For Vijay Pratap Singh, one more journey loomed. One more “tour” as they called it in the office. The month was about to end, but the soul-sapping heat of the Gangetic plains didn’t look like abating. The rains had remained like the government’s many promises: grand in design and absent in execution. In this unforgiving weather, in this unforgiving land where unforgiving people lived, Vijay Pratap Singh had the unforgiving task of selling them churan and other traditional concoctions that claimed to cure everything from erectile dysfunction to cancer.

He was studying a spreadsheet on his phone, sales and stock figures, regionwise and distributorwise, and trying to calculate his incentive for the month. Jobs like his depended on incentives, the monthly income that came from actual sales in the field. This was a real job, he thought, tied to real sales. It had no cloak of intellectualism to protect it, no higher purpose to justify loses; it was not a job that aimed to change the world, it had no grand pretensions about it. If a man couldn’t sell churan across the dustbowls of UP and Bihar, he didn’t rank high in Vijay Pratap Singh’s eyes. 

He was lying down on his berth on a sleeper bus, his least preferred mode of travel. He hated buses, especially overnight sleeper ones. They had garish lights inside and outside, and the berth and blankets smelt musty. A cramped space, curtained all-around to claustrophobic levels, and tinted glasses, all gave these buses a special flavour of hell. He wanted to avoid them at all costs, but was rarely successful. 

The trains were booked full weeks in advance as usual, and while he loved trains, his trips couldn’t be planned so far ahead as to score a confirmed reservation. He had a golden run for about four years, when Yadavji was posted at the reservation centre in Noida. He had once queued up an hour before the counter opened, and ran into Yadevji who had come early to smoke a cigarette and chew paan before the work began. They had started talking, and Yadavji, a lanky man in his late 40s had taken a shine to the salesman. He didn’t know how it happened, but after that he just texted his upcoming travel details to the booking clerk, sometimes at an absurdly short notice of a few hours, and Yadavji always had a confirmed ticket waiting for him. It was the most potent magic he had ever seen. 

The first time he had gone and collected his ticket, he walked straight out to the paan shop opposite and told the shopkeeper to never again charge Yadavji for paan and cigarettes. From time to time he would slip in an  envelope of cash to the booking clerk. Both of them treated it as a crass act of transaction between friends and were embarrassed to even participate in it. Vijay Pratap Singh, however, had realised long back that cash was the ultimate glue that kept friendships alive, made relationships last, and smoothed over life’s many minor and major annoyances. One day Yadavji was transferred, and no one mourned that more than the salesman who could travel across India at short notice. At their final parting, over a dinner of mutton and whisky at a dhaba, Yadavji left with one final piece of wisdom for the younger man, “Singhji, take care of yourself. Don’t let your family or wife eat you up. Be detached.”

He didn’t know what had prompted such a life lesson, but he immediately understood what Yadavji meant. Like millions, he was in a marriage that was neither happy nor sad; it was just a partnership of sorts, a limited one at that, for while he shared his life with another person, his deepest thoughts and desires, the contents of his heart, were all his. He shared physical intimacy, but he could hardly share his dreams with his wife; their life together was lived by rote, where the mundane and inconsequential acts of living had sucked all the air of possibilities. 

It was early morning when he reached. It was a small town like many others, nothing special about it, a hodge-podge of narrow streets and cattle, battery-operated rickshaws, and a mass of scooters and cars, a warren of small shops along its “main road”, often punctuated by a rare multi-storey building with blue-glass facades. The facades were the sole ode to modernity in the town, the lipstick on the pig of urban decay. As soon as he got down, he found Sunil standing at the bus’s door, a thermos in hand. 

“Sir, how are you,” he said.

“Sunil, there was no need to come, the hotel is right across.”

“I know, Sir. I was anyway out the whole night with the gau raksha dal, so thought why not see you before going home.”

“Did you catch anyone?”

“Almost did, but the bastard escaped. Later we learnt that they were taking the animals to Tarachand’s beef factory, so good only that he got away. You know Tarachand is Goyal Sahab’s cousin. Would have been a problem if we had thrashed the lorry driver. That’s the bloody problem, Tarachand’s company is called Al-Nafisa exports, how are we to always remember it is a Hindu company?” said Sunil. 

