‘Good morning ma’am, my name is Vandana Narayanan, could I please speak to Ms. so&so please…..’ If I had a penny for every time a Vandana or an Anil or a Kumar called me from a call centre, I would be a very rich woman. There is no escaping these call centres, they have got us covered. Morning, noon, night – they are there to rouse you out of bed, interrupt your tea, crash in on your family dinners, time after time. That was all they were to me, a nuisance.

Sue Turton has changed all that. On Thursday night’s episode of ‘Dispatches: The Data Theft Scandal’, she brought to the fore what we all fear deep down – some faceless person getting their grubby hands on our personal and financial data and using it to their own means. To find out more about this, Sue visits various places and people across the UK and in India. And what she finds out is fascinating – and more than a little scary.

Turton goes to India to try and find out how easy it is to get the confidential data we innocent people give over the phone on a regular basis, to these nameless strangers. To her own surprise, it turns out to be a not-too difficult task. Posing as a businesswoman who is interested in getting the financial details of UK customers, she soon makes contact with a Mr Arora. He turned out to be a fount of information, this Arora, as he shows her page after page of data ‘leads’, detailing a caller’s name, bank account number, bank sort code, credit card number, the CVV security number etc. Turton tries to disguise her shock by enquiring if this isn’t illegal but Arora flatly states ‘not at all’!

Then onto Calcutta, where enterprising Mr Chandak goes one step further and proves the authenticity of his ‘leads’ by playing the voice files of actual telephone conversation between his call centre agent and the unsuspecting caller. All this info for just £8!

In the UK, she talks to a convicted felon who tells how difficult it is to get the data from the call centres. Furthermore, he tells of the number of people who join these call centres with the aim of getting their hands on such data and making money out of them. While in the UK, one has to go via the underworld to get such info, in India, it seems much more easier to lay one’s hands on extremely confidential data.

There are brokers whose ‘job’ is to play the role of middlemen, between the call centres and the buyers, who pay tens of thousands to get hold of these ‘hot leads’. What’s even more shocking is the role played by the technicians, who come into such places to maintain the hardware and walk away with millions of data stored in the pen drives. ‘You wink and it is done’, boasts one such middle man.

Then there are these high-class brokers in Hyderabad, who charge upwards of $50 per lead – why? ‘Cos theirs is fresh and unused!

Sue Turton, over the course of a year, has managed to open a massive can of worms. The repercussions of this investigation will be manifold. Here in the UK, there’s going to be a great deal of panic amongst the public and this would undoubedly be fanned by the media and others disgruntled by the shifting of operations to countries like India and China. Indian government is also going to be under some pressure to put the foreign investors’ minds at rest and assure them of data protection. The great boom in the Indian economy owes a great deal to the call centres, BPOs and other associated industries – which could come down like a house of cards if these companies decide to up sticks and move out, en masse.

Will our government step-up? Will we see a marked decrease in call centre-related crimes? We’ll know soon! Until then, keep safe!

About to drink your afternoon cuppa? Don’t! It may well contain more chemicals than your favourite cola brand. Surprised? Well, I was too, after reading this article in TOI.

So our friendly neighbourhood cow is more harmful than the coloured water. Hmm, I have to admit, I really cannot accept that as a fact. Detractors could argue that it could purely be because of all that is associated with milk – milk is almost a synonym for purity, isn’t it? Milk-teeth, innocent as a babe smelling of milk (well, paal manam maara kozhandai, in Tamil), milk of human kindness…, well you get my drift.

The author, in his piece, states that humans are the only beings that drink the milk of other species long after they have been weaned off their mother. While this is true, the statement cracked me up. In my mind’s eye, I could see a tiger cub standing in queue outside a cow shed, patiently waiting his turn. Of course no other species drinks the milk of other animals – the whole argument is ridiculous!

The very idea of giving milk a bad press seems quite crazy to me. So, what is so wrong with milk anyway? If it is the concept of antigens and what nots, then what would happen to all the meat eaters? These days, one can eat anything from a garden variety chicken to zebra or kangaroo meat. Doesn’t that bring in the baddies present in those beings into the human chain? Is veganism the answer then?

