Still there are a few realities that need to be told to the new breed of sales trainees. Knowing things in advance is always good so that Jor kaa jhatka dheere se lage. My friends, these are few of the things that you should be prepared for(Apart from traveling in a trolley with goats and life threats from competitors –

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So, my training is more or less over and here is my modest attempt to summarize what life is for a management sales trainee. The good things first:

1. Your business sustains livelihoods: From your salesmen to your distributors, from retailers to factory workers, from shareholders to your coworkers, you know that there are people who are dependent on this business. They are, in a small way dependent on you. Even as a trainee, the choices you make are important as they impact some of them directly (and in a big way). A smile from a retailer, a ‘thank you, Sir’ from a salesman, and you know that your job goes beyond the materialistic things of life.

2. Sales thrills: Sales gives you its own joyrides. You feel that you own that X% of this world. This ownership comes in many terms.. It could be the shelf-space, stocks, loyal consumers, sales-force spread across the territory. Then comes the thrill of numbers, if you are in to it, then the numbers belong to you. And when they belong to you, you chase them, you protect them, you plan for them and you try to achieve them and upon accomplishment you celebrate them..it’s fun.

3. Sales figures are not your headache, yet! Despite all the training and stints, the truth is that you are still in that so called ‘learning phase’. So people don’t really expect much fireworks from you. And even in the rarest of the cases that people do pull you over numbers, you just need a bit of thick skin to hear everything and conclude yourself by saying that you’ll try harder next time.

4. You hardly complain about quality if things are free. Your stay, food and numerous other expenses will be paid by the company.

5. Enjoy the ego trip: It’s a world of numerous hierarchy levels, and usually these levels are pretty hard to climb. In you mid 20s, you get a position which many others in the organization can only dream of occupying even in their late 30s. And it’s not the new age IT stuff, it’s a place where people really respect the chair that you hold.

6. Travel to new places: Explore and enjoy. You visit at least 15-20 new places in your training year. At least some of them are bound to be good tourist locations. You stay there at company’s expense and you wake up facing either the sea or a mountain range. How could you still complain about life?

In brief, take everything in your stride and move on. Dil rakhne ke liye to log ye bhi bolte hain ki Sales is what makes men out of boys : )

BTW, I can’t resist the urge to write the other side of this. So very soon, I’ll come up with a piece on perils of being a sales trainee : )

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So finally Taco Bell (pronounced as Taako-Bell) has arrieved in india. I was taken by surprise when suddenly I came across several TacoBell banners in Bangalore last week, announcing the opening of their first outlet. Then somehow I stumbled upon the Mantri Square link, which is being touted as India’s biggest Mall. Incidentally the Taco Bell outlet is in this mall only and the two made an irresistible combination for a visit on the very next day.

What I saw there was kind of shocking.. I saw a queue in the mall ..leading upto the Taco Bell outlet.. yes my dear friend! you got me right, there was a queue even to get into the queue of the outlet!

Then given our notion of fast food, I didn’t mind it that much (I thought that OK lets be in the Queue..and it reinforced the feeling that Taco Bell is something big and giving it a miss will be nothing short of a sin).

For about 20 minutes I was in this queue outside the outlet, then another 10 minutes I was just near the entrance, and then only I got the first glimpse of the counter. Order taking process was slow..actually, it was damn slow. Then there was another bunch of customers waiting besides the counter. I realized later that they were waiting for their orders to get executed, which means that even the kitchen people were also agonizingly slow and were taking their own sweet time in preparing the orders. The sad part is that they were not preparing some Mughlai Paneer, they were preparing Tacos and Nachos, and anyway why is any preparation time required for these items?

God! I waited another 30 minutes to get to the counter(total time in the queue according to my watch was at least 1 hour, though I felt like I wasted the entire evening in that damn queue)

I ordered a Taco combo and some Nachos. Then I waited for my order to come. And finally..finally the moment arrived. When I had that food tray in my hand, I knew that this effort of mine was a clear demonstration of my grit, mental and physical strength and task orientation of the highest order, and ideally deserves to get a place on my one pager resume.