“Yaar, sell our maal, make money, and forget about all this nonsense. Tarachand is rolling in cash, and here you are burning petrol all night to catch some cattle. Tell me, one day these cows and buffaloes will die on the streets. It is better that Tarachand butchers them and exports the meat before that happens.”

Sunil opened his saffron gamcha, gave it a vigorous shake and wrapped it around his shoulders.

“Sir,” he said with an embarrassed smile, “This is an old Hindu-Muslim thing. Forget about it. See, I got hot tea for you from the railway station.”

“Let me check-in at the hotel first. And Sunil, Vaidji says Ayurveda considers buffalo meat as an aphrodisiac and good for building muscle. Also, buffalo urine is used to treat skin diseases and even haemorrhoids. So you should become a gau bhakshak instead of rakshak.”

Both of them laughed as they walked across to Alka Hotel. “This Vaidji will get us killed one day. What will happen to all the saffron militants if this is known? Maybe all the vaids should get together and issue a poster on the benefits of buffalo meat. That may solve the gau raksha problem only,” said Sunil. 

Vaidji looked like a Vaidji. He was dressed in dhoti and kurta, had a long red tilak on his forehead, a longer white beard, and from a shed in Greater Noida he manufactured various kinds of Ayurvedic medicine, and nutraceuticals. Vaidji had for years worked as a clerk in a courier company, while he knocked up various formulations from a makeshift room at the terrace of the house he had inherited from his father. One day Vaidji ran into Rajat Maheswari, a wholesale grain dealer, at the pharmacy. Maheshwari believed only in traditional medicine, and aimed to treat everything from his morbid obesity, diabetes, back spasms, to a weak libido by the various potions and tonics he bought from the Ayurvedic shop. In Vaidji, he saw his own personal physician, and later his own company. They had gone into business together 10 years ago, with Coughjeet, a disgusting green and bitter syrup that treated productive cough. Coughjeet was a failure for two years, unsold bottles littered the shed and Maheswari was staring at a loss of 20 lakhs. 

That’s when he poached Vijay Pratap Singh from a bigger company and made him head of sales. That was Maheshwari's only inspired business act, otherwise he was a penny-pincher always lost in unimportant details. He had offered Vijay a hefty hike, and bought him a second-hand car and later even hired a driver for him. In less than a decade, Vijay had made a success of the company, clocking sales of ₹120 crore last year. He had an army of salesmen across north India, his boys as he called them, and through them he sold whatever cure Vaidji conjured. 

Vijay showered in the hotel and quickly changed to meet Sunil downstairs. He had carried with him samples of Coughjeet+, “new and improved farmula” that was pricier than the regular version. To the best of his knowledge, it was the same syrup, just made more bitter. He had asked Vaidji for a new product, and the old man had come up with this in two days. There was no testing; none of their products were ever tested. Hundreds of thousands of his customers just consumed them based on vibes and belief. Vijay often marvelled at this blind trust: why would someone just trust a label? He had figured out that anything wrapped within words like “natural”, “herbal”, “Ayurvedic” automatically elicited trust that evidence-based modern medicine didn’t. While one had detailed protocols and published history, the other just had the weight of ancient wisdom behind it. As far as Vijay was concerned, his products were an easy sell, for this country lived in the past. If people believed everything good and miraculous had already happened 2,000 years ago, then why would they not imbibe Coughjeet which was claimed to have been discovered by rishis in the forests in a time before history. 

“Sunil, this is the new Coughjeet, we will use this carton for sampling and feedback. Give 10 bottles each to all the boys and tell them that it will cure cough and cold faster than the regular one.Vaidji has come up with a new formula.”

“Sir, I will try this on my son first. He has had a bad cough for a week now. You know these doctors will just write half a dozen medicines and take hundreds of rupees as fees.”

He wanted to stop him from doing so, but then what kind of a salesman he would be if he showed lack of faith in his own product. 

“What’s the plan for today? Are we meeting Goyal sahab? He has to clear ₹10 lakh in dues. Maheshwari Seth is losing his mind over this,” Vijay said as he felt the satisfaction a hot cup of strong chai can evoke. 

