Sunday, July 17, 2011

Under-Estimated or Over Delivered? A Giri Trading Experience


Yesterday I visited the next door multiplex for an advance booking. But the booking counter had not opened. With 40 mins in hand, I decided to visit Giri Trading Stores at SIES Campus. It was just an alibi to kill time, as returning home would have made me lazy to revisit the multiplex.

A familiar face greeted me at the counter. The lady has been at the store from the time the store opened. Fluent in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and managing to speak Hindi and English, she was a known face for every third customer walking in. Giri Trading at SIES is a small one room store, with 1 Counter clerk (the lady) and an assistant. It’s not a supermarket where one can pass time without being noticed or cared for.
Not even 2 mins inside the stores, and the assistant walked up to me offering help. I asked him if they had the "Shankara Bharanam" Collection. The lady at the counter was the first to respond in affirmative. The assistant looked a little doubtful, but the lady’s assurance got him searching. And I got some more time to browse through the English Subtitles.

2.5 mins down, and his search for was still on. I was prepared to hear of its non-availability. Surprisingly I got an unexpected response. He told me, it was not there, but he could make one right away. He guided me to store Kiosk,showed me the song collection there, waiting for my permission to start compiling. A little hesitant I told him, I will not have the list of songs and their order, if he gave me this instant compilation. He assured I will be given that too.

I was not expecting this from a man who looked no less than a road side vegetable vendor. The next couple of minutes I watched him, open folders, drag-drop files, and that too at a speed of seasoned computer user. His next question to me came as a bigger surprise. This Dhoti Clad veg vendor look alike asked me if I wanted the Collection in Audio or MP3 Format. I said the Audio one would suffice and he handed it over to me.
He went on attend the next customer, a senior man, looking out for a“Vallakk”.

3 comments:

magiceye said...

Indian entrepreneurship at its best!

ಅಶ್ವಿನಿ/ Ashwini said...

Yeah you're right its becoming a common thing now a days. I've exprienced similar things recently. There are small vegetable gaadivala using touch phones and some of the features which techie like me has not used at all.Interesting wrtite up.

Sunil Padiyar said...

True.. 'never go by ones look' I learnt this so many times. Interesting write-up.. .