Vipra Vakyo Janardana

Here is a story firstly:

A king of Nepal by name Bhadraka had gone out on shikar(hunting). On his way a bird of omen, perched on the branch of a tree, uttered some significant sounds. On hearing them, the king asked a member of his party who was conversant with the language of birds: "What does the bird say?"

The interpreter replied: "King! What the bird says does not concern you. It says that a farmer who is going uphill for cutting grass for his cattle will die, bitten by a snake."

Just as he had uttered these words, the party saw a farmer proceeding towards a nearby hillock, carrying a scythe. On seeing him, the interpreter observed: "I think this is the farmer referred to by the bird. Your Majesty may be sure that he will die as foretold."

Out of curiosity the hunting party stayed in the vicinity, waiting for the farmer to return.

They saw the farmer's silhouette, after some time, coming down the slopes of the hill carrying a bundle of grass, whereupon the king heckled the interpreter: "My dear man! What happened to your prediction? Look! Has that farmer has the power to walk even in death? Or did he bribe Yama's messengers? Or better far, did he drive those messengers away in battle? Or did the serpent miss its aim? Perhaps you will say that the bird of omen got befuddle but once. Pray, enlighten me how this farmer cheated death."

"May i request my liege to wait for some time before rushing to conclusions?" replied the interpreter, annoyed and disturbed.

When the farmer came near, the interpreter beckoned to him and asking him to unload the stack, wanted to question him.

But as he unlocked the stack, the grass-rope with which it was tied got broken and the hay fell apart. What should they see in the middle of the stack but a mighty cobra cut in twain by the sharp scythe embedded in it?

The interpreter drew the attention of the king to it and said: "This cobra came to kill him, but got killed instead; I do not know what mighty virtue this man had acquired to accomplish this. Anyways, let us question  him."

So saying, the interpreter asked the farmer: "Brother! When you went to cut grass did anything special happen?"

He replied: "I am a farmer. I do not know anything except my plough and my bullocks. When i was ascending the hill, an aged Brahmin walking with the help of a stick came across my path. I paid my respects to him in my humble way and he blessed me. Beyond that, nothing un-usual occurred!"

Turning to the king, the interpreter said: "Did you listen to what he said, my lord? Is it not clear that this farmer escaped death by the blessings of that aged Brahmin? A few moments back you ran me down; can you now tell me if the science of omens has gone wrong? Never will it. But this is clear: even the writings of Brahma on our skull can be changed by the blessings of the learned and pious souls."

"Did not the great sage Gautama, in his arguments with Lord Shiva, show the divine eye at the sole of his feet? Did not the great Bhrigu manage to kick Lord Vishnu on his chest? Did no the great Agastya swallow the entire ocean like a spoon of water? Did not the great Vasishtha successfully replace the mighty Sun with a piece of a wand? Did not Sage Kashyapa create a duplicate Indra? Who can hope to stand up to real Brahmins? Did not Markandeya of yore who was face to face with death, as ordained by Brahma, throw him out by the blessings of Brahmins?"

Happy to be convinced of the truth of what the interpreter has said, the king replied: "Indeed, Brahmins are embodied gods living in this world," and gave away rich presents to the interpreter.

(Story sourced from "Untold Stories Of King Bhoja" by V.A.K.Ayer)

Some more lines from the book:

Vipra means A Brahmin.  The word of a Vipra will never go wrong. Lord Janardana will carry out His behests through the words of Vipras and hence the saying Vipra Vakyo Janardnah. There is no difference between God's words and a true Vipra's words. The Vipra is embodied God. Vipra is a an embodied god. Blessings of a brahmin can save a person from death too.

We have known these sages' stories since our child hood, but never parred our observations to the depth to which the story narrates. I was literally stunned by the truth the story exposes about the pious Brahmins who can challenge the GOD. What a glory one earns with truth!! Woww....Truth & Dharma has such a power to question the creator of the world. 

But i doubt any such qualified Brahmin exists in our living world now.

