ON MULTI LEVEL MARKETING (MLM) & MORALITY

There have been a few instances when I had considered joining MLM groups for generating additional income instead of the usual moonlighting ideas that I had been practicing. The main attraction was of course that unlike in moonlighting jobs you needn’t be constrained by a fixed timing and place.
More often than not in MLM opportunities, what is being marketed, what is our gift to the customer is never clear. One is rather encouraged to skirt the issue. There are MLMs for physical products like in the case of Amway, and virtual products of some Marketing Techniques’ e-books and the like. Here the protagonist tries hard at diverting the listener’s attention from the product per se often using long winding arguments to say how an interest in the product will take your concentration away from the main goal of that kind of marketing viz., generation of residual income. Attend parties or group presentations or sit with individuals to listen to their apparent dreams of making it big in this bad dog-eat-dog world, you will still come up with the same nagging doubt in your mind. Do they really believe what they are preaching? Are the promised earnings trickling into their accounts, and really has the trickle ever grown into a flood?
I am yet to see one who has become a billionaire, why a millionaire by being in such an MLM arrangement. Claims galore are made. Some firms announce incentives, even lower down the line, may be to keep the people motivated.
One of the main and persistent advices in MLM is not to get wrapped up with the product as a user and miss out totally on the business opportunity. Excellent pictures are drawn about how one’s income would grow. There are several ingenuously designed schemes of payouts, each one trying to beat the other. Are these conceived by actuaries? We see pretty soon the product (real or virtual) vanishes into the background, soon to be forgotten. You find that you are only left grappling with and chasing this dream of getting greater and greater payouts, getting appreciation medallions like Silver, Gold, Platinum or whatever, and gnawing doubts whether this ever happens.- more so, if the whole thing is happening in virtual space, with websites displaying photographs of successful executives in the network.
Recently, setting aside my doubts about MLM in general and resolving to vociferously deny any interest in MLM concepts, I happened to attend a friend’s presentations. I was lured in by another friend of mine, with the bait of my chief interest being part of this MLM exercise. The whole idea unfolding before me was like the way Allu Ramalingiah trying to convince the hero of the movie Shankarabharanam to accept an invitation to be felicitated. Concepts and ideas dear and appealing to me and those about this MLM concept were skillfully interwoven camouflaging the true intent of the whole exercise. My protestations of not wanting to be part of the MLM saga and wanting to be able to do something more than mere selling were drowned in the repeated brainwashing against being the lower-end user. The product-focus was either lost or was getting lost frequently. There was always this plan of a paid service portal that was being projected as the real idea for which all this income generation was being thought about. Thus the two presenters were vying with each other in skirting the issue of where the concentration must be: in the MLM part of the project or to a part of the project where this MLM opportunity would be the side attraction. That part of the project where the virtual product of this MLM would facilitate people like me indulging and earning through engaging in my area of interest.
In order to force a logical end to the two hour long presentation I had to say I will scout for suitable candidates to be enrolled. I had already been tricked into “buying” the product that apparently had a use which I could put it to. When you make a risky buy won’t you be looking for the worst case loss? That was what I was doing. Well there are no gains without taking risks either calculated or bearable. In the event of everything evaporating, even if you are left with something to do on hands you could somehow satisfy yourself that you have a product to use.
Now, let’s delve into why MLM selling is so painful for the employee-turned business aspirants. As the logic of MLM was unfolding, it was plain that the difference between the employees/self-employed and the business class is the difference in perception. The business class never gets interested in the product, its usefulness or its technicalities. They look at ROI. For all the other services they “employ” people and reap benefits of the full contribution of the employees. That is fine. At least when there is a hardcore product and the businessman is exploiting the OPB, OPM, OPE etc.,[Other People’s Brain-Money and Efforts ] he is paying them, and there is someone who is dedicated to really making the product see the light of the day. Thus in the end the customer is not cheated out of anything assuming the company in question has that minimum scruples to see that the product is of the requisite standard. But in MLM the product is soon going to lose focus. None in the network is going to be bothered about the product per se. It will be virtual sales of a virtual product to real people paying real money (sometimes earned by the sweat of the brow) the people up the line getting benefits of the labors of others. After sometime people higher up theoretically must be getting the money they are sweating for.
Where is the hitch? This apparent process of the growing branches of the tree will terminate at some point of time. The last leaves are the losers of the total value. It is to them especially it makes sense, to be left at least with a usable product. That is the least moral obligation for anyone who claims to be an honest businessman. Or is an honest businessman a contradiction in terms or a chimera? More on this in my next post.

