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That unbranded smile
B.S.
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The little shop round the corner often wins hands down when it comes to customer relations
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THE SHOP may have had a name board. But I can't remember it, for we simply called it Pandu angdi, after the smiling, soft-spoken man who ran it. His name was Pandurangiah something, but children like us, who were a good 20 years younger to him, took the liberty of calling him Pandu. We don't know what he felt about that, but his signature smile never waned.
It wasn't probably just the smile that made us stick to his shop even after a better-stocked shop opened closer home. We kids liked Pandu because he had the patience for our barrage of questions. "Ideshtu... Ideshtu..." we went on and on, pointing to every glass jar lined up, before we settled for that one "hath paisa peppermint". He must have judged our level of affordability from experience, but he still answered us, as he measured 10 kg rice and five kg dhal for a more important customer. Amma liked him because he told her when some "stock" was not good enough, actually remembered to drop it home when better "stock" arrived, and took back without a word of protest a rotten coconut she sent it back. Her loyalty to Pandu angdi was so strong she made father drive his rickety TVS and bring the month's groceries from there even after we shifted to a place some four kilometres away. This continued till father ran out of patience, entirely.
I now shop for my rice, dhal, and daughter's chocolates in one of the large malls. But I am still to get used to two things: the shopping cart that seems reluctant to move where I want it to move and the young shop assistants who smile even when their legs are killing them for the fear of being pulled up by the manager.
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