UNIT 7: Lemon-Yellow and Fig

Manohar Malgonkar

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Manohar Malgonkar(1901–2010) is one of of India’s noteworthy writers of

ABOUT THE STORY

This story depicts a real life situation in the life of a salesman in a sari shop in
Bombay (now Mumbai). Mr Ratnam has employed the salesman for his honest
face and pleasant manner. One day a charming, young lady, well dressed and
well perfumed, came into the shop. She bought a lemon-coloured silk sari and
paid the price of Rs 40 for it with a Rs 100 note. Soon after she left, another
prosperous lady entered wearing the same perfume. She asked for a fig-
coloured sari. The superstitious salesman recollected a story of how two women
used a trick with a Rs 100 note to cheat a salesman. Agarwal took certain
precautions to ensure that he did not get cheated in similar fashion. But, when
his employer Mr Ratnam conducted a surprise check of funds in the cash box
that day, he found Rs 100 short. The twist in the tale is that although Agarwal
was actually an honest salesman, he found it difficult to justify the missing cash
to his boss. As a consequence, Agarwal was accused of being dishonest and lost
his job.
There is an ironical twist to this tale as fate seems to have struck a blow
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to the overzealous Mr Agarwal. His own honesty and his concern for Mr
Ratnam was in fact, the turning point of his relationship with him, resulting in
the loss of his job. Mr Ratnam appointed Agarwal on the basis of his ‘honest
face‘. Ironically, it was his honesty that caused Agarwal to lose his prized job.

LEMON-YELLOW AND FIG

I have lost my job. It was a good job, too. All I had to do was sit in the shop
throughout the day and sell saris and choli pieces; that was all we sold. They
were very good saris and choli pieces, specially woven in Mr. Ratnam’s little
mill in Bangalore and only sold in Bombay through the shop run by me.
They had begun to catch on and last week I had managed to sell over a
thousand rupees’ worth of them. I had little doubt that very soon the sales
would go even higher. In fact, I had written to Mr. Ratnam to send me more
plentiful stocks. If I could sell five thousand rupees’ worth of them every
month, that would have brought me a monthly income of two hundred and
fifty rupees.
Yes, it was a good job, but it didn’t last long; it went just as I was beginning
to be a good saleman, learning all the little tricks.
I was lucky to get the job. I had no experience of this kind of work. Mr.
Ratnam made no secret of the fact that he was employing me purely on a
hunch: because he thought I had an honest face.
I had answered an advertisement and was interviewed by Mr. Ratnam who
had come from Bangalore.
It was Mr. Ratnam who told me I had an honest face. Hesaid he was looking
for honesty. His last salesman in Bombay had run away with some of the cash
and six shot-silk saris.
Mr. Ratnam gave me the job on the spot. ‘All I want is honesty’, he said.
‘Honesty and a pleasant manner with cus¬tomers. I will try you out for a few
weeks, and if I’m satisfied with your honesty and your handling of customers,
you can have the job for good’.
Of course, I am honest. And I am also a hard worker. In the very second
week I had made more sales than the previous salesman had made during any
week. The fact that this was the week before Diwali, which, as you know, is the
time when more saris are bought than at any other time, may have had

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something to do with it. On the other hand it may have been due to my
salesmanship. Anyway, I had good reason to be satisfied with the way things
were going.
That was how it was until this morning. I was beginning to have rosy
dreams of getting married and settling down. Bombay is a good place for a
refugee from the Punjab to settle down.
I had barely opened the shutters of the shop this morning when the woman
came in. She was pretty as a picture and I felt happy that I should be making
my first sale of the day to her.
We Agarwal shopkeepers are rather superstitious. Most of us believe that
the success of a day depends upon the bohni, the first sale of the day. I felt sure
that this customer would bring me good luck. Little did I know!
Shechose a lemon-coloured silk sari, very plain without any gold work on
it, and a choli piece to match. She was on the dark side, and I felt the yellow was
not her colour. But, of course, it was not my place to tell her that.
As I was wrapping up the bundle, I could smell the perfume she wore. It
was quite a strong perfume. In fact, I rememberthinking that it was a little too
heavy for the morning. But it was a very good perfume and seemed to fill the
little shop.
The bill was forty rupees and she handed me a crisp newhundred-rupee
note. I gave her back sixty rupees. Mr. Ratnam had told me that I must make it a
point to start the day with a hundred rupees in small notes kept in my cash box.
He was very particular about cash. A hundred rupees was all I was meant
to keep in the shop to begin the day with. The rest of the collection from the
daily sales was handed over every evening to his munim who called for it.
Before going out the young lady gave me a smile which made me wish that
I had been in a position to give her thesari instead of selling it to her. I had
hardly replaced the sarisand choli pieces which she had been looking at, when
the otherlady came into the shop. She was large and she was nothingtolook at
but she was prosperous, for she wore large diamondear-clips, the hexagonal
ones which are so popular in the South.
And as soon as she came in, I got a whiff of her perfume.
I have a sensitive nose, but it did not need a sensitive nose to tell me that it
was the same perfume that the young woman had used; it was quite
unmistakable.

