasantly surprised to find an attendant at the Reception who willingly showed me to the “Concerned Person” as such persons are referred to in Government parlance.

Surprisingly, this office was clean, brightly lit, and well-ventilated, with fans that actually worked! The official himself was polite and helpful. He called for the “concerned person” who promptly “looked into the matter” and solved my ‘query’!

Phew! Another day in the life of Mumbai’s bureaucratese.