JUBAIL, 30 September 2006 — Recently I had the misfortune of visiting an educational supply store to buy a miniature globe for my daughter Vineetha. The cause of my visit was something more than the usual enthusiasm of a father to improve his daughter’s understanding of geography.
At home, my wife firmly sided with the tormentors of Galileo and declared in the kitchen that the earth is flat like the map hanging on our wall, nothing less and nothing more. Since she was preparing my favorite South Indian delicacy, parippuvada, and the oil on the stove was at a boiling point, I refused to argue with her any further and made a tactical retreat to the dining table. But I made the mental decision to nip in the bud the possibility of my future son in law’s predicament over the same issue. Hence my decision to buy a miniature globe for my daughter.
Nowadays a salesman smiles or exhibits some form of that forgotten art of hospitality only when he visits you to sell something which nobody else want to buy. On all other occasions he prefers to be a carbon copy of former Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, monotonously expressionless.
But this time it was more so with the shop manager. So I didn’t bother to enquire with him and instead went straight to the corner where a few miniature globes were displayed on the shelf. A salesman appeared near me and telling from his smile I was pretty sure that he was a new recruit to the noble profession. He was only too willing to show me the merchandise I was interested in.
But, to my astonishment, I found Soviet Union still intact and spread over Europe and Asia. So was Yugoslavia. Burkina Faso and Eritrea were missing. There were two Yemens, North and South. The Berlin Wall was there, Germany still ruled posthumously by the soul of Eric Honecker himself! I didn’t dare to look at India for the horror of finding it still to be a part of the British Empire!
I explained to the salesman my unwillingness to buy that prehistoric artifact and he was apologetic. But our conversation attracted the expressionless manager to our side.
“What is wrong with my globe?” He almost shouted when he said this.
Narasimha Rao vanished from his face and instead Josef Stalin took over. Everybody in the shop was now glaring at me.
“Um, the Soviet Union...” Suddenly I was fumbling for words.
He turned the globe until he came face to face with Soviet Union. Then, with an ordinary ball pen he made some hurried strokes all over the proletarian empire. In a matter of seconds the balkanization of the Soviet Empire was complete.
“Will you buy it now?” Stalin roared with added confidence.
Leaving my future son-in-law to his own predicament, I bought the miniature globe instantly.