A friend has my Sanskrit Blog read out..

It was a very interesting happening yesterday[13.04.2010] when my friend and colleague walked in to my cabin and had a chat with me expressly for arranging a talk by me on the coming Shankara Jayanthi[18th May 2010]. I happened to introduce my Sanskrit Blog to him. I discussed the structure, motive and the format of the Blog, and some other subjects of mutual interest to us.

Then I just read aloud for him my last Blog on summarizing the book, Megabrain. Apparently he had not read the English version though it was in our library for more than a decade now. He was thrilled about the revelations in the book. He did have his own doubts about the claims. Skepticism is the hallmark of a good Scientific Temper ain't it? But what gave me a pleasant surprise was as I read aloud the Sanskrit Blog he was able to get the meaning, without my having to translate, again confirming my hunch on the understandability of Sanskrit for an Indian even without formal training, if only he were just taught how to properly read! Earlier another colleague whom I had requested to visit the Blog had done that but had opined that the language used was rather "high" and "beyond comprehension". The difference between comprehension and beyond is a mere "right reading"? It might help me to check on this by trying a read aloud of this to the other colleague. That will serve to confirm my hunch.And give me a strategy for Sanskrit teaching.

Ha! I found a way!

All along I was searching for an editor to post in Sanskrit, so that I could start a Sanskrit Blog. Today I found a way. What an exhilarating moment this is to me only one who could get into my shoes can really feel. What all have I not done, to see this moment. I posted a query in blogger.com asking for suggestions. I opened an account in Wordpress thinking there is a direct phonetic Sanskrit editor available online there. I was unsuccessful. Today I just tried to use Barahapad to input phonetic Sanskrit and copy pasted it onto the Blogspot Screen and Hurrah! I got my Sanskrit post right. This means that I could straight away start a Sanskrit Blog, right here!Earlier I had tried to use the Hindi editor available on Blogspot to write something in Sanskrit and I wasn't at all happy about the output!

I must celebrate this day.

देवीस्तुतिः

सिन्धूरारुणविग्रहां त्रिनयनां माणिक्यमौलिस्फुर-
त्तारानायकशेखरां स्मितमुखीमापीनवक्षोरुहाम् ।
पाणिभ्यामलिपूर्णरत्नचषकं रक्तोत्पलं बिभ्रतीं,
सौम्यां रत्नघटस्थरक्तचरणां ध्यायेत्परामम्बिकाम् ॥

अरुणाकरुणातङ्गिताक्षीं ध्रृतपाशाङ्कुश पुष्पबाणचापाम्।
अणिमादिभिरावृतां, मयूखैरहमित्येव विभावये भवानीम् ॥

ध्यायेत्पद्मासनस्थां विकसितवदनां पद्मपत्रायताक्षीं,
हेमाभां पीतवस्त्रां करकलित-लसद्धेमपद्मां-वराङ्गीम्।
सर्वालङ्कारयुक्तां सततमभयदां भक्तनम्रां भवानीम्
श्रीविद्यां शान्तमूर्तिं सकलसुरनुतां सर्वसम्पत्प्रदात्रीम्॥

सकुङ्कुमविलेपनामलकचुम्बिकस्तूरिकां
समन्दहसितेक्षणां सशरचापपाशाङ्कुशाम् ।
अशेषजनमोहिनीमरुणमाल्यभूषाम्बरां,
जपाकुसुमभासुरां जपविधौ स्मरेदम्बिकाम् ॥

LIFE WITH MOM # 2

In the last post I stopped at lamenting on the status of today’s aged. In my Mom I see a person from the old world who, as I have already written, is one of those who cared for their in-laws, in that, they respected them, accepted living with their idiosyncrasies. In turn when it was time for them to live their own old age all they’ve got is a world where they are not welcome as live-in aged family members! Daughter’s-in-law find very ingenious methods to avoid living with their MILs of which, one is: throwing away money if necessary so that the old find ways and means of living by themselves, the other of course is to get them into some old age home. In the process they (DILs and the nincompoop sons) forget the fact that what the old fellows need is not perhaps money, or even the security of company, but the coziness of a home which they can call their own.

