Today I had gone to buy vegetables with mom to a nearby vegetable market. I used to go there with my mom, when I was a kid. It was nostalgic to be in that market, hardly anything has changed there. It seems as if it was yesterday when I used to come here as a kid. I could recognize most of the hawkers; they had only grown a lot older than what I remembered them as.
I started talking with one of the hawker who I remember gave me best tomatoes when mom used to send me alone to buy some vegetables. The hawker did not recognize me, but was visibly happy to know that I had started earning. He wished me luck for future.
It was really nice to see that the most of the things are still same back here. I looked around the local market and again I could recognize most of the shopkeepers. Things have hardly changed for them they are still going through the same life with a smile on their face. My life on the other hand has changed a lot in past few years; I don’t know what it’s going to be like in coming years. There was a sense of happiness to see all these guys but at the same time there was a feeling of uneasiness that these guys have not grown much in past so many years. I don’t want to be like that, I want to grow in my life. I don’t want to confine myself to do one thing for such a long time, I want to learn a lot of things, gain knowledge, share knowledge and apply that knowledge to grow in my life. I would like to come back to this blog after 5 years, I will be really happy if I would have been successful on staying on the same path till then.
I thought while going through :
1. the nostalgia of meeting people who reminded me of childhood days.
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2 comments:
How do you define growth? What makes you judge others and say that they have not grown? Just because they are still selling vegetables?
You might be doing same things in terms of your profession, but you might have grown spiritually. And then, growth is also very much function of your enviornment and opportunities it provides you. That in a country like India is not same for everyone. For some business of daily sustenance keeps them occupied enough than to think about growth.
Also keep doing the same thing over and over again does not mean you are not growing.
I thought that this kind of remark will come...
I think it's more because of the fact that I was not able to explain the scenario of the market well. The shopkeepers have not changed the way they conduct their business, while the malls just 5 mins walk away are focusing more on new ways of doing business. These guys always had chance of moving up the value chain, but they chose not to. Their attitude towards their profession has hardly changed, their attitude towards customers have hardly changed.
Let me explain some of the facts, these shopkeepers have bought the land, the shops when it was very cheap, they don't have to pay rent on the shops. So the cost of ownership is very less or negligible, these guys flourished earlier as they were the only shopkeepers available at that time. They overcharged of lower quality products, never cared about customer relationship or the customer experience. Then as the time passed new shopping centers came up and these guys faced stiff competition, that changed a few guys, they built better stores, spent time and energy on building customer relations. Those guys are doing far better than others who refused to change.
When I went back to the market 70% of the shopkeepers were still doing the same thing, they were trying to sell low quality for high profit and were not ready to treat the customers well. While the malls at some distance are making a huge sum of money these guys are sitting idle most of the day. I think they had an advantage, if they had focused on customer relationship and being honest, they would still be making money and growing... as some of their mates did and are successful today.
I know that life doesn't give everybody opportunities but these guys are unsuccessful not because of lack of them but because they refused to change with time.
Even I am not sure what kind of things will I be doing in future, it may happen that I end like them due to some untoward circumstances. But I don't want to be like them and that's why I mentioned that at I would love to come back to this post few years down the line and see whether I have been able adapt myself with changing time and environments.
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