Cricket Temple

A temple with Lord Ganesh idol having eleven heads (symbolizing the cricket team), another idol in batting posture and yet another in bowling posture. People of Chennai have named this temple the ‘Cricket Pillayar temple’ and is located at Annanagar in the heart of the city. Pillayar in Tamil means ‘Ganesh.’

The temple was set up six years ago by Ramakrishnan, a Ganesha devotee and cricket lover.

Don’t dismiss this as yet another display of a cricket crazy public. The temple demonstrates the freedom and flexibility that Hindu religion provides.

People often talk about 330 million Hindu deities. These people often forget the freedom that Hinduism provides to a person to create Gods or Goddesses or to modify the existing Gods or Goddesses. So there exist many more million Gods and Goddesses and even more in the minds of the devotees.

Marketing skills of a gupchup waala...

The other day I came face to face with this reality while moving (in fact walking) along the streets of Bhubaneswar during weekend for shopping… So as I was seeing a sea of human population ambling away aimlessly in a desperate effort to make their weekend a bit more interesting my eyes set sight on a gupchupwala alias golgappewaala or puchkewaala.


Normally you wouldnt have given a second glance to any gupchupwala standing on a street corner with a bulging plastic bag filled with golguppa, but this person was different. He seemed to be in the spotlight. So Mr. Gupchupwala was spotted attracting a huge crowd right in front of a newly opened Gym (coincidentally it was just in front of one of my friend’s house,so while I was at her place…I could study this person’s strategy quite well) centre that had used a lot of halogen lights to make weight concious people aware of its existence.

The sight also made me fall prey to try out his gupchups. After all the Oriyas have a strong attachment towards roadside unhygienic delicacies…without any complaints towards his exhorbitant price,I asked him to serve me. His apt hands started working on mashing the potatoes and mixing it with all the varities of masala stored infront of him making a thick mass. While his hands worked on the same his mouth did not close for even a split second. He revealed that he was from UP and that he could make 5 varities of things with his stuffs and that he was selling gupchups for the last 10 years and he went blah blah all the while finally revealing his marketing alliance.

So Mr. Phuchkawala apparently had a reason behind standing in the spotlight of this GYM!

He described that he had stuck up a marketing alliance with the owner of the gym. . He said that initially he used to stand infront of a park a few blocks away from the place where he was right now selling his stuffs when one fine day he was approaced by the owner of the gym who wanted him to sell his stuffs standing infront of the newly opened centre.The marketing alliance had paid off well for both of them as he explained. These days he was following a premium pricing model charging more for the gupchups because of the location factor.Moreover he was drawing a crowd infront of the GYM thus making it more prominent. He also told about how the entire alliance was a success and told us instances of how bulky men and women who had come to his gupchup centre had felt self concious and had landed up in the gym for a weight reduction programme.

I was spellbound by his knowledge of marketing. A query about his educational qualifications revealed that he hadnt even passed the 10th standard and incidentally in a matter of few minutes he had taught me so much of marketing…

So Mr. Smart Gupchupwaala can anyday take a class of marketing alliance the way the dabbawalas took a class on 6 sigma concepts at IIM. So next time when in doubt do not look into any book or site for examples....look around you, you would get a lot of live examples in ur own ecosystem.