Lucky Draw

“Does anybody win anything in a lucky draw?” Swami asked Jigneshbhai and me over a coffee at the café. I knew why this question was troubling him today. It was because of an episode that happened last week that I must tell you about.

It was on a cool evening sometime last week that Swami called Jigneshbhai and me.

“How about we go to the shopping mall this evening?” he asked.

“Well, why not?” Jigneshbhai responded. We didn’t have any particular reason to go. But we didn’t have any particular reason not to go, too. Given this tender balance, Jigneshbhai thought it was logical to go rather than to not go.

But that’s not the point. The shopping at the mall got over fast. Well, how long, after all, can a forty-something guy take to buy a pair of jeans? There’s a blue or a black to choose from. And once you try a few on, it’s simple to decide based on fit. Anyway, I digress again.

When we stepped out of the store, a young salesman accosted Swami.

“Sir, can you fill this form with your name and phone number?” The 20-something cut our path waving his hands with a smile on his face.

“Oh no, not again!” This is what telemarketers and pushy salespeople evoke in most people. Most people, habituated to receiving calls of this kind, do the normal thing of not taking them. Some engage with them only to follow it with questions like “where did you get my number?” Some slam their phones with a rude rejoinder such as “I will complain to the police if you call me again.”

But in Swami, this species of telemarketers and salesmen incite a deep sense of sympathy. He greets them with a sense of camaraderie that surprises even the callers. “They are also doing their jobs, poor things,” he told us once after talking for ten minutes with a caller. “Personal loan approval in 60 seconds,” the caller offered to attract Swami’s attention. It was customary for indifferent, rude voices to disconnect calls within 10 seconds. But when he called Swami, an understanding tone on the other end surprised him. After 60 seconds, the caller realised that he was the one who had to pay attention on this call, not seek it.

After three minutes he realised that sweet talk with someone who’s not taking a loan is a waste of a call. It was worse for his job than a rude buyer rejecting him outright. After those three minutes, it was the caller who said, “Sir, can I call you later?” in a hurry to disconnect. But Swami took another seven minutes. He asked him, “Who is in your family, how many calls do you make per day?” and after getting those answers, he went on to enquire about his incentive plan. “After all, they must be getting bored of calling so many people every day. It’s not easy to get slammed by jerks all the time,” he remarked with an endearing sense of empathy.

The reason for this background is to tell you this. That when that young salesman at the mall approached us, little did he know who he had hit upon. Jigneshbhai and I had seen him coming from a distance, so we tried to change track. The salesman must have felt later that he should have done the same on seeing Swami. When Swami reached him, he broke into a smile.

“What is this form about?” he asked.

“Sir, it’s a simple form from an e-commerce website,” the salesman explained.

Swami put his glasses on and studied the form.

“What does the e-commerce firm do? It is not mentioned anywhere on the form,” Swami asked with a deep sense of interest.

“Sir it’s a clothes site,” he continued.

“We finished buying clothes now. We will skip it,” Jigneshbhai intervened and started to walk ahead. He sensed that this could be the start of a lengthy bout of camaraderie between Swami and the salesman.

But Swami’s empathy had awoken. His face was full of glee at the upcoming amity. He scanned the form for more details. He found none. It had only the name and phone number.

“Wonderful. So, the clothes site sells clothes?” Swami asked.

This was no time for empty talk, I felt like telling Swami. Did he know any clothes site that sold something else?

“Yes, Sir. Womenswear,” the salesman clarified.

“So, why are you asking him to fill the form? We aren’t interested in womenswear,” Jigneshbhai said. He tried his best to break the developing fellowship between Swami and the salesman. His hands twitched to get rid of the form.

“Sir, it’s a lucky draw form,” the young man explained. “I need only your name and phone number and you will be eligible for a lucky draw offer from this site. Your wife or daughter can also buy if you win.”

Swami’s face glowed in appreciation. The prospect of free clothes for his wife filled his imagination. The young man detected that positive expression right away. His attention shifted to Swami in a jiffy. “Sir, it will take only two minutes,” he persuaded.

