Three Salesmen.

Two weeks ago, Epiphany, a literary arts festival, was organized by our college. The festival drew a fair number of students from other colleges and also one rather enterprising encyclopedia salesman.

He stopped me on the second day to show me his wares - a dictionary-cum-thesaurus and a set of encyclopedia. It was quite evident that he couldn’t speak English at all! This struck me as rather ironic, since he was after all selling English dictionaries and thesauri.

However, I patiently listened on as he extolled, in Hindi, the fine qualities of the books he had to offer. I knew I wasn’t going to buy anything, but I always like listening to sales talk. At the end of it all, he came out with the punch line, “Sir, if you bought this dictionary from the bookstore it would cost you Rs. 799. But since this is a special prelaunch offer, I’m giving it to you for only Rs. 299!”

I then explained to him how, despite the unbelievable offer on his part, my empty wallet, and more importantly, my supreme mastery of the English language, meant that I did not wish to purchase the book. “But thanks anyway,” I said as I walked on.


Two days after this incident, I was walking down J. M. Road, when I was stopped by another salesman. He too, was selling the same dictionary and set of encyclopedia!

“Hello Sir,” he called out to me.

“Well, well,” I thought to myself. “What do you know? At least this guy speaks English!”

However, I was in no mood for another sales pitch. “Let me take a wild guess,” I said. “That book costs Rs. 799, but you’re selling it to me for... Umm... Rs. 299?”

The look on his face was priceless!


Incidentally, I was stopped this evening by yet another one of these guys. (One of the perks[?] of walking around so much!) I repeated the trick, and left behind yet another bemused salesman shaking his head.