I Love Kisses

My sister is just back from USA. Needless to say, she bought lots of chocolates. Of all, i loved KISSES. These chocolates are awesome. Just pure chocolate, exactly the way i love eat chocolates. I love them.

Many chocolates are mixed and flavored with nuts, dry fruits etc etc. I feel chocolate has to be a pure cacao just lots of cacao and nothing else. Kisses are exactly the same and so i love it. I find Cadbury Silk and Bournville are very near to my taste.

Just 9$ for one big party bag!!!

This party bag has 3 flavours Milk Chocolate, Special dark and Caramel. Oh my god! The Special dark flavour are just the way i like it....slightly bitter but still the best form of chocolate.

And btw, http://www.thestoryofchocolate.com/ has a very good info about the chocolate. May be you like it.

We need more Customer Centric Processes - 1 : CITI Bank

A week back i used my CITI bank debit card at a fuel station to pay. The transaction was declined. I was sure that the account has required balance in it and so i requested the attendant to try one more time. But the transaction was declined again. I paid the bill using HDFC card and left. Soon after a travelling a kilometer, i received a transaction alert on my mobile from citi bank that Rs.400 was debited from my savings account at the fuel station.

I rushed back to the fuel station and explained them abt the msg. The head of the attendants stood out and say "Sir! this is a general happening they see day to day and its absolutely nothing to worry. Once you we settle the account of the swipe machine by EOD i.e. 12AM for the day, the amounts will be reverted back to the respective account. We see these things daily. If you dont get money by tomorrow morning, we will any how be here and we will pay you back by cash". Upon my insistance, he generated a receipt of the successful transactions till then in that swipe machine and that didnt reflect my CITI card transaction but listed my HDFC card successful transaction. I was ok. But i immediately called the CITI customer care and launched a request for the reversal. The customer care person took the request and asked me to call him back after 3 working days so that they can investigate into this and see if this transaction did really happen or not and whats the status etc.

After 3 days, i called the customer care about the status of the request. It took some good 3 minutes for me to get to talk the customer care after all the verification clutter. Soon after an person attended, the call was dropped into a pool and i have to do the entire process again. The person at the other end informed me that the request was done and the amount will be deposited to my account the next day. I thought its cool and done. But...

"But sir, you have a fill up a CDF and send it to a chennai address. "

"What is it?"

"CDF - Customer declartion form"

"Is this mandatory to fill up the physical form? Cant i do it online?"

"No sir, it should be a physical form with your signature"

"Ok"

"Where can i get it from?"

"our website - downloads area <blah blah blah>"

"Huhh hmmm ok"

"And also, please enclose the account statement marking the dispute transaction and any other transactional receipt pertaning to the dispute."

"You mean, i have to travel 40 kms to-n-fro to get the account statement? Can i download it from net banking and will that work?"

"<Smiling> Yes sir, download and printout will work"

"Thank god! But why is this process required when the transaction failure and amount debit was proved?"

"Sir! The amount will be credited back based on the primary investigation but citi bank requires a formal request(that is the customer declartion form to be downloaded from website) and then the dispute will be closed if found legal. Otherwise the amount will be debited back if proved fraudelent or etc."

"Ok! But what if some customer doesn't have access to internet or kind of naive? How can he get the forms etc.?"

"Then the person has to visit the bank and get the required forms from the bank"

"Thats fabulous process you have inline. Absolutely fantastic practical way to make the customer suffer."

"<Smile> Sorry sir, thats the process define. Anything else with which i can help you?"

"Thank you."

Now, see, i spent Rs.10 for calls to talk to customer care, Rs.12 for  6 printouts of CDF form and my account statement, Rs.55 for courier to chennai from hyderabad. Thats a total of Rs.77 to recover MY Rs.400 back and lot of valuable time. 

What if the dispute amount is Rs.200. Then i.e. i spend around 40% of my money to get MY money back. How foolish does it look?

What a rubbish and foolish process you have in place CITI bank? This is absolutely not a customer centric process. A bank which advertises quoting "200 years of legacy in banking" is not expected to have such a rubbish process in place for such a very probable and most frequent disputes.