“Yes, I have asked him many times, but he keeps delaying. I think he has some money problems. One of his staff was saying something about a new investment that hasn’t worked out. He is our main distributor in the district, I don’t think we can go hard on him.”

After they drank the tea, Vijay rode pillion with Sunil to Goyal Sahab’s shop. Goyal “Enterprises, Distributors and Stockists, Since 1979,” said the deep-blue board above the shop. Pritam Goyal was sitting at the counter, bespectacled and silver-haired, looking more respectable than he deserved.

They talked about politics, family, war in the Middle East and everything else for half an hour, before Vijay cleared his throat and said, “Goyal Sahab, some payment is pending.”

Goyal went quiet for a long time, making everyone uneasy around him. He finally said, “Vijayji, come inside and let’s talk in private.”

Vijay gestured Sunil to stay and followed Goyal to his small office inside the shop. This was only his second time here, the first was when he had offered to sign up Goyal as a distributor for a new brand of Ayurveda medicines. He had offered unlimited credit, and 20 per cent more in margin on sales. Goyal hadn’t heard of Coughjeet, then the sole product.

As they took their seats, Goyal said, “You have to agree that I have been good for you and your company. I distributed your products before anyone else would even touch it. Every year I exceed your targets. So don’t look at me like I am a fraud.”

“You are right, Goyal Sahab. But I am not looking like that. I didn’t come here to collect money, in fact I want you to distribute Coughjeet+ our new premium product. You have to agree, though, that the amount due is quite big, and we allow you the longest credit time in the market.

“You are like an elder brother, tell me how can I help you?”

Goyal sighed. “I don’t know how to say it. You know Tarachand, my aunt’s son owns Al-Nafisa Exports. He sells frozen buffalo meat in Vietnam. He has made so much money. Last year at his son’s wedding, he hired three helicopters for the baraat. He told me to invest in his buffalo farm and promised to double my money in 10 months.”

Vijay stared at him. 

“The farm is inside the factory campus only. I had to buy old buffaloes and pay for my share of the lease in the factory land. From all over north India, I bought nearly 100 buffaloes. I was doing it for the first time, and we are vegetarian people also, so I didn’t know what I was buying. Now I have all these buffaloes who are either too old or too sick to be slaughtered and I have lost 50 lakh. My cousin says that we could use more than half the buffaloes if they were treated by a doctor. But no private veterinary doctors are here, and the government ones have said they can’t go to cow slaughter factories. What do I do now?”

Vijay smelled an opportunity. He said, “You wait here and let me make a few calls.”

He stepped out of the shop, told Sunil to stay put in the front, and called Vaidji. 

“Vaidji, this is important. Our stockist has 100 buffaloes that were bought for slaughter. Now the slaughterhouse says they are too weak and sick to be killed. Is there anything we can do? Do you have something that will work on buffaloes?”

Vaidji went silent for a while, as Vijay held the line.

Vaidji looked around the shed, where various medicines were under production. He hadn’t thought about drugs for animals yet. But how difficult could it be? These buffaloes just needed to be healthy enough to be killed. I could just combine big doses of common antibiotics and steroids and put them in an ethanol solution, he thought. That should do the trick. He could call it Hercules+. He saw another Coughjeet in the making. 

“Yes, our ancient texts talk about taking care of animals, too, through medicinal herbs and ground bone dust, etc. I have a few things that I can put together that should work. Our ancient rishi-munis thought of everything. Give me a week and I can produce enough medicine for 100 head of cattle. I will do a special puja in the evening before I start on this.”

Vijay was elated. “I will get an advance order for the rest of the year, double the price of Coughjeet.” 

Later that night, he was sitting in Anarkali Bar with his boys. They had eaten and drunk their way since evening. He was waxing on the art of the sale, and impressing his team by flaunting them his iPhone. 

“I will buy the sales leader this year a brand new iPhone as a gift,” he said. “Hercules+ will double our sales. I want all of you to branch out to buffalo rearers and gaushalas, and tell them about our new product. Also, Sunil, give some money and booze to the gau rakshaks and tell them they can make some noise but not harm anyone. Everyone will be compensated. Peace will prevail, because money will pave its path.”

Everyone laughed aloud. Vaidji was in the shed, grinding packets and packets of antibiotics, a devilish grin on his face.