I won’t get into too many details over here.. but the food was OK.. the Taco was good, twisters were just a poor cousin of our Kurkure, the Burrito’s wrap was a bit too maida based and I don’t like Pepsi that much anyways. I came out exhausted, when exiting I saw that the queue was still building up at the first floor entrance

Pluses:

The novelty factor: How can you not even try this?

It’s American: and hence comes with a bit of coolness, after all we are a nation where you can proudly take your date to the McD for the fine dining American experience.

Free Pepsi: yeah mostly. I mean actually it’s free fill.. So you buy once and re-fill it as many times as you want to. Right now it’s so crowded that forget the free-fill, I won’t dare to go near that machine even if I am paid 100 bucks. I know that few daredevils might still relish this concept of free-fills, but hey! do they really care? Its fountain Pepsi.. carbonated water minus even the packaging costs.

The Price Factor: At the starting point of 18 Rs a Taco, they are quite cheap. In fact the whole menu is priced on reasonably appealing points. I read it somewhere that they want to occupy the sweet price point where they are cheaper than any other fast food chain and still a notch higher than the street food. Should particularly appeal to the college going junta.

Minuses:

Crowd: I mean “CROWD” in its proper English meaning . Unless you really love being in a crowd, you’ll feel uneasy over there.

Time: Seriously guys, you invest this much time in a temple queue and you’ll get Niravana J

Mismanagement: Ohh where do I start. Just to name a few issues, Why-

– Can’t they have a pre-order taken?(just like McD does during busy hours) so people already have an understanding of what they’ll buy when they reach the counter

– Can’t they deliver the order faste?

– Is there a slightly jammed and handle-less door to the wash basin area and why is it so close to the counter? Imagine that you somehow get inside, and then you realize that you’ll have to push it(jammed) and there are so many people standing in front of it on the other side. Though I didn’t see anyone getting hurt this way, but I am sure this is a real possibility.

Can’t they at least show IPL on those LCDs? so that people can utilize some of the 1 hour plus time that they are gonna spend in the queue anyways.

Now my last complaint is that we get another exclusive Pepsi-contracted (this one also coming from the Pepsi spin off YUM brands stable), and that too at a time when they are running an extremely annoying “Youngistan kaa WoW” campaign. (If anyone, including the agency guys who coined it or the Pepsi guys who paid for it, got any understanding of what the hell this Youngistan kaa Wow means, please please please enlighten me)

Fun Fact: Incidentally Taco Bell has struggled to make a mark in the Mexico.. they were laughed out of the country in early 90s as Mexican people found the food to be a mockery of their beloved Mexican food. The company has recently re-entered the Mexican market and is now projecting its product as a fast food from America

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Recently, I had to go through the arduous yet entirely worthless process of interacting with the customer care center of a reputed telecom service provider company. I took a new connection and within 3 days they withdrew the connectivity citing improper documentation issue. The irony was that I took the connection from their authorized dealer where their representative took care of all the documentation part. When I called them up, the agent wanted me to visit the same dealer again and resubmit the same papers, while I believed that it was unfair on their part to ask this.

I am not arguing about who was right or wrong there, my point is quite different. During my several calls in this regard, one thing was obvious- the call center agent was in no position to help me in anyway. Though he could understand my point but could do nothing about it(even resuming my connectivity for 1 day while I resubmit the documents). Now how many times do we see such inefficiencies in the system? so often we come across processes or the IT system making the organization extremely rigid.

It is a fact that your system may render you inflexible and may cause lost opportunities, but that’s a huge area in itself. Even if we leave the money calculations aside there are still lots of soft aspects of this issue.

