my kinda people

I am doing a new route for morning walks. Walk up all the way to the gym; and then workout there and walk back home!Walking is actually so, right from home and not taking the car out!
the keleidoscope of life on the road unfolds with unfailing regularity and it has been such fun watching the world pass you by.Nowadays i have the time and the inclination for observing and enjoying the drama that unfolds.
It starts with the idli kadai at the end of our colony;idli, dosai, poori and vada are his usual fare. the elan with which he sets up his shop in the morning(it is a mobile cart) is a real treat. Of course we miss it if we are lazy and start late.By the time we get back, it is usually buzzing with atleast a dozen customers.
I am fascinated by a very senior citizen setting up shop in front of rbi quarters. He must be atleast 70, and he sets up a thayathu shop of red and black strings, carefully strung together. Without taking a single day off, he sets forth his shop on the pavement at 7 am. I wonder everyday, why is he in such a hurry to open his shop. It is not the first thing that customers would want to buy, in a hurry! But there he is with earnestness and method, every day.It was pouring yesterday and i missed him at his post.
We patronise a elaneer vendor on the way back from the workout. He is a perfect case study for CRM as it is practised on the gullies and bylanes of any town or city in india.No expensive oracle package for them.There are quite a few in the same area, I patronised him initially as he spoke atleast five different languages to customers on the odd day i had bought elaneer. He was so sure and confident of his skill and ware, that I found myself lining up to his cart.He gives us credit on the day we forget to carry money with us. He gets up and lines up with two cocoanuts the minute we take the turn which leads up to his cart. No more questions about whether we need vazhukai or tanni kai. When he happens to be away for tea or stuff, he has a stanby there, who is also told our taste in elaneer!very comfortable and enjoyable. The other day he was also displaying his other talents. He was treating a friend for ear ache. He was burning a cactus stem and squeezing the juice into his ear. I was shocked at the treatment, but his friend seemed to want it.Versatile and colourful personality; i would miss him and his shop if he happened to shift his trade elsewhere.
innum varum....