The Warm Enterprise

If businesses were akin to community meals.

Dear friends, 

Today’s pot is filled with three portions of Khichdi. After a lot of contemplating about whether I should send out these portions separately or together, I decided to go for the latter. I hope as you partake these portions, the flavors speak to you, and you feel warm and satiated. If you would like to know more about the khichdi pot, you would want to click here. If you find the Khichdi warm, scrumptious and flavorful, perhaps you would want to share it with your near and dear ones. I would be sending out the newsletter every Wednesday morning. For now, I am planning to do personal essays but as the days pass on, let us see what flavors beckon.   

Thank you once again. Read on... 

Virtual Spaces—Warm or Cold? 

It is a cold, grey morning here in Vizag and I sit in my balcony. It has been raining for the last couple of hours. There is an occasional roll of thunder, but it is largely quiet—no gushing winds, no urgent closing of the windows, just plain simple rain. I sip my coffee contentedly and let my gaze travel. The roads below are wet, in front of me, the raindrops coalesce lazily on the balcony railing and not far away, a crow flaps its wings and takes off to the skies. Somewhere inside the house, Maon might have been curled up on one of the cane sofas. I finish the coffee in my cup and return to coziness, to warmth. As I settle in one of the sofas, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for this quiet hour, when I am connecting with my breath, my nature, when the noise of the virtual world is yet to enter my system and I can continue to stare at the wall in front of me for hours. And as I let the thoughts sink into my consciousness, two words stand out.  

Virtual world. Virtual space.  

Until a few years ago, the dichotomy between the online and offline world was more pronounced, distinct. People would talk about using their “online time” or the internet more thoughtfully. The language was of usefulness, the metaphor was utilitarian. But now after the pandemic, the lines between the virtual and non-virtual world have blurred, the edges have softened.  

“Let us meet over Zoom,” or even better, “Let us Zoom.” 

“Am I audible/visible?”, “Zoom etiquette”, “Zoom apparel”, have become a part of everyday parlance. People started paying more and more attention to how their virtual backgrounds are perceived and have started planning their activities around their Zoom/Google Meet/Teams commitments.  

The word “space” is no longer an empty word. It is filled with promise...and confusion.  

The sky is space. The earth too. 

The cubicle is space. Kitchen too 

The cage is space.  

The forest, bedroom, roads, tree shade, shelves, mantel, cinema hall are all spaces. Zoom, YouTube, Facebook, Bing, Twitter are all spaces.  

Maon has curled himself into a ball now. Gusts of cold breeze blow in. I crave for a second cup of coffee. But I feel too lazy to get up and go to the kitchen. I continue to scroll my phone instead. So, yes, the internet is space. And if it is space, what are the other spaces it holds? I am curious now. The rain has started to thin and I continue to scroll.  

A Facebook live is going on where a young woman is “donating” clothes to the “poor”. She has “no use for them” once she wears them, she tells her bedazzled followers. Words like “generous”, “compassionate” keep dropping and my mobile screen is filled with all these fuzzy “heart” emojis. Within minutes, the post has attained the exalted status of “viral”.  

I switch tabs. It's another site now. A young man is telling his followers how he earned 80000 rupees just reading poetry for a month. The “Oooh”s and “Aah” s follow.  

Another human is selling a career growth program which promises the participants 10X their present income. Another one talks about the difference between excellence and mediocrity.  

Sigh! I finally get up to make myself that second cup of coffee but not before getting sucked by an ad selling cat toys. I don’t know if it was the kittens in those ads with their liquid blue eyes or the fact that my brain was already half fried by all that was thrust into my feed, I almost added a bunch of stuff to my cart, but then coffee saved me. It always does. I pulled back.  

Outside the rain has stopped. As I put away my mobile, I remember something I had read a long time back-- about how supermarkets place items like candies, gum, mouth fresheners near the checkout counters. The time being spent here being the longest, the customer is fatigued by that time, and impulse buying becomes so much easier. 

And very recently, I came across this article, which talked about how big corporations are moving their business from E-commerce sites to social media. Now it is no longer about “hooking” your potential client but about casting your net deep and wide where most fish are swimming. 

Selling becomes so much easier when all that your potential customer craves is a sugar rush. 

 Recently, I worked with a young client.  

“She has low self-esteem,” her father told me. But now when I think about it, the low self-esteem was not in my teenaged client, nor was it in the young woman who was making a big show of “donating” her clothes, neither was it in the individuals who were making tall claims about monetizing everything right down to their toilet habits. It was in the algorithms—the popularity algorithms, the shame algorithms, the “Destroy all sense of self” algorithms, the “divide and dominate algorithms” --the infinite scrolling algorithm, the “sell 24/7” algorithm.  

The hare and the tortoise never entered a race. In the world that they reside in (which incidentally happens to be our world too), there is no construct of “race”. The hare is this little being which chews cabbage leaves and disappears into rabbit holes and tortoise is this sage being which can disappear into his shell for long periods of time. The story has been perpetuated by humans to perpetuate the idea of a “race "and how one “should” win.  

And that brings me to my original question, “If internet is space, what are the other spaces it holds?” The image of a supermarket, nah mall comes up— everything is glittering and on display. The sellers continue to market surreptitiously, the buyers continue to buy. Everything is so easy, just a click away.  

Life is an exquisite checkout counter. I stop myself from making that third cup of coffee.  

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The Warm Enterprise 

It was the year 2012. I was just out of my corporate job after a lot of toxic drama.  Frequent allergies, constant exhaustion and fatigue were the hallmarks of my life. That said, we were otherwise “fine”, settling in into our new home; I was even exploring a couple of freelance options. The weekdays would pass off in a blur with kids’ homework, my assignments, packing lunchboxes and attending PTA meetings. On weekends, we would rent CDs and binge watch. In other words, we were leading the typical urban life. 