Just think about the work life of a security guard, or a call center employee who has a written script that he/she has to repeat again and again day after day, or for that matter a salesman at the retail store.. the list is just endless. We say that a company’s policy and systems are in place if its workers are more and more a replica of each other, If all of them behave like machines, very professional on the face of it but hardly human when seen in perspective.

The company becomes stable but in its quest of stability it strangles its employees and their individuality, the worst hits are the employees at the lower levels. They have a script for everything, how to great the customer, how to handle him, what to say while taking the credit card and so on. The processes and their manuals go from strength to strength but do they really serve the purpose with which they were instituted?

We always like when we are treated by real human beings, people who connects with us, who understands us. Suppose I have already done all the research. Now I am in a mood to book a particular model of LCD TV in 10 minutes as I have to I go to my office, I don’t want to hear to those annoying cross/up selling pitches from the salesman, and if I am in a mood of just checking the price I don’t want him to come to me and repeat those mugged up lines again and again.

Moreover it felt great (alas! It’s past) when your fruits weighed slightly more than 2 Kgs and the shopkeeper told you that it’s OK. When the customer care representative assures you that he will try his level best to do something in your favor and calls back after half an hour to tell you that it’s done.

So, there are possibilities when people don’t want all those standardizations (of course we want them in place in life safety issues like aviation, security checking etc)

The point is to have some faith in your employees, though the destination and the suggested path is to be shown, but please! Don’t decide where exactly they need to land their next foot. Give them a breathing space. They are the ones who will be interacting with your customers and they need to believe that it is their job, they need to enjoy it. They need to believe that they are creating some value for the customers.

Let your waiter serve a new dish to some of your regular guests on the pretext that they pay for it only if they like it.(fix some amount per day that he should not overshoot), let your customer care representative tell your customers “Sir I am activating it right now, but you please submit your bill by tonight” Give them some powers so that they can really help, guide, care for and sometimes even pleasantly surprise your customers. You are not empowering them for just making their job exciting but actually you are helping your customers by making them interact with real people and not with dejected human machines.

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A.S: People who have never been away from B’lore(in a sense that they were missing it) might not relate that well to this post.

Well, my job has taken me to Thamaraserry these days. There is calculation that goes on in my mind all the time whenever I am shifted to a new location: How do I get to B’lore from here and in how many hours?

Now this is where Thamaraserry is a bit tricky. By road, it is just 313 kms away from Bangalore. To catch the flight you have to anyway travel 75 kms on road (40+35) and there is just one flight from Calicut and that too in afternoon. The train route, however comfortable that might be, will make you feel like being cheated for your time. Just have a look:

Fig: the red line shows the train route (includes the 35 kms road journey from Thamaraserry to Calicut), while the blue line is the road journey.

I decided to give the road journey a try, though it included a ghat section and an unpredictable service and also the risk that it might eventually take lot more time as well. But I perhaps had no choice either, I was not sure when I’ll be free on Saturday, so a flight was out of picture, and given that I only had a Sunday as the leave, I could have ill afforded the train and reach B’lore the next morning.

So I finished a meeting with salesmen, then accompanied one of them for sometime in the market and then asked him to help me in boarding a bus to Mysore. After a 15 minutes wait I got a bus going in the same direction..up to Kalpetta, some 35 kms away from Thamaraserry. I just boarded that bus and wow! What a feeling when you are finally moving towards home.

The bus took about an hour to reach Kalpetta and once reaching there I was in a state of cluelessness that could have put even Ravinder Jadeja to shame J

I mean that I was there at this station, having just 4-5 other buses. I tried to ask at least 3-4 persons about the bus to Mysore and none of them served any purpose but to impress me with their fluency and command over Malayalam and adding to my misery. After half an hour of wait and several such attempts, I got to know that I should go to the other bus stand for the Mysore bound buses.