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 At first it didn’t even strike me as being unusual. I put on my best smile and
began to show her the saris. She wantedsomething in what is known in the
trade as the ‘fig’colour. Itis a mixture of red and green threads and very popular
amongst South Indian women.
I took out several different saris in the shade she wanted, but as I was
explaining to her why there was a difference in the prices, I must have been
thinking about the coincidence of her using the same perfume as the other lady
who had given me the hundred-rupee note, because suddenly the thought
struck me that both the women must belong to the same household.
And that brought to my mind a trick which had been played recently upon
a fellow-shopkeeper. A young lady had gone tohis shop early one morning and
had given a new hundred¬-rupee note which he had changed for her. Soon after
she had gone out, another lady, her accomplice, had gone into the shop, bought
one or two little things, and coolly demanded her change.
But she had paid no money, and when the shopkeeper pointed out her
mistake she had called in a policeman and complained that she had just given a
hundred-rupee note to the shopkeeper which he had put in his cash box and
that he refused to give her the change. Oh, yes, she knew the number of the
note, and right enough the number tallied with that of the note in the cash box.
There was little that the shopkeeper could do about it except hand the note over
to her. It all seemed to fit. It was a dirty trick but it had worked and now they
seemed to be trying it out on me.
It gave me a shock to think that anyone as pretty as my first customer
should be involved in this kind of business. But this was no time to be worrying
about it. I had to be quick if I was not going to be caught out.
‘Excuse me a moment’, I told the lady who was looking intently at the fig-
coloured saris. ‘I have a few more in the same shade. I will get them for you’.
The cash box was on the table in the corner, hidden from her view by a tall
shelf. I opened it and took out the hundred-rupee note given to me by the lady
who had come earlier.
I put it in an envelope and addressed the envelope to my brother who
worked in a shop hardly a couple of hundred yards away, and calling the
chokra from the next shop who did occasional jobs for me I casually handed
him the envelope. ‘Please take this to Kirpa Ram’s shop and give it to my
brother’. I told him.

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 Then, pleased with myself and smiling, I took three of those fig-coloured
saris from another rack and went back to my customer. I couldn’t have been
away from her for more than a minute.
She liked those saris a lot. She kept on looking at two of them as though she
couldn’t make up her mind which one she liked better. I could scarcely keep
myself from grinning at her play¬acting. ‘Why don’t you buy both? They
should suit you equally well’, I said to her.
‘Yes, I think I will do that’, she said, with a broad smile which exposed all
her pan-stained teeth.
She took both the saris and paid for them; ninety rupees. She paid it all in
ten-rupee notes. I looked at the notes carefully. I wondered if this was a new
angle to the old trick. But there was nothing wrong with the notes. It was clear
that I had judged her wrongly.
I felt a little ashamed of myself. But I had reason to be pleased with myself
too, I had made two good sales within half an hour of opening, and as soon as
the chokra returned, I sent him for a cup of coffee and a masala pan.
And then I saw Mr. Ratnam coming towards the shop. I didn’t even know
he was in Bombay. He lives in Bangalore and looks after the looms. He was
looking pleased as punch as he entered the shop, and when he had sat down I
told him how well the shop was running and that more stocks would be needed
almost immediately.
‘You can have all the stocks you want, my boy’, he said. ‘That is what the
shop is here for, to sell as much as we can. It is just that I wanted to make sure
that I was not going to be let down like I was by your predecessor’.
I was rather hurt that he should ‘be still doubtful of my honesty. I said, ‘I
was hoping you would be sure of me by now, sir’.
‘In business, in this sort of business, one can never take any¬thing for
granted’, he said. ‘There are so many temptations.What the last man used to do
was to show that he sold fewer saris than he actually did, and pocket the
difference. It could never be found out unless there was a stock-checking’.
‘I see’, I said.
‘I just wanted to check up the stocks before sending you any more. Just a
formality, you know. You don’t mind, do you?’
It was nice of him to ask me if I minded, but, of course, I didn’t mind.
For most of the next hour we did a sort of cursory stock-¬taking. In fact I