Either it be banks or insurance firms or any service providers has to seriously look into their business processes for practicality.

Why do SUPREME GOD do this way?

I quote, "GOD struggle for existence"

(I may seem ignorant of many facts or even foolish neglecting something that is very obvious. If so, i would love to learn.)

I justify below:

Point 1: GOD is supreme.
Point 2: GOD is the one who creates every living being.
Point 3: GOD can control anything that exists.
Point 4: GOD is kind.

The aforementioned are not mere assumptions but the inbuilt thoughts and learned thoughts we have grown up with since you started thinking.

These days some questions intrigues me,

Why does any living being has to suffer? Why does one has to struggle to get food/shelter or what ever he wants?

GOD is the one who made us. He is the one who gave us destiny (we call it VIDHI). He is the one who made ones character as good/bad. He is the one who destroy us. In between, what is all this drama? He creates a person, makes him bad, makes him do the wrong things and finally punish him after death by sending to Yamaloka.

GOD creates a world, feeds it, creates living beings with good/bad attributes and create drama with bad and good, right and wrong. Slowly unfold the drama and take avatars to punish the bad and protect the good.

Why all this fuss? He could have created a perfect world with harmony and thus everyone can live happily in the vicious circle of birth-death-birth. Why cant he create a ideal world?

Why do humans have to struggle for anything? Is it, if GOD gives you what ever one wants without struggle, you may never go to GOD for help, you may never pray, you may never prostate, you may not be thankful and is that why he makes us struggle? Does GOD do this prove his existence?

Slightly offtopic, but cant resist posting this here...someone quoted very correctly (copied from frnds status message),

తోలి శ్వాస తీసుకొని ఏడుస్తావ్ తుది శ్వాస విడుస్తూ ఏడిపిస్తావ్ రెండు ఏడుపుల మధ్య నవ్వుతూ నవ్వించిన కాలమే జీవితం.

www.jobswalkinindia.com website review

Crap....crap....crap. www.jobswalkinindia.com is one bullshit website you will ever come across.

• "Login" doesn't happen smoothly at one go. Most of the times, login doesn't happen at all.
• Once you login, there is a link to LOGIN again. ha ha ha!!! Have some common sense atleast. 
• Don't think of validations. The "Date Of Birth" field accepts even current date and "Email Id" field accepts any crap like xyz@abc.com. No verification or validity of the details. I can end up giving any of my friends email id and mobile number and he will be the victim of this one damn site.
• Enter the "Date Of Birth" as current date and "Experience" field as 10 years. Site accepts these shit data with grace.
• And most importantly, data provided for registration or data posted in the resume you upload is never protected. You just google it out and your uploaded resume will be shown to the world.
• No option to edit your profile. All that you can do is, create a new profile. And this also doesn't override my previous profile details. WTF.
• No option to disable or hide the profile. 
• With all the above headaches, you cant even delete your account/profile. This means, once done is done.
• No support. No replies for the mail.
• "Contact Us" or "About Us" or "Terms & Conditions" links at the bottom of site are just useless as like this crappy website.

I'm sure some lousy engineers have created this site at their leisure times and stopped looking after it. These guys doesn't have any coding sense for sure nor have some common sense at least. You f*****s! if you cant really handle it, just shut the shop and go home. 

This teaches me a lesson to read reviews of every website before registering or providing any of my sensitive data. 

"Eppudu Oppukovaddhu Otami" by Sirivennela Sitaramasastri garu

Man!!! What a song...what lyrics!!! Simply outstanding. I fall short of words to say what i feel about this video. Shows the actual side of Sasthry garu. Sasthri garu explains his perspective about Life.The lyrics are inspirational and can help you get up when you fall in your life. Truly inspirational to keep you ON at all times.

                                                పదాలు ముఖ్యం కాదు, భావం ముఖ్యం.

After Nick Vujicic, Sasthri garu rocks here.