Then I waited at this other stop for another half an hour, many buses came and went.. some going to Mananthwady.. some to Sultan Battery..which in fact was on the route. But I avoided these local buses and kept on waiting for a KSRTC bus. And then, there it was, I could read a bit(Ma..Sa..Ru)..confirmed the same and yeah, It was a Mysore bound Super Express..WoHoo! and I know that I am gonna be at home before the dinner time

The bus was true to its name.. a rattling Super Express being driven to the max speed it could afford. In an hour we were at Sultan Battery and had a half an hour break there.

Pics: Inside the SE bus and monkeys tormenting passengers in another KSRTC bus(on right)

Soon we entered the Bandipur Wildlife Sanctuary. I keenly looked outside to spot some wildlife but gave up after an uneventful 15-20 mins. After a nap, I woke up to find ourselves in plains. The time was 4:30. Soon we hit Nanjangud and I spotted the Mysore-Nanjangud KSRTC VOLVO shuttles, that sight made me feel closer to home.

I reached Mysore at 5:30. Ran across to catch a Volvo and did a mental High Five once I was in there.

At the end what came as a nice surprise was that Raja-Rajeshwari Nagar came as soon as we entered B’lore. I was at home by 8:30. Seeing my Mom, wifey n kiddu, there was no doubt that all the efforts were worth it : )

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Life is full of questions. We prepare for some of them, while few others just take us by surprise. While one can prepare for an exam, an interview or even the much abused ‘let the boy and girl talk for some time’ kind of instances in one’s life, there are few questions which will just prop up suddenly and will leave you wanting for answers. I am gonna describe one of such situation that I faced during one of the many non consequential interactions that I have had with my customers/retailers in this sleepy town of Kottayam (yupp thats my base for the moment, and for the un-initiated, its located in kerala.. n for the out and out lucky ignorant bastards, it’s in south India)

I remember an old joke about IT professionals. Which goes like this: A frustrated on bench IT guy vents his frustration on a poor restaurant worker. He says that after just 3 years of job he has a bank balance, car ..etc. Tumhare paas kya hai?

n the worker replies ki “Sir, mere paas kaam hai”

When I was in Wipro, we used to laugh our heads off over this.

I got myself into a similar situation a week back. Now I was with the route Supervisor(oops.. Team lead), completing my usual beat, interacting with retailers (mostly with the help of my TL) wherever possible.

We had visited about 20-25 outlets by the time. I was reasonably happy with the way things had gone till then, I had noticed quite a few things which would have ultimately help me in compiling a good report. So when my TL (OK for the IT junta: A TL in this sales business has little resemblance to a TL in IT field, We are talking about TL of hawkers/salesmen) went away to park his bike, I decided to engage the retailer myself. So here is how it went.

Me: Hello Cheta(means elder bro in Malayalam), Where do you keep Cigs?(looking inside the counter to check the stocking)

Retailer: (Gave me a puzzled looks)

Me: Wo mein company se(showing my ITC logo on the T-shirt)

Retailer: Still confused. said something in Malayalam.. which I could not understand at all(perhaps was asking what do you need?)

Me: (I looked for my TL..but he was not in sight.. I again tried my best) : Cheta, Cigarette company.. Scissors..

Retailer: Hmm .. you.. new supervisor?

Me:(Feeling rather offended): Nahi, m Area Executive

(Had it been earlier days, I would have said tht m an AUT and perhaps even explained that I’ll become an ABM after 6 months .. but not now, I am comfortable with whatever stint m doing and living through it)

Retailer: (with a disinterested look) Gaon kya tumhara?

Me:(kya mein gaon kaa lagta hoon?): UP, … Cheta stock OK hai?

Retailer: Haan, Iss se pehle kahaan kaam karta thha?

Me: ( what??): Iss se pehle IT mein thha.. Bangalore.

retailer: (Looked at me with renewed interest… came a bit forward): IT mein kya?

Me(looked back again to see the TL .. still no signs.. f*ck): Engineer

Retailer:(with a Smirk) Wahaan se yahaan kaise?

Me: Uske baad MBA kiya.. phir yahaan first job.