“Of course, we have two minutes,” Swami said, and took the form in his hands. He removed the pen from his shirt pocket and started writing.

“So, is it your job to get these forms filled from people in the mall every day?” Swami asked while filling his name.

“Yes, Sir. We have a lucky draw every Monday.”

“So, do you do this full time?”

“No, Sir. I work in the menswear showroom there during the day.” He pointed to a store on the floor above. “And I do this in the evenings when people come to the mall,” he added.

“Very good. Some extra pocket money?”

“Yes, Sir.”

While this guy might very well be a hardworking guy, (and God bless all hard-working guys), we hadn’t come to the mall to appreciate enthusiastic salesmen and their hard work. We wondered if there was a way we could get our friend to work harder on the form and get it over with fast. But Swami took more than the two minutes promised. He surpassed it by quite a margin. The youngster also realised it.

“Phone number here, Sir,” he pointed to the form.

“Yes, sure. But tell me one thing.”

“Yes, Sir?”

“You get paid, or let’s say, measured, based on the number of forms filled?”

Swami was getting into performance metrics now. That was his old habit. He had registered, from his past tête-à-tête, how companies measure loan peddlers. He had recorded metrics for donation seekers and mobile plan sellers too. Now he was adding lucky draw form fillers and their metrics to his repertoire.

“Kind of, Sir,” the young man said.

“And how many forms do you manage daily, or let’s say, weekly?” Swami asked. The salesman peeked into the form. He noted that Swami had filled only the first five digits of the mobile phone so far. Five more digits were pending. So, he had no choice but to answer.

“Sir, it depends. Weekdays are slow. Weekends I manage double of weekdays,” he explained. He did not give an exact number that Swami was expecting. With a last push for completion, he insisted, “Can I get the filled form, Sir?”

“Oh, got it. That’s expected, isn’t it?” Swami was still on the metrics. “On weekdays only people like us come to malls,” Swami exclaimed and laughed aloud. Neither me nor Jigneshbhai reciprocated. We rolled our eyes and wrinkled our foreheads. But the salesman giggled.

“Okay, here you are,” Swami finally said, handing over the form. “So, what’s next?”

“Thank you, Sir. I will call you if you win anything in the lucky draw,” he said and sneaked away towards another group at a distance.

“Well, he has a job to do. So, I thought why not give him the details? We were anyway not in a hurry, were we?” Swami said as we made our way outside the mall.

Jigneshbhai had his normal unperturbed expression on his face. “He must have been happy seeing us at first. But even he might not have thought we were so jobless. Who takes 10 minutes to give a name and a phone number?” Jigneshbhai chuckled with his usual sarcasm.

Swami sneered at us. “No need to make fun of that. I was helping a poor soul,” he added with a scowl.

Jigneshbhai didn’t want to talk any more about this. Swami’s many attempts to help poor souls had gotten us into trouble in the past. I thought of Deja. Soul talk was his domain. Deja was a dog now, but had been a spiritual guru in a past life. Before I could muse any further, “Okay, let’s go,” Jigneshbhai said, and we stepped out of the mall.

That was the background from last week to Swami’s question at the café today. When none of us replied, he repeated it. “Does anybody win anything in a lucky draw?”

After a brief silence, Jigneshbhai replied. “Yes, if you are lucky. But those who take less than two minutes to fill the form are luckier.”

“You stand no chance,” he added. “You didn’t meet the time limit for form filling,” he tittered.

Swami twisted his mouth in a goofy grimace. He focused on his coffee. It was better to keep his dreamy visions of lucky draw victory to himself, he mused. We sipped our respective coffees in silence. We waited for another topic of discussion to emerge. That’s when we heard a loud shout from somewhere.

Excerpted from the book “Give Me a Break” by Ranjit Kulkarni. Available on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback. Follow Ranjit Kulkarni on his Amazon Author Page to hear about his latest books and get updates from his blog.