Luscious Baklava

After reading about Baklava at my friend Kamal's blog, i had been waiting to taste it. But, dont know why, never actually set out to taste it. On one of the recent saturday evenings, after lazy day, started the craving to taste something new. Had to decide between Mexican food(at Chilis in Inorbit mall) or Baklava or Sithafal Icecream. Finalized on Baklava.

Googled the sweet niravana restaurant(where its said that we find delicious baklava), called up to find if they are serving the dish today. And i set out to sweet niravana near madhapur police station in Hitec city.

The restaurant was almost empty with just one small b'day party. The ambience was so pleasant. Lot of greenery, serene atmosphere. I knew the cost of the dish already. Its Rs.250/. Yes, you read it correctly. Its a bit on higher price. So, was prepared for it. I order Bakalava and waited for the dish.

The dish was served. The first look was heavenly dish honey dripping from the dish, hiding & peeping out dry nuts and still crispy looking Bakalava.

Baklava - A Turkish dish dressed with nuts and honey

1st layer of nuts

2nd layer of nuts

 It was served with a fork and spoon. The waiting me had tough time to tear the first part of the dish. Knife would have been easy.

The taste was fantabulous. It looked a bit more sweetish on the first bite, but my taste buds got it right and adjusted from the second bite onwards. Very nice desert and i like to taste different tastes and experiment. But, being a vegetarian limit my options.

LIVE life...Its much better than the DEAD

Casual browsing found me this wonderful video on youtube. So inspiring and motivating. Once you watch this video, you realize LIFE is to keep living and that too living happily.

If any dead person can speak out what he feels after death,

Dead person feels that a person with cancer in the last stage is lucky, that he still has life to live.

Cancer affected feels that a person on dialysis is lucky, that he would live more though with some restrictions & medication.

Dialysis patients feels that Nick Vujicic is lucky, that he will be able to live normal life though with his limitations.

So, being normal is very very very very very very very very lucky. Protect it.

Live like a king. Live life like never before and ever again. Be happy and live life to it fullest, who knows today may be our last.

Usage of WorkGroup & WorkBasket in Pega

It's been some time since i'm trying to understand the case management in PRPC. The concepts of WorkList, WorkGroup, WorkBasket are most confusing if not understood with some examples. Not to criticize any, i questioned many of my friends who has decent hands on experience in PRPC. But all that i get are vague answers or should i say theoritical answers. Spending lot of time on developer help, pdn etc, here is what i understood.

Before i blabber more, let me put down the definitions from PRPC here,

A workbasket is a named queue of open assignments that are not associated with an operator. A workbasket is defined by an instance of the Data-Admin-WorkBasket class.

A work group is an instance of the Data-Admin-WorkGroup class. A work group can identify a user who is a supervisor, and a set of workers and workbaskets that report to that supervisor.

Just have a look at how work group(referred as WG further) and work basket(referred as WB further) creation screens look.

Work Group creation screen(as in 6.1 version)

Work Basket creation screen(as in 6.1 version)

Intersting point here is, WG has a reference to WB and again WB has a reference to WG. A circular dependency can be noticed. Just thinking aloud. "This means, a entity called WG is created to just hold the Manager value. Other than this, what is the purpose of WG? I mean, lets say, if the Manager field is moved from WG creation to WB creation, then there is no need of WG entity/concept at all in PRPC??"

To dig into the details, lets have a look at the operator creation screen,

Operator creation screen(as in 6.1 version)

A user/operator can have only one WG and multiple WB's assigned to him. So, this also means, he has got only one reporting Manager that is linked through WG. But, what is the purpose of multiple of WB's?

Another point is, an assigment in a BPM can be routed to WorkList, WorkBasket, WorkGroup & we have many more options but these are the context our discussion.

Ok, with all the important points put down above, the questions will boil down to,

• What is the purpose of maintaining WG as an seperate rule, where as the Manager field(only field in WG) can be moved to WB and all we can avoid WG totally?
• We dont have any WG area in the inbox of the user. The user portal has WL area and WB area but not WG area in real time user login. Then what happens if an assignment is routed to WG?

