Business of Life

Doesn't it seem like a dream job? 3.50 in the afternoon and I've nothing to do but to listen to music and write blogs .. I listened to hard rocks in YouTube throughout the pre lunch hours and now have decided to try a different platter: Blues. I love this woman : Norah , I mean .. It mesmerizes me how easily she expresses deepest of feelings . But I'd talk about music some other day . Today I've something else to talk about... Hold your breath girls and boys, women and men , humans and other animals, living and the deceased : cause, for the 1st time in my blog-life I m gonna talk about business. In my own sweet (!) way of course.




1st Scenario :
Location:- Jockey Outlet , MIT
Time:-8.45 pm , Tuesday
I went with my room-mate to help her buy a pair of jogging track-pants. I had no bloody idea which kind of help she was expecting from me and why on the 1st place she was buying one while she'd never go for jogging for sure but then again, I had nothing to do and besides; being a woman , I've an intrinsic knack towards shopping (or rather window shopping) so I accompanied her. Now, like any ignorant consumer, i was under the impression that store assistants are there only to assist , but clearly, in this store they were behaving like the Gestapo ! The key word in lingerie shopping is perhaps "Privacy", at least it is so in India . I don’t know about my room-mate but i clearly was feeling a bit uneasy when one of the shop ladies was literally breathing over my shoulder. But that at least was tolerable and can be blamed to their inability of trusting the power of CCTVs. But what the other lady did to my roommate was not only disgusting but also outright insulting ; when my room-mate had chosen a particular pair and wanted to try it out , she was told : "Ma'am (and that was pronounced as gum) , it wont suit you at all." And when even after that she was determined to try it out, the lady actually kept on insisting her to buy a large size when she was looking for medium and said ominously : " you might try out the medium size but It'd look really bad"! I was amazed at the will power of my roommate. I get easily instigated by even tiniest of trespassing in my privacy and i'd have probably sued the shop if i were at the receiving end of such comments, but my roommate actually chose to neglect them and bought not only the track pant but many other items much to the apparent dismay of the shop lady. Now, I had carefully chosen the word apparent . After all, all these shop attendants work in commission basis thus their interest is to make the browsing turn into shopping . Thus, the means taken doesn't matter at all. May be, the lady in that shop was a brilliant reader of consumer psyche and by neglecting all the CRM lessons of Kotler and other numerous marketing books she stood out to be a purple cow. Promoting sales by irking the consumer ? challenging them to try out things? You decide! I, in the meantime , will find out some other jockey showroom where the shop people wont turn out to be such as***les.


2nd Scenario:-
Location :- An insignificant nameless Beauty Parlor near MIT
Time:- 4.30 pm, Tuesday
Turn on any channel on your idiot box and the maximum number of personal care ads you'll come across will try to entice you to invest on the beatification of your face. Now I personally feel that my feet and not my face deserves maximum amount of my attention (Not that I give it what it deserves but then that is the story of my life, i preach things without practicing them). So, it's pretty natural that when i finally managed to get some time for myself yesterday(ie when i finally managed to move my lazy butt) , the 1st thing I decided to do was to get a Pedicure. I love to indulge into reading a delicious love story when someone else is pampering my feet. After all , at some point of our life , we all do like to be treated as princesses and not just another nameless entity in the hoi polloi being stampeded by boots and not even receiving any gesture of apology. Thus a fairy tale romance can only be appreciated in a such a scenario when the aroma of lavender pack and the titillating touch of rose petals veils the big bad world from your vision and creates the illusion of a land of happily ever after. However, in my case it was a pretty basic pedicure (ie w/o the rose petal and stuff) and actually i got a small cut in the process. Now, I am quite sturdy and not the kind who faints at the sign of RBC, but since i was paying for a service , i deliberately acted hypochondriac and ended up getting a 60% discount and a free massage. Now, the story ends here but there's an epilogue which is more important . Today , in the morning , i received a small sms which expressed concern about my cut (it was actually a scratch) and wished a quick recovery . So, they actually made use of my phone number and they didn't take it just for the heck of taking it. Result?  if I ever feel the necessity of going to parlor again within these 6 weeks , I'd definitely choose this place and moreover I almost did a free WOM (WOT?) publicity of the place before i decided to hide the name of the place. Moral of the story ? Pampering works for me






3rd Scenario:-
Location :- Roll Club near MIT
Time:- 10.30 pm, Tuesday
For all you Bengalis out there (or anyone with an entrepreneurial bend of mind) here's a man who can be your inspiration. This person started his career in Nizam , climbed up the career ladder and became the GM of some restaurant and then one fine day just quit his job to open this small fast food corner with his wife as the chief chef. Now, he sells egg rolls at Rs 45/ piece and though I don't have any idea how much money he is making after paying 18000Rs rent pm for that tiny place; his life is far better than the post VRS average Indian men's lives which mainly consist of watching cricket matches and criticizing the players...!


I'd wrap up with a rather sad news from my PG life. I tried washing my clothes yesterday . I.e. I dipped them in warm water and detergent at 7 pm and after coming back at around 11, I almost got a stroke. The water had disappeared from the bucket and instead the clothes were dipped in blood. Most of them died or got severely injured by then and even after ventilation and saline doses, I could not save them . Then I discovered the culprit who caused the blood-bath. It was the Hare Krishna T-Shirt my mom bought as a gift for me from Vrindavan, the ISKCON premises to be precise. The man (And I am talking about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu here) who preached non-violence throughout his life, ironically got associated with a massacre , courtesy me!