When I went on a holiday to Amsterdam a couple of years back with my family, my son happily guzzled down bottle after bottle of yummy cow’s milk (the cows there were huge, let me tell you!) and was happy as Larry! He didn’t touch a single solid food item, barring a few McChips but was none the worse for it cos good ole milk kept his tum full. Now I have this geezer telling me that it is a big no-no!

Let me unravel this yarn and see how far it goes – we say ‘bye bye’ to milk. OK then – next to follow would be curds (I can imagine my granny’s reaction if her daily thayir sadam is taken off the menu!), cheese, chocolates, cream, cakes, doughnuts, pizza.. in short, all that is nice and good in this world! What does that leave out for poor ole vegetarian me? Grass! Great!

But what worries me is not the men, women and children guzzling down milk by the gallons – Lord knows, living in our towns and cities, they would have immunity against almost all of the known and most of the unknown germs as well. I am worried about our Gods who drink milk – they wouldn’t have any protection against pesticide-laced cow juice, now, would they?

Today was a scorcher. The weather forecaster on last night’s news predicted 28°C but I suspect it was more than that. I found out just now that elsewhere in Britan it soared up to 38.1°C(100.6°F), making it the hottest day EVER! To my mates in Chennai, it might seem like I am kicking a fuss over nothing or I am becoming a fireng, if I am moaning about a warm day like today.

The thing is, I am concerned – no, strike that, I am worried! I came to the UK five years back and that year, it hit 23°C one solitary day in July and that was the only day I dared to go outside without the company of my overcoat. But over the years, warm summer days are becoming more and more regular and over the course of the following week, it is supposed to become more and more hot. 38°C in Brentwood on Wednesday – 10°C hotter than today – my mind boggles!

Most of my angrezi friends here can’t be happier. They love the sunny weather and most of them were lying about in their lawns today, getting all nice and brown. How come no one is worried that it is becoming hotter and hotter? In Chennai, where it used to hover around 38 during the agni nakshatram (loosely translated, fire star – the hottest part of the year), it regularly tops off at 45°C.

And it isn’t looking likely to change for the better anymore. Cos global warming is here to stay. We are changing our planet’s geographical makeup slowly but surely, not understanding that we are heading towards the point of no return, beyong which the changes would be irrevocable.

Almost every step we take forward in the form of technology, has a negative impact on our planet. Take something like flying, for example. India is devoloping on all fronts and we now have low-cost, budget airlines much like the rest of the world. Like one of my friends in India put it, it costs less to fly to London that to Delhi. All this equals great news, isn’t it? Your mum can fly out to see you in Timbuktu couple of times a year now!

Wrong! Low-cost airlines, while equalling comfort, more starkly mean we are exponentially increasing our carbon footprint. With the world becoming smaller, our carbon footprint becomes bigger and bigger as the day goes by. Pretty soon, a torrid day and the price of mineral water going up yet again would be the least of our worries.

It is time we started making major lifestyle changes to make up for raping our planet of its delicate balance. First on that list would be to switch off the TV, computer and other assorted electical stuff around the home, just before we hit the sack at night. Leaving things on stand by is just as bad as having them on all day long.

Another way of helping things is to reduce the usage of cars and bikes. While it is not feasible to take the train from Washington to Bangalore, you can do something to negate the bad effects of air travel by carbon offsetting. What is that, you ask? According to carbonfootprint.com, carbon offsets enable people and organisations to reduce their carbon footprint. Carbon Offsets allow carbon dioxide, one of the main green house gases, to be either taken out of the atmosphere or reduced in another part of the world.

This can be something simple like planting a tree to changing to a green energy supplier for your electricity. Whatever the method is, we have to start doing something straight away.

Or, we could carry on as before and not do anything. Planting one solitary tree isn’t going to help much, is it? What is the worst that could happen, anyway? Well, nobody knows one could predict exactly how bad it could all end up being – but of one thing I am certain – it would be one heck of a show!