Good Novel- I loved reading Vendor of Sweets - Crazily teaches about management

They were the good olden times of Sundays in India way back in 80’s when national channel was some kind of a luxury for a regular middle class household. Some very interesting programmes were being aired in those days and one of them being Malgudi days. It was a series of short stories written by one of the best writers India has ever had - R.K.Narayan. He had written some very interesting novels based on everyday facets of life. What do people go through, their joys and their little sorrows used to be a major part of his characterization in novels.

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Hey Wait! Why Am I writing all this stuff? May be because my observation during all these years of watching Malgudi Days and reading the author’s different works made me realize that he had a unique way of teaching us what is management all about. He wasn’t from any B-School and neither was a management Grad but taught us about different aspects of management. All the stories somewhere point out the meticulous ways of living or the lifestyle of different people and their unique sense of management from all walks of life. Let’s take one such story from the book – The Vendor of Sweets by R.K.Narayan.

The story deals with only 4/5 characters – Jagan, the sweet shop owner, Mali – His Son, Cousin – No Name but who visited the shop everyday and was a cousin of everyone in the village, Grace – His son’s Half-American, Half-Korean girlfriend, Sivaraman – His Head Cook. Jagan had unique style of managing his sweets business. He and Sivaraman would discuss the quantity to be purchased, maintenance of basic raw materials like butter, dry fruits or any kind of flour etc. His every day would go in meticulous calculation of requirements in the store, maintenance of food products, registering the cash earned and also depositing the cash. As the story progresses it is observed that once the son arrives from US, he starts pestering Jagan for investing in story writing machine. Now due to the tensions in the house he looses his concentration in business and starts taking hasty decisions which cost him a bit. During the end of the story jagan finally leaves the business to his cousin to manage and wanders off to an ashram.

Jagan’s Performance at least in most part of the story is consistent. It suddenly gets diverted and he loses it once for all. Looks quite familiar

Right? As a HR when I worked in different companies and encountered similar situations it is noticeable that performance is not always consistent even in the best of employees. Everyone has a good day and a bad one. When discussions happen during performance review bad days are taken a lot into consideration. Does that mean that all those good days of performance were not counted at all? No precisely the point. Let’s again go back to our previous story of Jagan and his employee Sivaraman. Sivaraman would plan the quantities as per the estimated sale, now sale details are given to him by Jagan who in turn has to plan the budget for the raw materials and also labor charges. Head Cook in turn has to plan the number of sweets, their variety, and their quantity as per the budget allocated by Jagan. Everything is interlinked.