I will try to answer these questions with an example. Lets say, we have 4 operators, all having access to all the 4 work baskets.

Operator	JOHN
WorkGroup	JAVAWG
WorkBaskets	JAVAWB
	SAPWB
	DBWB
	BPMWB

Operator	MIKE
WorkGroup	SAPWG
WorkBaskets	SAPWB
	JAVAWB
	DBWB
	BPMWB

Operator	BROWN
WorkGroup	DBWG
WorkBaskets	DBWB
	JAVAWB
	SAPWB
	BPMWB

Operator	SAM
WorkGroup	BPMWG
WorkBaskets	BPMWB
	JAVAWB
	DBWB
	SAPWB

And the WB and WG are created as,

SAPWG	Manager: PersonA WB: SAPWB
SAPWB	Organization/Unit/Division WG: SAPWG

JAVAWG	Manager: PersonB WB: JAVAWB
JAVAWB	Organization/Unit/Division WG: JAVAWG

DBWG	Manager: PersonC WB: DBWB
DBWB	Organization/Unit/Division WG: DBWG

BPMWG	Manager: PersonD WB: BPMWB
BPMWB	Orgnization/Unit/Division WG: BPMWG

And consider a BPM as below,

Sample BPM for understanding

Now, when the assignments are triggered and routed to WB, WG, what happens? Where exactly the assignments appear for the end user?

When Assignment 01 and Assignment 03 are routed to SAPWB and JAVAWB respectively, they appear in the WB area of user portal/inbox(whoever has the access to those WBs). So user is free to pick up any assignment and can also transfer back to the WB.

When Assignment 02 and Assignment 04 are routed to BPMWG and DBWG respectively, they are routed to available operator, chosen randomly, in the workgroup.  If none are available, the assignment is routed to the respective managers.

So, whenever you expect any of specialized group to act on a task(with an assigned supervisor) use WG, else use WB which has bigger audience.

Another pointer,

PS: All the images & information is picked up from the developer help or pdn of Pegasystems.

Is Scrum an Agile or Agile a Scrum?

Agile is a software development methodology that can be used in project management. On contrary to many peoples understanding, agile is just an umbrella which covers various approaches, or i should say, various practices which can be run on agile principles.

Basic principle of agile methodology is project development in iterative and incremental basis. This is in total contrast of what happens in Waterfall project methodology, an traditional approach to software development.

So, following this principle in particular, there are many agile approaches such as Scrum, XP(Extreme Programming where Pair programming, an agile development technique is used), Kanban, Lean software development, DSDM(Dynamic Systems Development Method) etc.

Putting it very simple, for example, if i'm talking about the 10 min standup call as part of my agile process, that is not necessarily need to be agile, but scrum will insist it.

So agile is not a scrum but scrum is certainly one of many agile approaches'.

Bubbly to Crappy Pratheekha

I used to be an ardent listener of Full To Bindaas show on 93.5 Red FM. It was just due to, as Silk says, Entertainment...entertainment...entertainment. RJ Pratheekha was certainly as reason for this. It used to be a lot of fun listening to her and her spontaneous silly poems etc etc. But since some time, she developed a syndrome of doing stupid talks at the wrong times. I donno if anybody else has find it irritating and its really very very annoying.

She used to sound bubbly, but she turned into completely crappy. She used to talk between the songs, but yesterday i was listening to that panch pataka, and in middle of a song she started her crappy talk. WTF? She was RJing not in between the songs, but in the middle of a song. Picchi mudhirindhi pillaki!! Her mad has gone to the extent of shitting out her silly poems on the names in the middle of the song. WTF Pratheeka!! What happened to you?