Retailer:(He looked at my condition.. my hair was in a mess, It was almost 3 and I was yet to even think about lunch, and then It was really hot outside and I was sweating like anything) Iss job ke liye MBA ki kya jaroorat hai?

Me: hmm …. hmm.. (30 sec gap)…. Learning

Rretailer: what?

Me: Kuch nahi,..yahaan manager banne se pehle dekhna padta hai ki ground mein kya ho raha hai. Aapki problem aaj khud se dekhenge to kal office mein baith ke bhi samajh sakte hain.

Retailer: (whatever) Idhar no problem.. sab fantastic. He he he (with a ‘kat lo ab yahaan se’ look)

I gave him a smile and looked for our product availability and started filling the tracker. Though I might have answered the retailer.. but deep Inside I was myself searching for few answers.

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The top management has bitten the bullet and in this moment of great embarrassment they have talked about “forget and forgive” for the pilots. The statement made by the management has all the expected lines of “back together as one family” … ”will work together” and also a one line apology to the customers.

Now here is my point, whatever happened in those meeting rooms, a lot has happened outside. Pilots and Management might be too involved in this tug of war to think about anything else, but the reality is that there were thousands of helpless customers suffering out there, and thanks to the media, millions of the potential customers watched them. These are the people who were missing there exams, meetings, connecting flights, functions every day, or otherwise who burnt their hard earned money on purchasing last minute tickets from other opportunist airlines. Will they ever forgive and forget about this?

I believe it’s time for Jet to seek that “forgive and forget” from its customers. I would like to see an honest account by the management about this, and an explanation of why I can now believe that such things will not happen again in future. Doing something of that sort will require real guts and will actually show that the family is finally back. Till then, for me it’s a company in constant troubles, and when makemytrip throws those dozens of results in my flight search, I won’t mind spending a few hundred extra or travelling half an hour before if I can avoid them.

It is extremely difficult to build a brand, but as such incidents will show, it’s so easy to lose it all.
Jet is not all about the management, Pilots or the ground staff, yeah maybe the physical Jet is all about them, but the real Jet ..the brand , it lies with the public. And while it is easy to bring those few physical aspects back in shape, like to get the planes back in Air and back on schedule, it will be a gigantic task to regain that mind space among millions of people.

Michael Eisner, CEO Disney said this about a brand
“A brand is a living entity – and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures”

So those thousand small gestures of last decade could well get undone by this one major setback.
Let’s see!

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Tomorrow I’ll have my last exam herein IIMB, and almost certainly the last exam of my student life. Phew..it’s been around 20 years of classrooms, teachers/Madams/AcharyaJis/Profs, exams, Vivas, attendance, practicals, projects etc..and finally all of this will come to a rest tomorrow.

Can’t help but devote half an hour to savor the moment and reflect back on all this, especially the last two years in IIMB. It has been busy like hell, I have missed out on lots of other nice things in life to be able to write this mail today

t me try and give a flavor of this, however tough it may be but let me try and recap this in a paragraph, whatever comes to my mind:

..entry in the college, lots of new faces, unexpected ragging on the very first day, managing between being a fresher at B-School and a week old marriage, shuttling between Insti and home, first quiz that had 10% weight age, getting to terms with this grade system, taking the printouts and running hard and reaching the PGP office just a minute before the deadline, end of first term, seeing how people get bracketed into their respective boxes within a few months, Summer placements, when one piece of paper was all you had to show someone who you are, feeling awful and disgusted, sitting like call girls, waiting for 3 days and hoping that some tracker will come and call me (for an interview), bruised ego, learning some hard lessons of life, ending up with 5 offers to choose from, rejecting all others for Reliance, life goes on..scoring no As and no C grades in 2^nd terms..only Bs..was I also getting bracketed and learning the easiest way of survival? Continued shuttling as no room was available here, leaving the home at 3 am on the days of exams, waking up one day just 15 minutes before one quiz and missing it, a slightly frustrating summer internship, back to college, participating in lots of competitions, lots of back to back night-outs, launching a website, spending hundreds of hours on the site, getting to the finals of CTS boardroom competition, Catching the flight to Pune for the final presentations after spending whole night in completing the BDMDM project, continuously worsening economic meltdown, the exchange term, CMS course and the satisfaction of being the number one team by a great margin, the IBP course, going to Singapore and those 2 weeks over there, coming back to face the placements term, extremely bad job scenario, tracking the CGPA to the second digit .. 3.14 to 3.07 to 3.05 to 3.02 to 3.11(/4) is how it went in the last 5 terms. Directi’s lateral process, CTS’s laterals rejection, overall gloom, a few rays of hope.

