NACHIAPPAN

People who have watched Pithamagan movie will definitely remember how Surya and his gang do auctioning in train. I saw it live, yeah I did. I was travelling to Mysore from Bangalore on a Saturday morning, climate was not hot, heavy traffic as expected on Saturdays. Once the bus crossed the city, a fat guy with thin beard started walking to the middle of the bus and stood in the middle of the bus for close to five minutes. Then slowly he started talking about auctioning, how it works and what is his agenda for the day. Even though he conveyed the entire message in Kannada I was able to understand, believe me . The scene was exactly how Bala had portrayed in his movie Pithamagan. The guy started with a small blanket, and the starting price was Rs.30, people started bidding, a lady directly jumped to Rs50, then people started raising the price slowly to Rs55, Rs70 and finally it was sold out for Rs150. The way auction was conducted by the guy was amazing, he was able to convince people of the good quality of the blanket, what was the original price and how much will they save by buying it here. I believe the sheer reason for the increase of selling price from Rs30 to Rs150 is because his communication skills. He also had an assistant, auctioning was the main guys work, the assistant helped him in collecting money, getting out new items for auction. Once an item is sold out every one who had bid for the item gets a prize (consolation kind of). People got pens, notepads etc – remember Surya giving out a soap box saying “Alayamani padathula abhinaya saraswathi, kannadathu payankilli SarojaDevi payan paduthuna soapu dappa” . This auction went for the next few hours, for the first few minutes I was keenly observing everyone involved in the auction, the fat guy selling, his assistants, people bidding, was pretty interesting. Any interesting incident after few minutes will lose its importance, this was no exception, I opened my laptop and got my head into “Megamind” movie, by the time movie ended all the auction was over and the guys disappeared.