Anyway, this article is not about that.  

My parents, kids and I were all craving for a change. The kids wanted to see a village and even I wanted to get a sense of rural life in India.  And so, we chose Etikoppaka which is a short drive from our city, Visakhapatnam. Now, Etikoppaka as the internet will tell you is basically a toy village.  The men and women in this village are engaged in making lacquer toys. And so that day, when we walked through the streets of the village, the rhythmic thrum of the lathe machines fell into our ears. In the many tiny shops that we visited, my mom and I went crazy seeing toys of so many shapes and sizes. There was a tiny wedding procession, a village temple, the potbellied village priest, tiny baskets filled with colorful fruits and vegetables. As the boys whizzed through the village streets, we sat on the shop floor and entered a lively bargain with the shopkeeper. Later, we sat under the banyan tree and polished the lunch we had packed for the day.  

However, like I said earlier, this article is not about the picnic or the novelty of that day. During our shopping that day, someone told us about one miniature artist – Chinnayyachari. All of us wanted to meet him and so we landed at his doorstep. Chinnayyachari’s family consisted of him, his wife, their two kids and his mother. After showing us his miniature creations—a tiny chess board made with cactus thorn and palm reeds, Chinnayyachari took us to his workshop. There, men and women sat on the floor and were engaged in the various stages of toy crafting. The smell of wood and lacquer hung heavily in the air. It was a tiny place and I marveled at so much being created there-- turning wood, joining the pieces, applying color and bringing the toys to life.  

“Manollu Madam”, he said with a smile. 

Manollu...such a beautiful Telugu word which literally translates as, “our folks”.  

Not “my folks”, “my employees” or “my team” 

Manollu—our. This was not the first time I had heard this phrase. And yet every time “Manollu” fell into my ears during a random conversation, I would come into a state of pause.  

 

Anyway, not to digress... 

For Chinnayyachari and several artisans like him who were engaged in the enterprise of toy-making, life was not easy. Right from procuring wood and colors to marketing their toys, every day was a struggle. That day, as we sat drinking tea in his front yard and watched his mother prepare colors in huge aluminum pot, Chinnayyachari was sombre. 

 “Manollu Madam...only if they survive, can we survive, no?” he said, turning to us.  

I returned to interview Chinnayyachari in the year 2016. 

Etikoppaka attained the GI status in the year 2017. Did the life of the many toy artisans sprawled across that village improve after that? I don’t know. Sometimes on days like this, I wonder about the person who took us to meet Chinnayyachari. How come it was so easy for him to take us across to another human who was supposedly his “rival”? 

Remember, it was 2013. Facebook was still a place to search for long lost friends and not humongous shopping cart. And it was not as if we had done any research before starting out. We basically wanted to go out for a picnic. And yet...one human led us to another human who took us to many other humans and in that entire process, toys sprung to life, bellies got satiated, and earth breathed easy.  

In my last essay, I reflected upon what makes a home a home? Today, I wonder what makes a business, business? What makes an enterprise enterprise? And a community community? 

My father often talks about the weddings in his childhood when all the neighborhood women would gather at someone’s courtyard and roll out pappads in large numbers. When the women left, each was given a generous portion of what was created/made during that day so that she wouldn’t have to cook again for her family members. It was a hard life back then. The country had just gotten independence. The thick smoke of colonial hangover still hung over cities and villages. Families were large; money was tight. And there was collective grief all over. But this grief also led to spaces opening to more spaces... 

I return to the present. Maon curls up against my laptop.  

What if business/enterprise is like an everyday community meal, where everyone cooks, everyone serves and everyone eats? How would business growth look/sound then? A contented rubbing of belly? A sigh? A belch? What would be the texture of conversations? Their flavor? 

The other day in our community, in the middle of an insightful yet intense discussion, our mentor posted this message:

“Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” 

May all beings on earth be happy and free. 

A cool breeze begins to waft in. A moth lands on the table. Maon looks at it with astonished eyes and I watch Maon watching it. In a short while from now, I will have my dinner and Maon will spend his night napping/staring out of the window or strike a silent conversation with the moths and rain bugs that will fly in.  

“Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” 

May all beings on earth be happy and free. 

May everyone be happy and free. 

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Inhaling Warmth And learning to Draw a leaf 

Walk through empty streets 

Stop under the shade of a nameless tree 

Inhale her fragrance, sense her gentle, slow breaths in your being 

Put your ear to her trunk and listen... 

Did you catch the heartbeat of an ancient forest  

the laughter of a stream? 

Run your fingers along her weathered skin and pause 

Let your gaze rest on the leaves 

some held firmly on her branches 

Others resting on her roots 

Some allowing way for sunshine 

Others kissing the sensuous lips of the breeze 

Some yellow and wise with age 

Yet others tender, green flitting their heads here, there, everywhere. 

Hold the leaf on your palm 

And feel its edges, its leaf-ness 

its lines, now criss- crossing, 

Now deep, now fading 

Reminding you of the fingers of a lover you once held 

As though they belonged to you and 

you alone 

Embrace the impermanence of the leaf 

its birth, death and aliveness 

All held like a tiny teardrop on your cheek 

Draw.... 

As though the leaves own you wholly, completely and fully 

Like the forest, the trees, the stream 

Draw... 

as though you own them too 

the trees, the forest, the stream 

Draw 

Draw 

Draw... 

And then...  

breathe 

Like the trunk, the stem, the leaf. 

(C): Sridevi Datta