CONTENT
LOWEST LEVEL
AN INDIAN BUSINESS TRIP
This trip in 1999 was turning out better than I could ever have hoped for. True we had got less than a quarter of the way through it so far, and not everything had been perfect. Certainly I had not expected my bathwater to be a cloudy green colour, when I had turned on the taps at the five star hotel, which we were staying at in Delhi.
A few months earlier my old boss had resigned and I now had a new one, who was based in Sydney, Australia. He’d asked me to take him on a tour of my sales territory, visiting as many distributors, customers and prospects as possible. I’d never been particularly keen on these customer tours, with the boss in tow.
To begin with there is always the customer, who pleads total ignorance that we have recently announced a new, flagship product. That is despite the fact that I and my presales guys have demonstrated it to them, for several hours, just a few weeks previously. Clearly our presentations make a big impact!
Then there is the customer who just last week said their business was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and that they don’t have a budget for what I am offering them. Now I have my boss with me, so they make it sound like they are imminently going to sign up for the biggest deal in the history of the company.
The problem with customers like this is, that first they make me look stupid and secondly they create huge expectations, which they then dash, usually within just a few hours of the boss catching his flight out.
I’d flown up to Delhi from Singapore, just two evenings earlier with John, my boss of that moment. We had already held five good meetings with local companies. So far nobody had said anything that portrayed me in a poor light. It was now Friday afternoon and we had no more appointments scheduled until Monday morning.
Happily it was becoming increasingly apparent, that John was almost as interested in drinking beer and sight seeing, as he was in meeting customers. We had just come out of a travel agent, in the Connaught Place area, where we had organized a weekend trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.
Since we were not due to fly to Agra until the following morning, we now decided to do a bit of sight seeing in Delhi itself. As if by magic, within seconds of our discussing this, a young Indian lad, who looked like he was no more than about twelve years old, approached us and asked if we needed a guide.
We mentioned that our main interest was to visit arts and crafts shops as well as historic sites. A price for our guide’s services was agreed at US$2 for four hours, and we set off on foot.
We probably only walked about half a mile, but in the heat it seemed further. We were shown into some rather run down shops, which sold things like highly patterned beaten brass trays, poorly make kukri knives and carelessly cast bronze statues.
Since we bought nothing, we presumed our guide didn’t get any back hander commissions from the shop owners, but he didn’t seem particularly upset about that. Perhaps the US$2 we were paying for his time, was a sufficient fortune to satisfy him.
He next suggested that we walk back to Connaught Place, to get a taxi over to the Red Fort. Once again we set off, and had not gone far, when I stopped to look at some small ornaments laid out a mat on the ground. John and our guide had not noticed that I had stopped and were about fifty yards ahead of me when I resumed walking.
A few moments later I noticed that an approaching pedestrian was staring straight at me. He was very scruffy and looked like he probably slept rough, which is not so unusual in large Indian cities.
He held my eyes with his bloodshot ones, and walked straight up to me until his face was only inches from mine.
‘You’ve got shit on your shoes’, he said. I was rather taken aback by this statement and was also rather disoriented, having just given his black teeth, a very close, but unanticipated visual inspection.
‘You’ve got shit on your shoes’, he repeated more loudly.
This time I looked down, and sure enough, perched on top of my right shoe, just in front of the laces was a large lump of grassy shit. From its fibrous consistency and greenish brown colouring, I figured it had probably originated in a horse or maybe an elephant. A quick glance upward, confirmed that no horses or elephants were flying overhead at that time.
My inspection of the sky was triggered by the thought, that whenever my shoes had come into contact with shit previously, it had become stuck to the sole, with some excess squelched up around the sides. I’d never before encountered the type of shit that could leap up off the pavement, to take its place, in a prime position, on top of my shoe.
While these thoughts passed through my mind, the pedestrian who had so kindly informed me of my predicament, had stooped down, and quick as a flash had removed my right shoe. Before I had time to protest, he had already whipped a little square piece of cloth out of his pocket and placed my sock encased right foot on it.
The shit was removed with some newspaper, which he kept conveniently concealed about his person. Then out of a pocket he produced a shoeshine kit, consisting of two brushes a cloth and some black polish.
Somehow while polishing my shoe, the lace mysteriously snapped. Immediately he started to beckon to someone who was sitting in the shade of a tree, further along the pavement in the direction I had just come from.
This other equally dubious looking fellow loped up to us. He was carrying a rather mysterious looking bag, which had a flat top, but which seemed to taper away under his arm in a way which was reminiscent of a Scotsman carrying a bagpipe.
He lifted up a flap on top. Lo and behold, I was treated to a display of two pairs of new shoelaces. One pair was brown and the other pair was black. Since I had black shoes, I selected the black laces.
That’ll be US$5 said the shoe polisher, who by now was going to work on my second shoe. I know that to most people US$5 is not much, but I also knew that in 1999 a pair of laces and a shoeshine did not cost as much as that, even in countries which are far more affluent than India.
I protested, but paid up anyway. Having taken my money, the shoelace man loped back down the street, to retake his place in the shade, where he had come from.
The shoe polisher having now finished, stood up and said, ‘That’ll be US$5’.
‘I’ve already paid’.
‘That was for the laces. This US$5 is for the shit removal service and the shoeshine’.
‘Well, I’m not paying it. You can share the other US$5 with your friend’. I retorted.
‘He’s not my friend, I’ve never seen him before. How dare you question my professionalism. You are a professional, you get paid for what you do. I am a professional shit remover and shoe polisher, now pay me for my work and expertise, or I will call the police’.
‘Call the police then’. I challenged him, then I started walking quickly after John and our guide. They had stopped about 100 yards further along the road, and were looking back at me with worried expressions on their faces.
The professional shit remover started shouting at me and followed me, until I caught up with the others, at which point he gave up and headed back to work his patch.
Later, after our tour of the Red Fort, we sat in the Hotel lounge drinking Gin and Tonic. ‘You know John, I’m convinced that the shoelace seller, was also the shit dispenser. I think his bag has two compartments, one for the laces and underneath that, is a much larger one, which is full of shit. I think it has a nozzle at the bottom through which he squeezes out shit onto the shoes of passing tourists. Did you notice how it’s shape resembled a huge cake icing bag’.
‘Well Mate, it was certainly a scam. Our guide obviously knew them and was very scared. He absolutely refused to let me go back to help you. By the way what colour is the bath water in your room, today?’.
Many years later, I now see that a correspondent from the BBC is trying to track down the phantom poop squirter of Delhi:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8177032.stm
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