MANICHAEAN
02-06-2015, 04:49 AM
HEAVEN ON EARTH.
It’s not that I mind competition, but it’s so unfair these days. Get an original idea to start a business and before you know it there are hundreds of others copying your idea and doing it cheaper. You see, although I and my family have enough to eat, yet my position has become hateful to me, because I seem to have lost my value, and am in danger of losing my humanity.
I recently announced that I was considering selling heaven on earth and the reaction was immediate. Lots of people gave a start. "Aha! a business!" and before they knew what sort of product it was, and where it was to be had, they began thinking about a shop. It’s a very commercial Indian area where I live you understand.
At one time back in the sixties you could open a curry house that were then all the rage; sell burning hot Vindaloos to students and make your profit on the pints of lager and lime that they needed to get their breath back. But look now how that’s turned out. There is no longer a generic curry house as such, but a meridian range of establishments from Balti, to South Indian, Bengali to Tandoori all vying for the same trade.
So when my selling idea emerged people soon began inquiring where my goods came from. They watched me carefully to see who my supplier was, and if vans delivered in the middle of the night. They questioned my wife in a supposedly innocent tone, my grand-dad in conspiratory whispers and the postman on their door steps. But in vain they could not find out how I came by heaven on earth. And there then blazed up a fire of jealousy and hatred, and they began to inform on me, and to write letters to the authorities about me. One such complaint was that I was dealing in contraband and there appeared at the house one day an official from the Standards and Trading Department who, though he looked in every corner including the garage was unable to find a single specimen of earthly heaven and eventually went away to make his report.
Others said I was a swindler, because heaven on earth is a thing that isn't there; that is neither fish, flesh, or fowl, and the whole thing was a delusion.
So before long I had had enough of it from every side, and made the following resolutions: first, that I would have nothing to do with selling heaven on earth, which most people did not understand, although they held it very precious; secondly, that I would not let myself in for selling anything.
Then one of my good friends, an experienced businessman and cousin, advised me rather to buy than to sell: "There are so many to sell, they will compete with you, inform against you, and behave as no one should. Buying, on the other hand—if you want to buy, you will be esteemed and respected, and everyone will flatter you, and be ready to sell to you on credit—everyone is ready to take money, and with very little capital you can buy the best and most expensive wares. The great thing was to get a good name, and then, little by little, by means of credit, one might rise very high.”
So it was settled that I should buy and I had a little money on hand to start anyway. So this time I announced that reasonable estimates and payment would be made for purchasing the same commodity I had previously tried to sell.
It’s surprising how quickly my personal situation was transformed.
Oh, what a commotion it made! Hardly was it known that I wished to buy heaven, than there pounced upon me people of whom I had never thought it possible that they should talk to me, and be in the same room with me.
There was the verger from the church down the road who brought bags of earth he assured me came from The Holy Land, and had been passed down by generations of Pentecostal pilgrims. Both he and I became angry when he poured some from each bag on the living room carpet. Its "earth, it is Earth! From where He trod" he kept repeating, and became even more agitated. “Why are you not receptive? Am I offering you mud? Meantime give me something in advance, for, besides everything else, I have worked up a sweat carrying this up the road.”
I pushed a fiver into his hand, and he went away.
Meanwhile the news had spread even further my intention to purchase heaven in whatever form it took on our planet.
In the corner shop they gave me an extra tomato when I went shopping, and neighbours I’d seen but never spoken to before wished me good morning with a friendly smile.
And they kept coming. The doorbell never seemed to stop ringing.
“Have you heard the good news?” one middle aged couple enquired when I opened the door.
“He lives!”
Rastafarians turned up offering the “sacred erb”
“Man smoke dis, and hit take you to eaven, even tho u be hin de living room.”
"How much do you want for your ganja?" I enquired.
"For my erb? From heni one else I wouldn't take less dan thirty pounds, but from you, knowing you, and of you as I do, and as your parents did so much for Zion, I will take twenty-five quid.”
Eventually I called it a day and closed the business down. It was not so much a question of having no more storage space for; religious artifacts, the reputed bones of the saints, Russian icons, crystal balls, amulets and miniature Buddha’s. No, it was the Ugandan chief who one day wanted to sell me wife number six as he was having a cash flow problem; but who assured me with tears in his eyes that she really was Heaven on Earth.