That’s how it has been; overall it was an experience I will never want to trade against anything. All the hardships that we all go through in this environment are worth it. I have seen a transformation within myself from someone with dreams to someone with a plan and confidence to achieve them, a better understanding of what I want in my career, and on a more cosmetic level..from a timid speaker to a decent presenter

Perhaps this crisis is there to help us, to let us do what we wanted to do in our life and not what was offered to us(I don’t know if any good job will be offered to me at all). Perhaps this was the day for which I am much better suited after these 2 years than I was before. Perhaps it’s a time to reject those easy choices and take the decisions that might not please the majority..perhaps!

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Rather than talking about the society at large, we can simply look at the conduct of our media and that will be a true reflection of who we are.

We have all seen this, besides some rare incidents of responsible coverage we have seen an all out war amongst media houses for that exclusive footage, that exclusive talk with eyewitnesses, that extra bit of drama, and so on. Here are some of the most appalling incidents –

Live coverage: No one sitting in front of the television set needs an up to date account of what is happenning there minute by minute. Things like “as you can see..just now a set of 20-25 commandos are entering from the backside of the Taj”. Given that there was information about militants having satelite links established outside..such information could easily be available to them. and btw what value are you adding by doing this?(I noticed that surprisingly Star News refrained from using live feeds)

That extra bit of drama: A Zee-news reporter was lying on the road and reporting in a manner as if he is reporting while in serious cross-fire. While actually the whole bunch of media persons were right there.. half a foot behind him and all were sitting calmly (perhaps because they were not on air), Barkha Dutt was also seen screaming without much reason, looked desperate to be seen as doing a sensational piece of coverage.

Why troubling the forces:These media men are required to be cordoned-off repeatedly, a considerable effort of the security forces is spent on ensuring their security as many of these fools will just not respect the guidelines of reporting within the drawn lines. And then there stupid questions to the front line policemen, “Sir, whats happenning inside?”, “How many terrorists are there?”, “What are you planning to do next?”.

Insensitiveness: We don’t want you to pounce on the just rescued people as if they are your prey. If the person is in a sound state of mind and is willing to share his thought ..fine go ahead!
But in most of the cases the victims were not in a position to tell anything, they did not want this much intrusion and perhaps had nothing particular to share, but still they were virtually chased down by these media men. Someone finishes on one channel “I don’t know anything..saw nothing.. were just guided out by the commandos..” and suddenly a desperate Rajdeep Sardesai(who will otherwise sound so refined, concerned and hard hitting journalist) will come and literally grab the victim with both hands.. He will resist but our media bigwig will not hear anything, he’ll almost drag him and take him in front of his own camera to repeat the same thing.. will ask the same questions, knowing well the answers himself. What kind of journalism is this(and especially if it comes from the editor-in-chief of such a well known channel)?

Switch on any news channel and you hear the word ‘exclusive’ in almost all the sentences. I even heard a phrase called ‘exclusive victim comments’.

Just extend this behavior of media and you will see hundreds of people, most of whom have no purpose to be there, thronging these places..looking in to the TV cameras to have there own moments of existence on national television or to simply experience a live thriller.