I some times wonder whether these RJs would have any direction like thing for the program(as like TV shows). If so, may be her director has lost his mind that he is allowing her to mad off like that. I completely forgot to tune into Red FM intentionally during these timings. If i chance upon Red FM in between the channels and if some song is playing, then i would stop there else if that crappy pratheekha is talking crappeeish or stupidish(in her language), then i would immediately skip that. But, this crap has crawled into in the middle of the songs. But sometimes when pratheekha is off and Chaithu comes in, its kind of relief.

Rather Mirchi FM program of band baja...with bhragavi is sensible and decent and entertaining with her talks. This program overlaps with that of Full To Bindaas of Red FM. And yaah, last week sometime, there was an article in some paper about the RJs and their shows and the entertainment factor etc etc. This bhargavi girl was featured there and she was real stunning. Going by her voice, i imagined her to be a bit young and bit chubby and so....but she looked a bit older!!!

Input validation & formatting at client side in Pega

Client side validation is a very useful and beautiful feature of any web applications. The basic validations and formatting which doesn't require server side action can be done at the client side i.e. browser side mostly, and then the user submission can be passed on to the server.

Two useful things of client side validation are,

• Reducing the serverside action, thus, reducing the burden/load on the server for the simple validations.
• Increasing the response time of the application. I.e. user need not have to wait for the request to be sent to the user and wait for the server to respond back to just say, "One text field is empty in the user form".

Pega provides rules Rule-Edit-Input and Rule-Edit-Validate for such formatting/conversions and validations.

Rule-Edit-Input : This is provided in the advance tab of the property rule form. This performs conversions and not validations. No response will be sent to the user reg. the input validity. This rule performs conversions(as required by our application) and the sets the value back to the same property.

Rule-Edit-Validate : This is provided in the advance tab of the property rule form. This performs validation and adds(i.e. associates) message to the property if the validation fails. Any property/page with associated message in the clipboard is not considered valid in pega.

Both Rule-Edit-Input and Rule-Edit-Validate rules are java based i.e. these rules are written in java. Pega by default provides some rules of each type for basic functions. Its open to the user to add your own rules of each type for further control and customization of the application.

Examples are as:

Please feel free to contact me if i'm missing anything.

Exception handling in Pega Activities

Exception handling in java methods can be done in many ways. We can log the reason for the exception, the respective stack trace and we can even manage to print the stack trace to your application specific logs(java does that by default though) explicitly using Reflection API or many other mechanisms.

Pega also have such mechanism to exception handling in Activity rules. This can be done using standard when conditions named StepStatusGood and StepStatusFail(in @baseclass) in transitions of activities. These when conditions internally uses pxMethodStatus property to validate whether the execution of the particular step is successfull or failure. pxMethodStatus property will be updated regulary with the status after end of each step execution and before the start of the next step execution.

We also have a boolean named hasMessages which informs you whether a page contains one or more page messages. Any page which has one or more messages are treated invalid page in pega and cannot be persisted.

But, one very important missing point here is, the actual error message will not be found any where at design time. That is, there is no such property pega provides to hold the error message of the exact reason for the exception or the step failure. One has to dig into the logs or tracer to find out the error reason. This is really uncomfortable while developing applications. There is no any out of the box property that holds the the error message of the exception. It sounds so ridiculous why such a basic thing is not provided in pega?

A bit of R&D showed me this. An activity ActivityStatusExceptionHander in @baseclass handles the error message displaying in the window like this,

Digging into this activity showed me that, a property pyMessageLabel is the property which gets to hold the error message in case of exception. But after the harness display, the page which holds the pyMessageLabel is being deleted. So, if you want to customize the functionality you have to save this ActivityStatusExceptionHander activity to your local rule set and try on to hold the error message and you can play around.

Feel free to contact me if i'm missing anything.

Useful Activities of Work- class

Some very useful activities from Work- class we use very often in our day-to-day development process are listed below. 

Work-.Add activity creates a new work object and performs a Commit method (without a cover object)

Work-.AddWork activity creates a new work object but doesn’t perform a Commit method

Work-.AddCovered activity creates a new covered work object and performs a Commit method

Work-.AddCoveredWork activity creates a new covered work object and doesn’t performs a Commit method

Work-.AddToFolder activity adds the work item to the folder

Work-.ActionNotifyQuick activity creates simple correspondence

Work-.CorrUpdate activity updates the correspondence

Work-.CorrNew activity creates a new correspondence

Work-.StartNewFlow activity starts an additional flow execution on the current work object.

