Chapter 2: Some Background

And so, here Ulysses was, in The State. A big question he faced was why was he here, and what he supposed to do about it. First job, first assignment.
‘Now see, that is the scenario’, his boss had said, on his first day on the job, ‘The State is a big market. And we are not selling there. And these gentlemen’, he had continued, waving a negligent and contemptuous hand in the general direction of his Sales Managers, ‘are not only unable to sell, they are also quite unable to find out why they are unable to sell. And the Product Managers’, this with another contemptuous wave of hand towards the PMs sitting there in the meeting, ‘are only good for making strategies and preparing nice shiny little advertisements. Ask them to make nice little powerpoint presentations with lots of boxes and arrows, and two by two matrices, and they are as happy as children with Lego sets. But ask anyone about sales, and all go mum’. The Product and Sales Managers had made very spirited attempts to go invisible, but had failed miserably. So they made do with suitably contrite expressions. Ulysses was paying total attention, as his boss went on, ‘what I need is someone who can tell me what is wrong.’ And like the virgin who had been instructed on her first date, by her mother, to say DON’T and STOP, Ulysses had muttered his version of DON’T STOP, and that had been the cause of all this.
‘I don’t want a PM to make powerpoints,’ his boss continued, ‘I want results. I want someone who can tell me the actual realities of the ground, not nice little boxes and arrows.’ And with his manhood and PMhood thus challenged, Ulysses had rosen magnificently to the occasion. In a passable imitation of Abhimanyu threatening to break the Chakravyuh, he had stood up, and calmly announced, ‘I will do it boss. I will go to The State, aur main aapke laptop ke mousepad ki shapath leta hoon, jab tak I don’t have the answers to your questions, main aapko apna chehra nahi dikhaoonga.” Or something to that effect. Of course, he had totally missed the smug smiles that were exchanged between all the people present in the room.
And thus, it had been decided that Ulysses would visit The State for three weeks (Chehra nahi Dikhaoonga had wisely been taken by his boss as a metaphor), and would drink tea and discuss the elections with stockists and retailers and anyone else who cared to offer him tea and discuss the elections.
And so, here he was. Sitting in a crowded bus which made a street full of rubberneckers after an accident look like a government office after four in the evening.

Next Up: Chapter 3- A Bus Journey (And the guy who was a girl)