Coming back to media, it’s an absolute certainty that in the next few days our media will run reports from all around the Mumbai to tell you that Mumbai has sprung back.. Mumbai is not threatened.. usual traffic..usual environment and so on..as if nothing happened.. and thats the true spirit of Mumbai!
But for God’s sake please hold on, is this the spirit of Mumbaikers or just the fact that a common man is forced to go out for his livelihood? or a gross insensitivity on the part of our society at large.

Why spring back? Why not stand and assess whats happening around us, Has it become a part of our lives? Who is accountable for this? Why do we need to live under a threat for no fault of ours? and what is the solution of all this?

‘Springing back’ is a phrase that has been overkilled in India. A society bounces back from a shock, when it tries to get back to normalcy. After any big attack the perceived risk is likely to soar much higher than the actual risk.. so bouncing back is the process of bringing this perceived risk down towards the actual risk. Something what happened in America after the WTC took place. The Systems were reviewed, the actual risk came down considerably and the society bounced back.. back to its business.
But what about India? Have we done anything to justify this bounce back? are we feeling any bit safer now?
I know the answers, and just wish that we, as a society can actually bounce back in terms of our approach, mentality and response towards terror and not just through those shots of overcrowded CST to be shown as a sign of bouncing back.

(Perhaps I have been over critical about the role of media, many of the media persons were amidst all this and must have felt a real ‘call for duty’ while doing this coverage with all the good intentions.. but sometimes the pressures of market results in such filtering and tweaking of news that the coverage comes out as just a desperate attempt for higher TRPs at the cost of being completely insensitive to the situation)

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It will be a revenge for the brutality and atrocities against his community. Whatever happened in Hashimpura, Meerut or Gujarat were just the more explicit and more known incidents of what has happened in this so called secular country in the last 6 decades post independence. The fact is that this country has never accepted and perhaps will never accept them as their own. He himself lives under a constant scrutiny all the time, people look at him with suspicion, as if he is carrying a gun or a grenade in his pockets.

So let it be! Yeah he has done it, in fact ‘we have done it’, and he knew that from today onwards life will never be the same for this Rajputana city of Jaipur. What he has done is just a small act of service to the community. Tomorrow even if he is traced and captured and then hanged, it’ll all in the name of the God. But….being traced out..exposed.. unimaginable torture thereafter before finally being hanged.. he shuddered at the thought. Who will take care of ‘Ammi-jaan’? What will happen to Aslam’s studies? After all this is his final year of graduation and he is doing so well in studies. And what about Aasmaa? What will she do without him, will she ever forget him? Forgive him?

All these thoughts left his throat dry; he looked at the clock, 7:05 pm. He didn’t know about the exact timings. All he did to help the mission was to procure 2 new and 1 old cycles from the city and arranged for 3 old bags for Haafiz-bhai. He was quite sure that today was the day, he got that hint by whatever conversation he could overhear, he wished to play a more active role in this but was kept out of the riskier tasks.

To think about something else than the possibility of his arrest, he focused back on his anger. Whenever he looks at prosperous Hindus, he feels that they are so because they have taken an undue advantage of his community. Even his boss Mittal-bhai whom they fondly call as Mittal bh****, behaves like he has done a great favor by giving them this job. Almost half of the workers in his shoe factory are from his community. He once overheard him saying jokingly “I have no option but to employ them, and any way these sons of pi** look good doing this kind of work”.

Today is the day when several such Mittals will learn a lesson; he was much less frightened now.

He noticed increasing activities in the locality, people started screaming, and telephones started ringing. He has switched off his own mobile phone as per the instructions of Haaafiz-bhai.

He switched on the TV. He was thrilled to see the destruction; the ticker was flashing “More than 50 feared dead”. Not bad, this is better than what he expected. He felt proud of what has been accomplished by them. Suddenly he heard a knock on the door.

