Subir Roy: Foot soldiers of capitalism
It is only lately, since I have retired, that I have been able to get an idea of the kind of calls that come on the landline at home through the day. At least twice a week at mid-afternoon there will be a highly respectful voice saying, “A very good afternoon to you sir, I am calling on behalf of HSBC…” By now I have a very clear idea of all the special offers that the bank’s cardholders get. On one or two of the more attractive ones, I have engaged them in a conversation and learnt more than what’s on offer.
The youngsters at the other end have only a very basic knowledge of English, their accents deteriorate as the conversation progresses beyond set phrases and their understanding of the schemes is rudimentary. They are obviously from very humble social backgrounds and most are raw and somewhat naïve. But they make up for all their inadequacies by their perseverance and spirit. They must be earning a pittance as a retainership or none at all and a percentage of sales from the outsourced marketing agency that deploys them. And for, maybe, one successful call in fifty they have to keep on dialing and asking for the most abrupt putdowns and sometimes snapping insults.
I terminate in seconds all marketing calls on my mobile phone. But it is in the case of those that call in mid-afternoon at home that I have been curious to find out who would be so desperate as to take the risk of disturbing the rest of the stay-at-home at that hour and almost inevitably getting a blasting in return.
In about the same category come the door-to-door salesmen. They come peddling most things available under the sun and the moon but none are as insistent and unrelenting as those that peddle Aquaguard water purifiers. They have been at it for decades, smartly-dressed, most often sweating at the knotted tie around the buttoned collar, offering you health and happiness if only you will give them an inch. The other day one of them rang the doorbell and I opened the door thinking it must be a courier. Had I not been at the computer but snoozing, I would surely have spat upon him, figuratively at least, and he must have rung the bell knowing full-well the risk he was taking but still he persisted so that he could meet his daily target.
Door-to-door sales people are, of course, not a new phenomenon. As a youngster I have seen then in Kolkata, mostly up-country women who would hawk stainless steel utensils in exchange for old clothes, who kept ruining my mother’s sorely needed mid-day rest. Many of them would simply ask for a glass of water first. As a conversation opener it never failed. Once when I asked my mother why she bought what even I could make out was barely useful, she smiled and said: What to do, she’s just had a baby and looked so undernourished.
Almost in the same category were the women who rang our doorbell in Delhi in the late eighties. They were lower-middle class, a couple of levels above house maids, all obviously with families to support and very needy, mostly hawking all kinds of consumables and toiletries which were definitely counterfeit, desperately trying to get some custom. I remember one of them who was so tired that she simply sat down at the head of the stairs and refused to move unless my wife bought something. The expression on her face said, I must at least earn my bus fare.
All this came back to me when the other day we stopped the car to enquire about Hindustan Lever’s (I hate the name change to Unilever, after being brainwashed for decades by Dr Ganguly on the Indianness of HLL) Pureit water purifier from a youngster, wearing the de rigueur tie, who had upped a billboard under a bright umbrella by the roadside. He immediately offered to come home and give a demo which he did in broken English, addressing both me and my wife as ‘madam’. When my wife suggested we should buy it from the company showroom so as to be sure of what we were getting, I replied: He will bring it in sealed packaging and set it up and if we buy it from him he earns a little commission. So he set it up and we as a family are surviving well despite not boiling our drinking water any more.
People like us treat such sales people with the greatest indifference but what it must take to be one of them, needing to be smart and cheerful despite the endless rejection and having to fall back upon only a modicum of upbringing and presentability, with absolutely no assured returns despite the great spirit of perseverance. To me they are some of the finest foot soldiers of capitalism for whom the awards industry should create a special category.