Let’s take a hard look at how good my mom’s own acceptance of her in-laws was. In the very beginning of my father’s family- that is my grandfather, grandmother and uncles when they moved to Hyderabad from their ancestral home in Kerala - lived as a huge joint family. Even the married couples like my father and mother initially, and my eldest uncle and his wife (my aunt) and my aunt (father’s sister) and her husband (my uncle) who had got married in a mutual exchange agreement, apparently to save marriage expenses as well as “groom finding” expenses and efforts that are the wont of Indian society, lived under one roof as a joint family. We had no business interests or great property that we could call our own, which would have made joint family living a natural choice. Perhaps for this reason, slowly and within a period of three to four years at best, the family split into nuclear families, the parting couples citing various reasons for living away from the main family. Later couples in the old family home found newer and newer excuses to split. My grandfather and grandmother were forced to increasingly gravitate towards living with the yet-unmarried sons.

My grandfather and grand mother had four sons-my father being the eldest- and three daughters. Two of the daughters had been married long before my grandfather’s family had left Varkala, the ancestral village. My mom moved out first to take care of our education in an English medium school. So, that was her ruse, for my grandfather had earlier put me in a Telugu medium government school as was his belief and affordability. She opted to stay away in a rather small dwelling receiving regular payouts from my father, employed away from city in a way-side railway station, where a decent education for me would not have been possible. After this gingerly experiment of living separately, there was one more coming together of all the original family members, in another large family home-a rented accommodation about four kilometers from the first joint family dwelling- also a rented accommodation referred to as John Buneen (Bunyan?) House- a chawl like place in Old Nallakunta. The next to move out to Kozhikode [Calicut in those days], after about a year of marriage, was my eldest uncle. At that time we were in another house belonging to one Sh.N.S.Natarajan. I still remember the day my uncle was seen off from Hyderabad R.S. On that day, my mother had got hurt by slipping on mossy floor near the well in the yard. With just the first aid given in grandma’s remedies’ style- bandage tied around the head with just some turmeric powder stuffed into the wound - my mom had joined the rest of the members of the family, to see my uncle and aunt chug off with their eight-month old son Sekhar, whose legs hadn’t developed the strength to let him get up and stand. He used to drag himself all over the house, yet he was a cheerful child. I remember my school friend appreciating the child’s cheerfulness.

To cut a long story short, my grandfather oversaw the splitting of the family couple by couple until they found themselves staying with my last unmarried uncle at BHEL Township in RC Puram. By this time Grandpa and Grandma had been staying in turn with the different nuclear families off and on. They would move in with my uncle’s family at Chikkadapalli, or stay with us at New Nallakunta. Sometimes Grandma and Grandpa would stay separately with different families. I do not remember what went in my grandma and grandpa’s minds as they moved from place to place. May be they enjoyed the frequent change as a welcome condition, that also helped beat boredom of being with one family and one set of problems for long, or whether they secretly, cursed their fate. Now, that was something they might not have wished for, nor even dreamed of. Well, then they had to make that compromise. By the early seventies there was no joint family. All of us- the four brothers and three-sisters family of my grandfather were nuclear families now, with some of those families electing to even move to other cities so that even by some quirk of fate a return to joint family living should become a possibility. But all of the sons respected their parents and the DILs were not averse to having the parents-in-law even it was for small periods of time like three months or six months at a stretch.

Time has rolled by and my Mom and Dad had become old, and we had grown up found jobs and married. The DILs came. I was already working in Bangalore away from our Hyderabad home. So our life started straight away as a nuclear family. My brother had also married and set up home in Pune. My parents tried living with us for short periods of time. Cultural differences between the father’s generation and his sons’ and DILs created quite a few misunderstandings and frequently my parents retreated to their abode, perhaps a trifle dissatisfied even though they were not complaining. Their disagreements with our living styles were the chief reason for their often opting to stay by themselves in the paternal home in Hyderabad.

