Fancy Shop

The Bengali New Year reminds me of a few young age memories. Ours was a small township with sector markets to serve various zone of township population. A drug shop, two sweet shops , vegetable walla, fish bazaar, a red meat shop , a fruit seller, a ration corner , a few grocery store, two fancy shops would complete the composition. One which had a Ladies Salon was considered posh one. The one in my neighbourhood didn't have one, rather it had a young Homeopathy doctor's chamber to fill in the gap.

Mr Monty Banik had a roaring grocery business. Each new year I would visit his shop with my father - a packet with 3 variety of sweets and 1 samosa along with a chill cold drinks would await for honour. My father would pick up a brand new Bengali Calender that Mr. Monty had to offer in the occasion and the messy sticky packet used to duly come back to home . I used to enjoy the Cola for free sipping through the straw and killing 30 mins from my study time. Generally that used to be my first taste of chill each summer.

Mr Monty had a fancy shop just besides his grocery store which was run by his brother Mr. Jonty Banik. Barbie was still not in market but loads of dolls , soft toys, hard toys hung across the store. It had a glass showcase full of girlish cosmetic - bangles of various shapes and size, fancy hair clips and so and so...I knew the shop had a refrigerator too. In summer they sold ice creams.

The interesting part was directly at the other end of the market was one more fancy shop with similar commodities owned by Mr. Saha. He too had loads of necessary and cosmetic articles that middle class Bengali would look for like products ranging from Talcum powder to nail polish, needle to embroidery threads , unknown names to brand names like Lakme , ponds etc. It too had cooling machines and offered Amul butter, colas and ice creams..

I preferred visiting the second store than the first. My needs were simple - embroidery threads for my crafts class or colored bangles for my dance performances or bundled white paper ( we called it Diste Pata) for mathematics practices work. These were my hands-on learning of business transaction, events to sharpen my mental maths and finally opportunities to unbound joy of economic power. Mr.Saha had help me grow as an individual as equally as my school teachers. He corrected me if I went wrong, he appreciated me if I was fast, he recognized me amidst all tall customers even though I was school student - well knowing my money was an empowerment my parents boosted. But he never ignored my potential. Had broad smile and kept tracing my academic growth path every time I visited his shop.

Only when he failed to provide me my choice of need and was certain that time was constraint at my end he directed to other shops in the locality. This is when in a few occasions I had stopped by Mr.Jonty Banik's shop. Very unlike his brother who was always proactive to serve customer , Mr.Jonty made successful transaction only when the requirement was precise. He never had the patience to take forward the customer even if it was one step +/- the defined specification. 'No' was his easiest and preferred choice. He remained as a shop keeper in my mind.

Years later far away from the place of my upbringing on such special evenings I still recall the market to which I was a customer. Honestly I didn't know what a customer means. Lessons learnt are invaluable to me as I stand in a service industry on the other end of the table.

Gyan #12 - Great Service is about going a little extra to honour and understand your customer

Uninvited Guest

This is an embarrassing story, yet as I look back can relate to a fundamental that later in my corporate life have been preached over hi-profile trainings and shared during offline experience.

My music teacher had a daughter around my age group. I was in my early teens when he invited all his students to celebrate her 10th birthday. It was more than an usual way of invitation. Being a creative person he had personalized invitation card in name of each one of us. While I was thrilled and was preparing for the evening, my brother who was around five years expressed his wish to join me.

As elder sister I always shared a wonderful relation with him but this was bit unacceptable when he adamantly wanted to join me in this party. So simple a request - a brother willing to join his sister to a party, turned the late afternoon hours into a tense situation in my home. The fact that I was the only named invitee in the card made me bother ethically - probably more than required. I was in my growing years - the self awareness was building - concepts of what I felt the right and the wrong way of doing things were shaping up. In this case I firmly felt that the evening party was meant for my participation and the host would not expect me to have my brother along. I kept explaining my brother but in vain. He cried for a while and then started coaxing my mother to dress him up.

We both dressed up , me with strong conviction that he is not joining me ... and he was with a strong will to be with me. As I look back probably that was too natural of him at his age. To term self - a rude, would be very difficult but I just wanted to go by the books and ensure I don't embarrass my host.

