A very good friend of mine runs a small shop that sells various condiments, ice cream, sweet and savory snacks and cool drinks. This shop has been in the area of Bangalore where I have lived most of my life. My friend and I have known each other for the past two and a half decades. What started as a regular visit to buy my favorite confectionery or cold drink, over a long period of time evolved into a friendship that I cherish. Our meeting place is mostly across the counter of his shop where we chat for hours while he simultaneously transacts with his customers. The unique thing about this friend of mine is that our line of discussion does not get derailed in spite of the many interruptions from his clientele. He is older than me and this is a business that is run by him and his brother from the past three decades. We have seen each other through different phases of our lives. He keeps reminding me of the days where a friend of mine and I would visit his shop to buy one bottle of cola for five rupees and split it in half. One who drinks first would hold a finger at the middle of the bottle and empty it till that point. This split was always a tense affair and often led to friendly disputes with my shopkeeper friend as a judge. He has seen life through the eyes of many of his regular customers who have crossed many phases of their life over these three decades. I feel like he has vicariously lived diverse lives through this small business of his and that gives him a deep and wide understanding of life. I have reached a phase in my life where I do not visit him as often as I used to. However we still do have these long off the counter chats whenever I visit him. 

On my latest visit to him he told me that he had just come back after finishing the legal formalities of selling his family home in which they lived for the past forty years. They sold the house and bought a new apartment closer to the shop. He was describing the complex feelings associated with cutting ties with the house that had been their habitat for the past forty years. From here we organically journeyed into the history of that house and how his father built it. My friend’s father, who is from the southern coastal region of Karnataka, came to the city of Bangalore in the 1960’s. He started a small canteen that sold coffee, tea and some South Indian breakfast items such as Idli and Vada. Unlike most businesses of today this canteen was run in a way where the priority was sustenance and not exponential growth. This small business that ran consistently for around forty years, sustained a family of five, gave a decent education to my friend and his two siblings, funded the marriage expenses of his sister and enabled them to build this house that they sold recently. It also gave permanent livelihood for the cook who worked at this canteen and wages for the helpers who worked there on and off. My friend and his brother also worked in the canteen after their school hours washing the dishes when there was a shortage of labor.

I think a lot of professions and businesses even today exist with an intent of sustenance. Their resilience, the graceful long term commitments and the small yet significant victories are not acknowledged, respected and celebrated as much as they deserve. We are living in the times where only businesses or professions that promise an exponential financial growth are recognised, rewarded and encouraged. Lives that start with a small capital and sustain themselves over long periods of time meeting the basic needs consistently are not aspirational anymore. The current economic ecosystems that have been created by the modern MBAs, banks and financial experts look at such professions and business ideas as primitive. Any business idea or career that does not promise an exponential financial growth are treated almost like loss making ventures. I am afraid that this will create or probably already created a generation with a great pressure to succeed magnificently. Anything less than that has a great impact on self worth. 

A small canteen that remained a small canteen for forty years, that supported a family of five for four decades might not be a case study for a successful life or business anymore. It would only be worthy of interest if it had evolved into a small restaurant, then a big restaurant, then a chain of restaurants, followed by many franchises, then a takeover by a big corporation. Incidentally, my friend’s shop has also remained the same over the past three decades. He seems like someone who recognises the beauty and magnificence in his small business that continues to gracefully sustain him, his brother and their respective families. 

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