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did most of the actual checking and if I had needed to, I could have easily given
Mr. Ratnam fictitious figures. I was satisfied that all the stock was absolutely
correct to the last choli piece.
However, even before I had quite finished counting, Mr. Ratnam called to
me. ‘I think that will do’, he said. ‘I am entirely satisfied with you. As soon as I
get back, I will send you more pieces, and from next month you had better take
on some one to assist you; a little chokra to do the running about’.
Mr. Ratnam paused for a moment and gave me a broad smile. Then he said,
‘I am particularly pleased with your way of dealing with customers. I wanted to
be personally satisfied about that. So this morning I sent my daughter and sister
to make one or two odd purchases. It seems that although you had just opened
the shop, you managed to change a hundred¬-rupee note for my daughter.
There is nothing more annoying than being kept waiting for change. I also liked
the way you sold my sister two saris when she had come with the idea of
buying only one. They were full of praise for you. Now let us just check up the
cash box, and I will have done with you. A mere formality, you know. You
couldn’t be having much more in it than your hundred rupees and what my
daughter and sister paid’.
I am sure my heart skipped a beat. It suddenly dawned upon me that there
was a whole hundred rupees missing from the box, and Mr. Ratnam noticed it
too, as soon as he snappedthe lid open.
And that was how I lost my job. I didn’t even try to explain.I just stared
blankly at him and at the box alternately. I was sure that no explanation I could
give would have convincedhim. He did not have that sort of mind. What he
recognised was the cold fact that a hundred rupees were missing from thebox.
Anyway, I couldn’t tell him that I had taken his daughterand his sister for a
pair of confidence tricksters-if that is theword.
He shook his head from side to side, and he looked sad whenhe said to me,
‘And you have such an honest face’.
Of course, I am honest. But I am out of job, and if you know of anyone who
needs a keen young salesman....

GLOSSARY

Doubt: Uncertainty Sensitive: Touchy

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Stocks: Goods Chokra: Young boy
Hunch: Strong feeling Occassional: Sometimes
Pleasant: Agreeable, pleasing Predecessor: The person before the
Refugee: A person forced to leave his current holder
country Temptation: Desire to do something
Superstitious: To believe in magic, wrong
not based on reason Formality: Stiffness of behaviour
Prosperous: Successful financially Cursory: Casual
Hexagonal: Having six straight sides Fictitious: Imaginary
Cold fact: Unpleasant fact

COMPREHENSION

A. Answer the questions below, choosing from the options that follow.
1. Mr Ratnam’s sari mill was located in
i. Bombay ii. Delhi
iii. Bangalore iv. Madras
2. Mr Ratnam employed Mr Agarwal as a salesman because he
i. Well qualified ii. Had accounting experience
iii. Had an honest face iv. Had previous sales experience
3. Bohni means
i. Bad luck ii. Lots of money
iii. The best sale of the day iv. The first sale of the day
4. To start the day, the salesman was required to
i. Keep lots of change in the cash box ii. Keep Rs 500 in
different notes
iii. Open the shop on time iv. Keep Rs 100 in
small notes
5. In the sari trade, fig colour is a
i. Mixture of red, blue, and white
ii. Yellow colour
iii. Mixture of red and yellow colours
iv. Mixture of red and green threads
6. The salesman knew the second customer was rich because she
i. Wore large diamond clips ii. Wore strong perfume
iii. Was large in size iv. Bought two saris
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