"If life doesnt make you laugh,you just dont get the joke"

Planned a market visit to Karaikudi today, for which I set off in the morning, keeping my arrival time to be
9:30am through an hour and a half's travel from Madurai to Karaikudi(as everyone had told me). However,
after almost 2 and a half hours of wobbly back breaking journey (the roads in Maharashtra were definitely
much better), I reached my Chettinad Distributor's stock point. It felt like walking into some other era, the
house was what typically is shown as a South Indian house in movies, with very high ceilings, falsely
thatched in some areas, the nondescript "jhula" , the daunting garlanded photographs of various Gods and
Goddesses all around; and mind it, this was Not his house, but the stock point which has seen Biscuits being
bought and sold ,for the past 50 years.
Market visits always tend to confuse me. As in , if I am an ASM, what is the basic purpose of a my visiting the
market. At this stage of my territory handling, it is about understanding the subtle (or glaringly big)
differences in my territory, from one area to another; some may argue it is required for being in touch with
the actual happenings, vis-a-vis competition or one's own standing; I still feel all this can be gauged, by
spending more time per shop, rather than visiting more shops, and may be by spreading one's coverage
area.Anyways, as my mind raced through all this,while I walked from shop to shop, my musical heart would not
rest unless it successfully played a silent song ( a lot of times its timed very ill), "Mere man ye bata de tu, kis
or chala hai tu,kya paya nahi tune, kya dhund raha hai tu.." , making all my existential queries all the more
emphatic.
But ironies do not stop in life ever. So as I walked to one shop on the College Road beat of Karaikudi, my
senses picked a fragrance, that, for a split second, transported me back to the supermarket near our
apartment in Nice, France, called "Casino Supermarche" which by some strange coincidence would have
smelled the same in one of its ailes.
Weird is a word not enough when such experiences keep happening...
Also, when your mother tells you that 08-08-08 is being discussed all over the news channels (who never
seem to have enough for 24*7, but these analyses), so please be careful, and you brush all of it aside, till
your innocent market visit has a mini-adventure, as your car breaks down in the midst of dark wilderness,
and you are with a driver who cannot communicate in the language you understand. But as my mother
would explain, I had managed to visit a famous temple near Karaikudi (every place here has a famous
temple), and God did help me sail out of my mini adventure without much ado.
Truly Shantaram seems so perfectly right when he says : " If life doesnt make you laugh, you just dont get the
joke"