Birgunj, Nepal, where I have spent substantial years of my life, is a hub for the Chinese black market. Chinese goods outsell local and Indian goods. In the street, thousands of Indians are seen buying jackets with fake Nike logos, blankets, torches, Sony blank audio cassettes, make-up kits, balms and all.
The sloe-eyed doll dancing to repetitive tunes is a popular item. Every thing from a nail-cutter to a flask is adorned with Chinese designs like dragons, bamboos, pelicans or the spindly letters of Chinese calligraphy.
These things fascinated me in my childhood. Perhaps the cheap and attractive prices of these goods thrilled me, no matter their low durability.
Of course, the contentment of having a toy never lasted long. The vibrating puppy-toy usually stopped wagging its tail or the toy-bear beating the drum came to halt before I even reached home.
Even the toy train went off the tracks and the synthesiser became a screeching instrument immediately after being bought.
But more than me, the Chinese products piqued my servant Hari’s curiosity. He saw them as a means of making some extra money. He bought these Chinese goods in bulk, took them to his village and sold them to poor villagers by creating a need for them.
Taking advantage of their illiteracy, he sold a torch that emitted a red light by inventing a story about ghosts and witches being scared of red light and that the torches should be carried while moving around at night as the ghosts were said to abound in the village. Naturally, in a village based on the foundation of these old superstitions, the torches were sold in no time.
He also sold body-spray with the assurance that the smell kept snakes away. He peddled energy booster tablets for potency and actually gave tough competition to the local herbal medicine-makers.
Goodwill
The contraceptives for birth control were the only product Hari sold after telling the truth to villagers. They worked amazingly well, which brought goodwill to his enterprise.
Hari was so clever that he lent his Walkman to villagers and charged a fee for each song played on it. The villagers were thrilled at the prospect of listening to music through headphones. Hari sold many Walkmans.
Once he wanted to sell goggles. He got a good deal from the seller and bought them in bulk, planning to sell them at the village fair. As usual, curious villagers jostled around to take a look at the intriguing stuff he was displaying. “These goggles will protect you from harmful UV rays of the sun and are necessary to have good eyesight,” Hari told them.
A few young men tried the goggles on just for style. The rest looked askance at Hari as their mind oscillated between faith and scepticism. One of the senior villagers told Hari that we don’t know the difference between “AB or UV, but one thing we know is that sunlight in our village is very healthy unlike in your polluted cities and we don’t require goggles like those rich people in cities”.
This was the first time that Hari’s acumen was challenged by the villagers’ conviction. His tall claims had never been challenged. With this one damaging statement made by the villager, not only was his business on the verge of sinking, his reputation as an entrepreneur was about to be ruined.Falling back on his gift of the gab, Hari countered: “It brings a lot of health and prosperity too. Do you think that only rich people wear goggles, no! It’s other way round. Wearing goggles has made them rich.”
Hari’s rags-to-riches story transported the innocent villagers into a illusory world of affluence and turned the tables on them adroitly. Within no time, Hari sold a good stock of goggles. Most villagers could not let go of a fortuitous offer to become rich.
Eventually, Hari’s business came to a halt. As Hawthorne Nathaniel observed, “no man for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true”.
Hari realised that no twilight zone of honesty can be sustained in business.
Ritu Dokania is an author based in Dubai.
