ENTERPRENEUR

Enterprise is a big word in todays diction ,hence i couldnt even spell it properly, there is a misnomer that you have to have a good family backing, a sound education   preferably from a B school and ofcourse a lot of money to become one because we have been tuned to think big and also to treat big the guy who does something on the enterprise side, well i am just reminded of very many people that i have come a cross who were doing a business in small way and surviving on its returns,these are again nostalgic moments of my child hood where we lived in a small narrow lane, predominantly occupied by illeterates,their social status was above poverty line or might be just balancing on it. but there was a very vibrant group doing this for their livelihood as a hut service. we had two or three people dealing with eateries each one had their own unique product so that there was never clash of customers,a lady selling muruku,ottavadai and athirasam, well she used to appear from 4.30 pm onwards,which was her prime time of sales.what ever little purchase made would go a long way in meeting the evening snacks,it was very rare that people would pay and buy out, it was often on credit that they were sold and she was neither bothered, cause she understood marketing much better.what she was selling never had a shelve life the earlier she sells them the lesser is her loss.just like this person we had other groups, a few persons selling fish on retail,you would get a door delivery and select customers were their prime target .yet another group sold color(goli soda and cool drinks) one group was into making kamarkat, a local delicacy toffy made of jaggery and coconut.,yet another group was making appalams. a few targeting on the morning breakfast, idli,dosa and aapam.one just selling sundal at 10 am a nutritonal supplement for the starving crowd. we did have some bigger enterpreners too a beedi factory, the lady in and around were its employee base, the process started with a few cutting or trimming the base leaves, some men used for rolling and stuffing the tabacoo.crust, the most intresting production job was to label each beedi individually and neatly pack them into bunndles.i guess each bundle consisted of twenty four beedi against the normal grouping of tens and twenties. well all these were witnessed by us as a way of spending our free time, which also gave us some first hand info about the process involved.  i have to mention about the most sucess ful enterpreneur of our time Chinnappa, a petty shop owner,his house shop and establishment was all condensed into that small bunk of 3x3 size. his shop was the most visited one for all of us because before going to school we have to touch his shop and go. i think he was the first fellow to introdue this 1 paisa bussiness, every shop in the vicinity would charge 5 paise to fill a pen with ink while he would only charge you 1 paise well he would give us a diluted ink but who cares it was for the teachers to strain and read.as far as we were concerned we would even fill up two pens at the rate of 1/2 paise and we had other attractions of spending the balance 4 paise, every thing in his shop was hovering around 1 paisa a then mittai,kammarkat,pakkumittai,nellikai.and the mostattractive one was his 1paise lottery, lot of ambitious gifts would be displayed you have to tahe a number paing one paise,but than i dont think we ever got any thing out of it at times we might ger a gift of 5 piase or ten paise.but it would be recycled aiming for some thing big.but now i just think he was a better enterprener cause his shop was always crowded he knew that it was volume that matters not quality