During my good old academic days in Mysore, more particularly in Yuvaraja's college, it was a pleasure indeed to sit on the compound walls with masala spread tomato slices or the famous "masala poori"plates that was being prepared in the push carts surrounding the clock tower/town hall areas. The aroma of the masala (forget the hygiene for a moment !!!) was sufficient to secrete the saliva reminding us of "Stimulus-response" experiment on the dog conducted by Pavlov , which we studied in behavioral sciences during MBA days in Manasa Gangotri.
Though the look of the bucket containing water to wash the plates created nausea, the mad rush surrounding one particular push cart named "pushpa" to eat this masala poori was stunning. Though the name of the push cart was Pushpa, which is an emblem of "sugandha" , the "durgandha" played a major role, thus indicating a misnomer to the cart.. Finally, the taste and the smell of the masala under the magic hands of "papanna" , the owner of this cart, was downplaying all the bad odours and smells and we could observe a craving in the magnetized customers to satisfy their tastebuds .
Above all, the customer orientation of Papanna in terms of his untiring and charismatic ever-smiling face apart from his generous credit policy extended to poor and middle class students of those days wherein it was a horrendous task to get even Re 1 as pocket money, is an eye-opener to today's business magnets who are driven by the profitability and yields of the business, ignoring the so called customer delight.
Today, after moving to Bangalore to fill the never-fillable poor belly, i tend to reminisce those days of Mysore, where we were enjoying the life with minimum requirements of money with a large family to the tune of 8 to 9 members. It is sad to witness that Mysore is on the verge of becoming mini-Bangalore where the next door neighbors are strangers to each other in today's rat-race filled world in which survival is pushing the humanity into oblivion.
Pushcart Papanna's generous credit poilicy set me back in time, to my school days - early fifties - in New Delhi. We had a tuck-shop - tea and biscuit - by the side of the main gate of Madarasi School, Mandir Marg. It was a father-son operation. They. presumably, had names, but we used to address the elderly as 'Lalaji' - a term befitting a wealthy trader or retail tycoon. The tuck-shop owner, a refugee from Lahore, where he had a thriving business going, was pleased to hear us calling him Lalaji. Nothing pleased us more than pleasing him, particularly when we didn't have ready money for tea.
Lalaji used to be very kind, and say, 'koi baath nai, beta; paise kahaan baghe jaa-raha' (Never mind, son; money doesn't away). So we had tea and shop-made biscuits, baked in a Gole Market bakery, without having to pay cash down. But then, on the first few days of a month when time it was to settle our accounts, not everyone paid on time. Some of us used run up bills at the chaat-shop as well, at the other gate of the school, and needed to reschedule payments to balance our pocket money. So on early days of every other month some of us used to avoid the main gate (and got into our school through the adjacent muncipal school) Those of us who had no such compulsions came up with excuses for those absent, and Lalaji would always give us an understanding smile, and say 'koi gal nai' (Never mind, in Punjabi) He knew his money won't run away, and this month's defaulter doesn't remain so the next month. Wonder what Mr Nataraj's MBA mind thinks of Lalaji's business model.