His heart stopped for a bit too long, he regained his mental poise only after hearing Saadiq’s voice “Shaqeel bhai!”. He opened the door. “Shaqeel bhai SMS Hospital chalo jaldi… blast hue hain.. kam se kam paanch.. Ya Allah sab Illake waalon ki khair kare…. Aao jaldi se Aslam bhi wahin hai..phone kiya thha usne..appka switched-off hai ..isiliye mein…”

He could not hear any further.. the mere mention of Aslam left him almost paralyzed, He took a while to understand that Aslam is there only to help the victims.

He was talking to himself “What has this boy done? He is there in such a situation, this is not the time of helping anyone but to be safe yourself. These people and police together will search for any Muslims like vultures in the days to come, they will not leave him. This will take a communal turn anytime, I’ll have to go and bring him back before it’s too late” and he rushed out.

The scene outside SMS hospital was not for weak hearted persons. Just near the entrance he saw dead bodies of 2 young boys. Both of them wore identical clothes..very much like He and Aslam used to get from Abba-jaan in their childhood. He was pushed in to the gallery by a rush of new bodies brought to the hospital. Sounds of wailing were deafening. The helplessness of hundreds of mothers, fathers, wives, sisters, and children had a piercing power. Suddenly he found himself very weak. “Beta, tumhara bloodgroup-O+ hai kya? Mere bête ki jaan bacha lo” said a crying, helpless father. He looked into his eyes, the eyes that have perhaps seen the world for more than 50 years were filled with pain and utter despair today.. he has seen this face before.. yes it resembles the face of his late father he saw when Aslam was down with Malaria for more than 30 days. It just did not matter who he was.. his mental state was close to that of his own father when he saw his son almost dying due to lack of proper treatment. He just went with him.. Doctors took a sample of blood. He saw at the other corner of the room. He saw Aslam donating his blood. He could also see Rehmaan bhai, trying his level best to help the victims and their relatives.

Doctors returned shortly after and took him to the blood-donation room. He laid there thoughtless.. sounds of wailing were even more piercing now. Clearly more and more bodies were being declared as dead bodies, more and more children were losing their fathers and mothers.. wives were losing their husbands ..more and more homes were getting converted to permanent haunting houses.

After the process he felt dizziness.. but he walked out.. he wanted to walk out of this mess.. otherwise perhaps he would collapse there. Suddenly he hit a man.. he was.. he was ‘Mittal-bhai’. He was in a devastated state, he clutched his hands as if he wanted to say something.. no voice came out, but lips said everything “my son”.. Shaqeel did not know what to say or do, he moved a few steps further, then looked back. He was not the Mittal-bhai known to him, he was just a helpless father. He went to him.. Without much thoughts his arms were around his shoulders.. Mittal bhai looked up and clutched him again like a child.. he was trying to stop himself till then..perhaps he could weep now.. when his wife won’t see him weeping..Perhaps he didn’t care anymore know. It was a cry that Mittal-bhai was trying to control as hard as he could.. just those gasps for air would let it out. Shaqeel was shaken to the hilt. Mittal bhai recovered in a few minutes, sat in one of the corner.. with hands joined he started to pray for his son’s life.. Tears were still rolling from his eyes incessantly.

Shaqeel also found his hands together, subconsciously, this moment he knew that Mittal-bhai and he were referring to the same person.

The person that all of us remember when we are completely helpless is the same. It didn’t matter anymore if there was an Idol in front of you or not.. whether you call it Allah or Bhagwaan.. whether you are a laborer or a factory owner..with those trembling hands, sinking heartbeat, and teary red eyes.. you pray to the one .. you become a mere beggar.. and you beg for the lives of your loved ones.

He got up.. moved towards the blood donation room once again.. he wanted to drain all his blood there itself.. he never wanted to come out of that hospital.. he wanted to die amongst those cries..those eyes..where homes were being destroyed one by one.. he did not want to be alive till the final count.. he just wanted to add one to it..If only the doctors could drain out all his blood.

The post 50 dead and still counting.. God’s own man! appeared first on Bhanu Sisodia.