It’s not that I mind competition, but it’s so unfair these days. Get an original idea to start a business and before you know it there are hundreds of others copying your idea and doing it cheaper. You see, although I and my family have enough to eat, yet my position has become hateful to me, because I seem to have lost my value, and am in danger of losing my humanity.
I recently announced that I was considering selling heaven on earth and the reaction was immediate. Lots of people gave a start. "Aha! a business!" and before they knew what sort of product it was, and where it was to be had, they began thinking about a shop. It’s a very commercial Indian area where I live you understand.
At one time back in the sixties you could open a curry house that were then all the rage; sell burning hot Vindaloos to students and make your profit on the pints of lager and lime that they needed to get their breath back. But look now how that’s turned out. There is no longer a generic curry house as such, but a meridian range of establishments from Balti, to South Indian, Bengali to Tandoori all vying for the same trade.
So when my selling idea emerged people soon began inquiring where my goods came from. They watched me carefully to see who my supplier was, and if vans delivered in the middle of the night. They questioned my wife in a supposedly innocent tone, my grand-dad in conspiratory whispers and the postman on their door steps. But in vain they could not find out how I came by heaven on earth. And there then blazed up a fire of jealousy and hatred, and they began to inform on me, and to write letters to the authorities about me. One such complaint was that I was dealing in contraband and there appeared at the house one day an official from the Standards and Trading Department who, though he looked in every corner including the garage was unable to find a single specimen of earthly heaven and eventually went away to make his report.
Others said I was a swindler, because heaven on earth is a thing that isn't there; that is neither fish, flesh, or fowl, and the whole thing was a delusion.
So before long I had had enough of it from every side, and made the following resolutions: first, that I would have nothing to do with selling heaven on earth, which most people did not understand, although they held it very precious; secondly, that I would not let myself in for selling anything.
Then one of my good friends, an experienced businessman and cousin, advised me rather to buy than to sell: "There are so many to sell, they will compete with you, inform against you, and behave as no one should. Buying, on the other hand—if you want to buy, you will be esteemed and respected, and everyone will flatter you, and be ready to sell to you on credit—everyone is ready to take money, and with very little capital you can buy the best and most expensive wares. The great thing was to get a good name, and then, little by little, by means of credit, one might rise very high.”
So it was settled that I should buy and I had a little money on hand to start anyway. So this time I announced that reasonable estimates and payment would be made for purchasing the same commodity I had previously tried to sell.
It’s surprising how quickly my personal situation was transformed.
Oh, what a commotion it made! Hardly was it known that I wished to buy heaven, than there pounced upon me people of whom I had never thought it possible that they should talk to me, and be in the same room with me.
There was the verger from the church down the road who brought bags of earth he assured me came from The Holy Land, and had been passed down by generations of Pentecostal pilgrims. Both he and I became angry when he poured some from each bag on the living room carpet. Its "earth, it is Earth! From where He trod" he kept repeating, and became even more agitated. “Why are you not receptive? Am I offering you mud? Meantime give me something in advance, for, besides everything else, I have worked up a sweat carrying this up the road.”
I pushed a fiver into his hand, and he went away.
Meanwhile the news had spread even further my intention to purchase heaven in whatever form it took on our planet.
In the corner shop they gave me an extra tomato when I went shopping, and neighbours I’d seen but never spoken to before wished me good morning with a friendly smile.
And they kept coming. The doorbell never seemed to stop ringing.
“Have you heard the good news?” one middle aged couple enquired when I opened the door.
“He lives!”
Rastafarians turned up offering the “sacred erb”
“Man smoke dis, and hit take you to eaven, even tho u be hin de living room.”
"How much do you want for your ganja?" I enquired.
"For my erb? From heni one else I wouldn't take less dan thirty pounds, but from you, knowing you, and of you as I do, and as your parents did so much for Zion, I will take twenty-five quid.”
Eventually I called it a day and closed the business down. It was not so much a question of having no more storage space for; religious artifacts, the reputed bones of the saints, Russian icons, crystal balls, amulets and miniature Buddha’s. No, it was the Ugandan chief who one day wanted to sell me wife number six as he was having a cash flow problem; but who assured me with tears in his eyes that she really was Heaven on Earth.