The Big Sell

copyright2011 Danise Codekas

“Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms shall be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.”

Where is the wireless network router? Sitting in Starbucks and cannot grab the connection. Do I walk around the store with laptop in hand and try to find the connection that sticks? I see the bars blinking in the bottom left hand corner of the screen but the red X’d monitor icon keeps blinking on and off.

There is a man trying to sell his company’s positions to 3 men, in their 20’s. He is building their desire by mentioning the flights they will taking to the East Coast and how he flies into Miami and rents cars driving to Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach and hooks up with girlfriends in San Diego. Slick.

You can see the excitement in the men’s faces as they are hoping to catch a job that not only pays them millions, it also allows them to escape their uninteresting lifestyle. He is really selling the job, however I am waiting to find out how big the check is that they will have to up front to latch onto this incredible opportunity.

As is true, women sometimes know when a guy is selling something that smells like dog doo. A woman is sitting at the table next to this guy, and she is now openly listening and staring at him, and right before she became so obvious, grinning, she said, “Yak, Yak”. I cracked up. This Starbucks is small and has about 15 tables. We can hear the spiel.

How many times have things been offered to you that seemed to good to be true? And admit it—you jumped on some of them. Seems there are a lot more carpetbaggers wandering around the depressed suburbs, filled with empty repo’s. Cities slick with lights, money and valets are dimming lights, as rows of empty business fronts no longer light the way.

Restaurants lush with the laughter of those affording the $800 dollar bottles of champagne and cognac, offer split bottles of $160.00 wine now. And favorite patisseries and elegant chocolatiers are cutting business hours and elegant paper doilies that once lined the Spode china.

I am depressed as this things made me happy. Spoiled American woman deprived of her favorite blueberry éclair and Starbucks lacking an extra router for the corner I chose to sit in. How can we live without such necessities?

Outside Madras there is a fabulous garbage dump that if all the garbage was spread out from west to east, it would reach half way to the moon. I once visited a man and woman who lived in the garbage dump. They raised 4 of their children there. They were also raised there and so the city on the dump became a place where, once in a while, politicians visited because a large number of their constituents resided there.

How I came to meet such a family is one of those stories travelers store up because if you travel, there is always an experience which is unlike anything previously encountered.

Their home had 3 rooms, made out of refuse, consisting of wood, metal, cans, paper and things which were indefinable. I had tea and we ate rice and vegetable soup before I was escorted back to the city streets of Madras, where I boarded a bike taxi back to my hotel.

There were men and women with little stoves selling food and tea and juice in the dump. Some had oil burners to light their location. Like Union Avenue in San Francisco, one garbage street had mini-lights lighting the way. They had a generator that 100 or so families shared use of and funds to buy kerosene whenever a high caste person came for tea.

If you did not realize you were standing on one of the most filthy, largest refuse places on earth, you could imagine a smiling maître d’ seating you at a table made from upturned baby bed, 63 upturned and glued soda bottles for a table top, and a chair which had a mickey mouse emblem on its back.

The lady who was working at the café proudly had me walk behind the makeshift shack which served as the café kitchen, to show me the 8 refrigerators lined up that held various teas and other implements and cookware, salvaged from the dump. There was no Wi-Fi, unfortunately. So, I had to downgrade their Michelin Rating from 4-star to 3, that day.

Yes, we have all tried to make more money, or find an easy way to get more, sometime in our lives, and lived to tell the tales of failure. We have married, dated and seduced by flashing bank balances, May Bach's, and 23 carat diamonds that would lead one to our un-realistic beliefs about what a comfortable and peaceful life is for us.

I knew a man once who actually told me that he would not date me because he wanted to buy me things, he could not afford. When I asked him what things he was referring to, he mentioned things that were evidently seen by him on Lifestyle’s of the Rich and Famous. It was our 2nd date and all I really wanted was another chocolate mousse.

Unfortunately, he was wrapped up with lawyers and bankers and arguing with his mother about increasing his monthly allowance from 6,000 to 9,000 a month, because Stanford was such an trendy, expensive place. I think he was nuts.

But then, unfortunately, I always ran from me n who revered money, or talked about what they owned more, than what was in their hearts. They are too high maintenance. And yes, I never asked him, for anything more, than another chocolate mousse.

So, I have the right corner to sit in, here, at the café, the router is over there. The 4 men, who were trying to see if they could increase one another’s wealth, have left and I am left with an empty vanilla latte cup, and a 10 minute ride home.

Maybe you could remember a time when you faced someone who was poorer, dirtier, less educated than you, who, surprisingly was more generous in their treatment of you, kinder in offering you more than you needed, and wiser realizing that joy, when shared, no matter the amount, becomes that which, when remembered, enables you and me to not wish for what we do not have, but be grateful for what we do.

There is nothing worse, in my mind, than to be looked upon as if I needed sapphires, diamonds and gold. When all I, and probably you need, is love and a cup of tea. Oh, the tea that was served me in the Madras Café? Earl Grey, because they thought I was British.