You must be wondering why my articles are dwindling on this site. Well I ll let you in on a secret. I ve been into many things of late. Lots of useful work at office, 30 minutes of Yoga in the morning and 45 minutes of Yoga in the evening, 15-30 minutes of acupressure during the day, and the usual phone breaks, lunch breaks and the two hour commute into and out of office. Enough to keep myself occupied. But that did not prevent me from enjoying the interesting things that Bengaluru provides. A couple of days back, I had lot of time to kill at a signal light near Sony World, Koramangala. I was always interested half heartedly in the knicknacks that the beggars sold at this signal. Well they aren’t exactly beggars, perhaps street urchins or jobless people would be a better word to use.
The person for the day was trying to entice me to buy an LED desk light. It looked powerful and intuitive too. The top portion had about 8 LEDs of white colour and the power source was from a mouse shaped based (in fact its a mouse lets say!) holding 3 AAA batteries. In between these two was a flexible cord which could be bent in any way desired.
“Esthu?”, i asked (how much).
“120”, came the reply.
Agreed I haven’t really seen something like this for Rs.120 anywhere around Koramangala. But still for a moment I felt its too high.
I looked a bit disinterested when the girl asked me “Kitna dega saab?” (how much will you give sir)
I said “50”.
“Less 20 bucks and give me 100”, she said
I stuck to my stand : “50”
She nodded her head and walked away. For a moment I believed that this light wont be mine. It is useful here to say I had bought the same light at the same junction from another person earlier in the week for the same amount that I quoted. But he was desperately hungry and it was almost the end of the day, past 9pm. So he had no choice but to take the fifty bucks. On the other hand this girl was neither hungry, nor was it the end of the day with scores of potential customers yet to come.
I felt doomed with this item. I let her go. The signal light was still red. She went around and I observed out of my rear view mirror that no one wanted that light except me.
After a while I got a knock on my left window. Rolled it down and she said “70”. I took out a fifty buck currency note and held it in front of her. “If you want to give it, give it, else walk away” I said.
She said 60 bucks atleast. I just gave her the fifty, and took the light. Period. I won the battle for this second light. Although at the bottom of the heart I still know maybe that the light itself costs say 25-30 bucks only. As a product it can consume quite a lot of batteries in a short time, but then the light it gives can put any other branded emergency light to shame.
So my street shopping continues …..
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