the story of THE EXPERIENCE BAR (part I)
“So Mr. Shirke, are you happy with your life?”
Mr. Shirke stared blankly at the man addressing to him. He looked like a bulldog, he thought. Big, burly, a triple chin that hung down the front of his dizzyingly bright orange shirt, a moustache that framed his drooping mouth and even droopier eyes that vomited an acquired skill of faking empathy. Signs of a great salesman. Varun Shirke looked down at the name plate. S.S. Murthy, set in gold in a piece of polished wood. He had trouble remembering this dog’s name. He had been having trouble remembering a lot of things lately.
“No, Mr. Murthy. I guess that’s why I’m here after turning you down once already.”
“Aah, I knew you were unhappy the second I saw you, my friend,” S.S. Murthy chuckled. “You young kids these days are just stuck in the rut, you know? All work, no play. It’s a pity, I tell you. In my days, Mr. Shirke, we would leave work by seven in the evening, no matter how important, and wait outside the girl’s hostel in Magarpatta. That’s how I met my wife, you know? Do you have a girl, Mr. Shirke?”
Varun nervously scratched the spot on his neck that still had a faint mark left from a night two weeks ago. “No, no I don’t. Not anymore.”
“Aah, is that why you’ve come to see me then? Girl problems? But girls these days, I tell you. So fast, so modern. It is difficult for simple guys like us to keep track with them, no? But don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.” He flashed him a victorious smile, displaying a diamond stud in his left canine. That was the salesman’s smile of a done deal; the smile that meant ‘you’re in my trap now, buddy. Il have you by your balls and make you pay for every word I market to you.’
Varun knew that smile too well. Of course he did – he was a salesman himself. A failed salesman, at that. He didn’t have the grit or the tenacity needed to fool customers into believing he was doing them a favour by going door-to-door in the heat selling water purifiers. He used to sell water purifiers; he had been demoted to selling a set of Encyclopedia books now.
‘Good Afternoon, Sir, do you know which bird can fly both backward and forward?’
His opening line was usually met with an exasperated cry of ‘What?!’
‘Sir, with our latest Encyclopedia set,’
By this time, the door would have slammed shut in his face
‘You can find answers to hundreds of such interesting questions in 42 categories, Sir’
If he had even reached this far in the conversation, the most pleasant words he’d hear from his potential customer would be ‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’
Yes, Varun was not happy. In fact, to put it mildly, he was miserable. He dropped out of engineering in his third year in the hopes of doing something meaningful to satisfy his creative urges – those urges that every other student in his class believed they possessed. “I want to do something creative, yaar. I don’t want to study about machines and be a bloody mechanic,” were laments one often heard in the college canteen and various engineering chat rooms. Varun escaped his fate of becoming a mechanic and became a salesman instead after two failed attempts as a writer for an advertising agency and a servicing stint at an online marketing company, which shut down only months after he joined.
“I know you are not happy Mr. Shirke. That is why I sent you an exclusive invitation to experience us... err… visit us.”
“So this is an escort agency?”
“Hahaahaa, don’t degrade us, Mr. Shirke.” S.S. Murthy pressed a red buzzer next to his desk which went off like a siren in outer space, a call any E.T. would be happy to answer. The door opened and in swept a tall man wearing a murky laboratory coat. S.S. Murthy went from a beaming salesman to a scowling mutt and stared at the tall man as if exorcising him with his eyes. The man flustered, spun around and walked out of the door and shut it behind him. He knocked twice. “May I come in sir?” “Yes, of course Shekhar Anna. Is that a question to ask? Come right in.” He snapped back to his current role and beamed. “This is Mr. Shirke. Mr. Shirke, meet Shekhar Anna, our technical head and equipment supervisor. Mr. Shirke is our new customer, Shekhar Anna. He is a salesman too, much like myself. However, Mr. Shirke, I don’t see myself as a salesman, you know? I’m more of a therapist, or a savior if you will. I save people like you from the illness of unhappiness.” And he flashed that diamond studded smile again.
Shekhar Anna directed Varun out of the room and led him into a passage with green lights tailing its corners. The walls were painted black with neon graffiti splashed on both sides. The paintings on the wall were mostly of scientific formulae, naked girls, portraits of weird men in beards and glimpses of profanity squished between the formulae. The passage came to an end as they found themselves facing a jet-black door with a garland of red and orange marigold flowers hung around Einstein’s portrait just above the words “Authorized personnel only”. Shekhar Anna turned to Varun and grinned. “Welcome,” he whispered, “to The Experience Bar.”