“We will continue to stay as man and wife, alone. When we age sufficiently and are unable to take care of ourselves please take us to your places and give us our much needed and well-deserved rest form the cares of life.”, my father told finally after finding the old style living of parent and sons’ families together has to be but a distant dream. He cannot recreate the old world joint-family system once again. He had always fervently hoped for it perhaps even in his day, but has seen it cracking. In the present age instead of cracks appearing there were homes formed away right at the beginning.

काचन परीक्षा

अहं तेभ्यो अकरं नमः

शारदा शारदाम्भोजवदना वदनाम्बुजे ।
सर्वदासर्वदास्माकं सन्निधिं सन्निधिं क्रियात् ॥

Life with Mom #1

After the passing away of Dad I must say Mom lost much of her verve and vitality. Diagnosed a diabetic in her fifth decade of existence she wasn't in the pink of health anyway.Most of the time she breaks down, lamenting her being left behind. Her insecurities have increased and she is showing behaviors that are not her wont. Mom and her Sis (our aunt) were living together in my aunt’s own home, while our own Gautamnagar home was let out on rent as noted in My Nostalgic Trip to Bolarum. Our aunt had gotten into debt by borrowing to help people- her neighbors through their, hard times. They had given her a hard time in return, by defaulting on the return of the loan. She had retired as a teacher form government service. She had just a decent pension to live on. Yet she borrowed money to lend a helping hand to her neighbors. The money was much beyond her means to service the interest payments, much less return the principal. After trying every trick in the world to persuade the neighbors to return the sum she took the extreme step of selling her house to wipe off all the standing loans, and still be left with a tidy sum to live by for the rest of her life which she has gambled would not be very long. She is 76 now. Ever since my aunt disposed the house off my mom has become very insecure. Nowadays she insists on having her belongings in physical proximity to her. Ah! Recently they moved house as they had to hand over the keys of the house they sold, to the new owners. The house they have moved into is smaller, so the first problem was to accommodate their possessions in that space. Now, neither mom nor my aunt would want to throw away any of the items they hoarded. Not that those things really were that useful. But both of them are touchy about relinquishing any of those mostly worthless stuff. My sis told me just the mere suggestion of throwing away of any of those things that mattered least is enough for either of them to go off into a tantrum where they would start saying, “We have also become dispensable. Throw us away then.” My sis has since been silent about such ideas. I saw this myself when I went to Hyderabad to help them with the job of moving house. It took three days to set the new house in order after the major items were moved. Some of the items used were moved by physically carrying them long after the movers had left with their truck. The very process was so quick that we had to take recourse to moving things by ourselves. When we picked up these sundry items, I couldn’t help suggesting their removal by either simply throwing them in the dustbin or disposing them off at whatever price they go for. My mom and Aunt simply heard me and tended to agree. My sis confided, had the suggestion been from her there would have been scenes!So, I learnt that my Mom at 74 needed all those things that had little relevance to their lives to feel reassured that everything is going fine. Mom was then worried about the rent payments to the landlord. That was a genuine concern. The rent was pretty high. They could ill- afford a drain on their finances. The landlord for his part needed assurance of monthly rent payments from someone he could have reason to trust. I gave him my mobile number, my sis’ house was visited by him. He made a mental note of the fact that it was an own house my sis lived in. He told me that as regards rent receipts he would only contact my sister. I assured my mom and my aunt that my brother and I would take care of the rent payments. My sister would be the administrator. IOW assurances were not only required by the landlord for he wasn't trusting the mere retirement pensions of two persons would guarantee his monthly income, they were required by my Mom and my aunt [to a lesser extent] for they weren't sure how we seriously we would service this obligation!
This condition of their minds is pathetic but a reflection of the old world order crumbling. The culture in India was that sons were supposed to take personal care of parents and other elders. It is yielding place to more old aged finding shelters in Old Age Homes.To the classically trained minds of ours this was nothing short of ignominy ! To them it was a bad turn from Providence. They-especially my Mom had done their best, in caring for their own in-laws. In return, they weren't welcome to live with the fast-paced current generation!