Work manners and humour, level: FMCG

Following is an opinion, an obviously personal one. I do not claim any expertise on the field or the subject matter and anyone who chooses to be guided by a blog rather than facts and hard sought knowledge, deserves truly, what it shall bring upon him.

Psychology journals classify humour as one of the efficient coping mechanisms for short-term setbacks and hardships in life. Budding CEOs and marketers of the world, fresh from B-schools, often use it to cope up with their sales stints when they join sales and marketing roles in FMCG companies.

Getting Around: Do not curse the fact that you will have to be a pillion to a direct sales rep (DS), while visiting the markets. Wait until the bike goes away, and you have to cover the market for hours on foot. Wait, did you ask for some conveyance again?  Ah, now you will have to do with the cycle! Or wait, till he takes you round for a trip in a local bus and the thing takes a sharp right turn… .Passenger trains are just fine though. More often than not, you can find yourself a place to sit on the luggage rack, if you are proactive enough.

Salesmen usually carry a big bag full of merchandising stuff, samples etc. in the field. That huge bag will occupy a lot of space on the bike, leaving lesser room for the pillion-you in this case. Keep it that way. You do not want that bag removed from between you two, given the bumpy ride. Think about it.

Best time to visit: Tragedy is to carry out the stint in the sweltering temperatures of 42 degrees in Delhi. Comedy is when it gets to rain and you realize your firm has no on-ground umbrella or raincoat policy, and the norm is to do the market anyways.

Hospitality: Every shop has a mayur jug of water and 2 glasses. If the owner asks the boy in the shop to serve you water in one of those glasses, it is a gesture of respect and courtesy. Accept it. Do not think about x number of people who have used the glass since morning, or about the boy’s dusted fingers holding the glass from the rim, or about the visible nothings floating on the water’s surface. The unspoken rule of the land is that rinsing the glass once is enough to wash it off of its previous users’ leftovers. Accept it and drink it and move on.

What to eat: An integral part of these stints is to share a meal with your DS. You may share a drink or smoke with him too, but this is where perhaps gender comes in. These stints are all about banana shakes, samosa chhole, chai and bread pakodas. I personally had to forget my love for English breakfast and earl grey tea for a while, as the distributors ordered special chai and thanda for ‘Madam’ from one town to next. From special ghevar of samlkha, to pakoras of bahadurgarh, to jalebi of gohana, to tikki of gannaur, to special ghee and gur shops – in India, outside cities, you are in for a treat!

Local language: It is not so much about learning the language, as about learning to accept the language. “10 peti laga do”, “rate kese failaya hai”, “market bigad di”, “maal thok do”, you get the idea.  And yes, do download the app for hindi number counting.

Local Culture: When it is hot, people scratch. The people you will be dealing with will be scratching their bellies, their face, their legs and what not all the time. Which is ok, because as you stand scratching your head calculating margins, schemes, landing rates etc. in his shop; you pose quite an amusing picture to him too.

Sight Seeing: One often looses enthusiasm to carry on with the sales calls from one shop to next given the strenuous nature of the work and the heat. A good way to revive is to look out for the young lads sitting in these shops – the 17-year-old son of the shopkeeper. Sitting clad with spiked hair, denims and his smart phone, he would anywhere be in this world than sitting in his father’s kirana shop. Derive sadistic pleasure from him. Wink at your own risk.

Budget: Alls well, that pays well.

Now that sophistication has been formally ousted from my life, here is a song quite different from the blues and jazz I have been putting up earlier. It is dedicated to my recent sales stint in Haryana, with its small neat towns, the peace-lack of noise pollution, delicious water, local sweets and delicacies, warm hospitality, the long and windy roadways bus journeys and its guys, one in particular, blessed naturally with strong jawlines for adding aesthetic beauty to my stints.

Confessions of a born spectator

I need this world, yes, because only it can provide me the peace & detachment I need.  

Yes, I do take my existential swings way too seriously. It may be, that time in life, or that point in season, or that time of the month, or that day of the week, or that hour of the day, or, it may be not. 

Hosseini described  a man - so close to myself - a man who had spent his life sitting in the backside of a car, watching as the world went by in a blur - never taking the steering himself. Thats me. The observer sitting behind.

One infant grows up and becomes a jockey
Another plays basketball or hockey
This one the prize ring hates to enter
That one becomes a tackle or center
I am just glad as glad can be
That I am not them, that they are not me

Maybe answers don't exist. Maybe I know the answers already, but the search is just too much fun, too liberating - like a trance. But one still needs an audience. An observer seeking attention, because that is what he does best.

There is  something about despair - it gives you depth. It gives you a pedestal and the strength to stand on it alone, and rejoice. Happiness on the other hand is always conclusive...fulfilling. It fills that hollow, takes away the depth, it makes me forget - I would rather not.

Jezebel

Reach for the top she said
And the sun is gonna shine
Every winter was a war she said
I want to get what's mine…

Jezebel
Won't try to deny where she came from
You can see it in her pride
And the raven in her eyes
Try show her a better way
She'll say you don't know what you've been missing
And by the time she blinks you know she won't be listening

And another one

If ever the Devil was born without a pair of horns
It was you, Jezebel, it was you
If ever an angel fell
Jezebel, it was you, Jezebel, it was you

I came across the character Jezebel yesterday through Sade and the character clicked at first sight. I searched about her on net, but somehow before searching, I knew what I was going to find. A princess. Not necessarily a pretty one but a princess by birth and by heart. An Israeli princess, Jezebel is condemned of acting against god in one version and for dressing in finery and putting on makeup before she goes to death in another one. In modern usage, not to my surprise, Wiki says and I quote, “In modern usage, the name of Jezebel is sometimes used as a synonym for sexually promiscuous and sometimes controlling women”.

Sexually promiscuous. There is something inherently scary about a woman being sexually promiscuous. For an animal form, who by nature is supposed to be giving and nurturing, there is something so unsettling, so shocking, so unappetizing when she wants to be at a receiving end. Not supposed to ask, Jezebel is supposed to seduce. Not to take lead, but to charm and direct, less the princess be cheated or worse judged.

But nature has its own wonderful way and its design mocks this very social concept of hating and curbing Jezebels. Men are supposed to be direct and simple creatures. They have been provided in this way. The concentric set of nerves around their happy organ is designed to respond to even the most basic and routine stimulations. 
For women – the complicated ones, they say, the gift is that each one is wired as differently as the design of a butterfly’s wings. You need to work your way around. There is no wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am. The nature’s design provides for a prolonged effort, for foreplay, for theatrics, for the knowledge, for the chase, for patience and for the eventual gratification.

Technically they say woman can have multiple orgasms. Factually 80% never climax from intercourse.
Socially, you are not supposed to be reading this. Psychologically, am not supposed to be thinking this.

From a culture where volumes have been written about pleasure, where scientific works are written on seemingly most insignificant  topics like techniques of perfuming of body in order to be prepared for the sexual act we have come so very far at our own loss. Reference here

Stay an angel; do not become a Jezebel, less you want to be called painted and immoral.

Casanovas be crowned, Jezebels be damned.

Reach for the top she said
And the sun is gonna shine
Every winter was a war she said
I want to get what's mine…