Mothers always know how it works better... My classmate knocked my door as we planned to go to the music teacher's house together. Being the youngest kid in the neighbourhood my classmate fondled my brother a lot! She repeated it once more. It gave my mother assurance to ignore my resistance and share the cause we had been debating for a while. I was annoyed. This should have been all within the family.

To all my surprise, my classmate broke the uneasiness in one stoke. She volunteered to take my brother along and frowned at me for my hesitation. With a hitch in my mind,we three reached the party venue. My music teacher was curious to meet the uninvited guest ( I still thought that). My brother had stole the show in the party - you know how healthy jolly kids turn out to be head turners in such gatherings.

When we were about to leave , my teacher came and appreciated me saying - " I never knew you had a brother, I should have invited him. It was great that you had him along or else we would have missed a lot of fun!" It was not me, my classmate deserved it!..I felt stupid knowing how I objected this.

I was stuck with a self defined moral dilemma and at one point didn't like to take this openly with anyone. Good that Ma had opened up the problem very lucidly before my friend and she did the best that evening could offer to many....

Gyan #11 - We love to keep ours assumptions and mostly the wrong ones in personal closet.. Open up ! Others can correct your thoughts.

Jogger and the weighing machine

Am sure many of us have gone thru the euphoric experience of getting into regular health habits. Be it morning walk, evening jogging, controlled diet or Yoga. If not in person definitely met someone who had given a try, may be not once but have gone for multiple attempts. The natural symptoms are - you go for buying lot of new accessories - comfort attires, shoes and in the very first week walking in the park or in the community gym you note down all that others have little more that you, to make this boring journey more energetic.
Parag and Anurag are residents of the same posh residency apartment, well settled with friends and families. They both are around forty and are responsible for heavy portfolios of the same corporate house. In a health check up session both were advised to shred a few Kgs of extra fat they were carrying with them. Being friends and respective wives being equally concerned it was very easy for both to land on the jogger lane.
The first two weeks were fantastic – they realized how green their complex is, they saw so many new faces in the same apartment complex, identified a few fast trackers on the jogger’s lane. Life was like a new start. So much of positivity with morning exercise being a priority. The story was same-same for Parag and Anurag till this point.
As the weeks changed "Morning Jogging" was not that exciting for Anurag. Priorities started changing post the commencement of his new project. Late night calls, discussions, reviews … Reasons are ample and not to be denied.
Parag ran alone watching out the green park for a few more days. On the third day of this lonely rat race he took a break, sat on the park bench and stretched his legs and kept his vision open to watch out. Suddenly noticed the old couple crossing, they just kept moving – same motion on the same pitch went on and on. Suddenly Parag felt he is losing a race. The old couple in each cycle threw him fresh challenges, stating that you lost the game. He could not take it anymore. Stood straight and started moving the next time the couple crossed him. That was it!
Every morning for Parag was an agenda to win the race that was on with the old couple. He ensured to circle the track faster than them and mentally kept a count. Unknowingly the health conscious old couple was two more rats in his race. Needless to say he won every day and had pity for the fourth rat – Anurag!
Wives are at times the biggest catalyst to make you more competitive. Anurag felt the same two months down the line. His wife tried pushing him to the park in the evening once in a while – but it didn’t click. It was all by chance that Anurag stepped on the weighing machine in the shopping mall just to keep up to his daughter’s weekend demands. The short and sleek piece of paper had “82 Kgs” in bold and the other end had a wish – ‘Be smart to achieve goals’.
Next day Anurag was back from office bit early than usual. With no coaxing stepped out for the community gym. Initially every weekend he made it a point to turn up to the mall to check the figures the machine had to say. In a months’ time had a digital weighing machine placed in the dry corner of the bathroom. He found all means to achieve a number less with each day. These days when on tour he looks for facilities to work out; at the least he needs a weighing machine to keep a constant tap on the numbers. Among all his priorities this is the only number whose increasing trend hurts him more than any other metrics failure these days.
The competitive Parag and the goal oriented Anurag are both now health freak but in their own way!
Gyan 10# - It takes a while to understand the strength in us, but once we know it we can travel different paths to achieve the same goal with equal élan.