Work-.ResumeFlow activity is typically called when a service level deadline or goal is not met, this activity forces completion of an assignment and advances the flow execution along a specified (connector) flow action.

Feel free to suggest if i missed any.

Pega Screen Flow

Pega screen flow is a flow category option provided by PRPC to gather/collect information from the user in a particular sequence. Screen flow enables the user to go back and forth and edit the information at any point of time till the form is submitted finally.

Screen flow can be created from New instance of FLOW rule dialog. The Template field has to be selected as screen flow.



Screen flows cannot create new work object and hence cannot be used to start an application. Because, "Creates a new work object?" option in the process tab of Flow rule will be disabled for screen flows. This also means, a screen flow is useless unless used in a starter(i mean standard) flow.

Screen flows can have embedded subflows. But normal standard flow cannot be added as subflow and only another screen flow can be added as subflow.

The available flow shapes for a screen flow are,

In screen flow, Flowactions are referenced by assignment shape rather than connectors(as we generally do in standard flows).

Screen flows can change the status of the work object to Resolved. This change of status can be set in an activity and this activity can be referred in the post activity of the flow action that is used in the screen flow.

http://www.bigcinemas.com -- BIG FRAUD

I tried booking tickets at Big Cinemas, Ameerpet, Hyderabad through online booking on https://www.bigcinemas.com on 12 of July'12.

The booking process & show/seat selection went on smooth and i provided my credit card details on the website to confirm the booking. After some minutes of processing, its mentioned as "Some technical difficulties occurred during your booking process, Please check your email for confirmation.If you have not received any booking confirmation and your payment is deducted, Kindly contact us at support@bigcinemas.com for your refund." -- Mind you, i didn't click on Back or Refresh on the browser for this to happen.

I immediately mailed to above email id to receive this response on 14th July.

Dear Guest,

Warm Greetings from BIG Cinemas !

We appreciate you taking the time to contact us and share your query.

We are not able to trace the failed transaction with the details received from you.

We request you to please forward us your credit card/account statement or a screen shot of the same.

We strive to provide the best quality service and look forward to your continued patronage.

Sincerely,
BIG Cinemas Support Team

Good that i captured the transaction failure screen and so i reverted them with the required snapshot of the failed transaction on 17 July as,

Hi Team,

As requested, attached is the snapshot of the Rs.480 charged to Reliance Media Works Mumbai IN on 12/7/2012. The transaction happened exactly on 2012-07-12:16:32:47

Kindly refund the amount at the earliest.

Regards.

Then after i received this mail from them on the same day.

Dear Thrinath Jalamadugu,

Warm Greetings From BIG Cinemas.

We understand the value of your time and deeply regret the inconvenience caused. Our team is working assiduously and diligently to process your refund, and we shall update you on refund Confirmation, as soon as possible. In the interim period, we request you for your understanding and patience.

In case, you need further help or assistance please do write to us at support@bigcinemas.com.

Thank you for contacting Big Cinemas and we look forward to your continued patronage.

Sincerely,
BIG Cinemas Support Team.

After that, i didn't hear from them again. I dropped in a reminder on 27July for the related status and no response. Fed up with this mail communication, i called up the customer care numbers of Ameerpet, Hyderabad big cinemas to enquire about the same. But the guy on the other ends provided me a number 022 30978888 to find the quries related to the net booking stuff. I called this number some 10 times and yet no response. Wondering what to do!!!

Absolutely, idiotic behaviour from big cinemas. Being a reputed org. i didn't expect such a fraud from them. Bit of googling, i found this http://www.consumercomplaints.in/complaints/big-cinemas-c136234.html 

i'm not the only one to be cheated by these f***ing company.

Stay away from these frauds.