Concord Business Centre

Yes, 4th block. Jayanagar 4th Block. Printo at 9th Block, which has become the one-stop-point to get digital printouts had a non-functioning colour printer on the day I desperately needed to get some prints as a surprise for my mother on her birthday. So, I called my one-stop-person for all questions on Jayanagar- Sonia Jose- and she directed me to another place. I eventually ended up at a place I thought had long disappeared (and not the place Sonia recommended). Concord Business Centre. They are no longer near the Jain temple. They are on the road that connects the former RV Dental College to the Nanda Talkies road. Turns out to be a far more entertaining and intriguing set-up than what I remember of the old place. That manager-uncle has all kinds of things hung up on his walls ranging from religious icons and divinity to motivational posters to photographs of Jaggi Vasudev and Sir. M. Visveswaraiah. They certainly hope to please all. I sat on the sofa in the foyer waiting with slight impatience to be asked for my pen-drive. My eyes kept wandering through the place. On one corner was a small 4 ft standee with a little notice printed on A4 paper, framed neatly on top of the standee. It said something on the lines of: “Please do not bring us requests to modify your marks-sheets and degree certificates. We do not believe in undertaking such tasks. You may not be happy with us today if we refuse your request but you will understand our position many years from now. It is our principle to not partake in these malpractices”. Then a lady who just got her printing job completed stepped out for a minute only to walk back in on a second thought asking, “Uncle, nim hathra vangibath pudi idhiyaa?”; and he pointed her to a small table positioned quite centrally near the partition of the printing units and computer systems. There were about half a dozen plastic dabbas each labelled “Sambhar powder”, “Vangibath powder”, “Rasam powder”, etc. She opened the appropriate box and helped herself to one of the sealed packets inside. Subsequently I noticed a couple of other people who walked into the Business Centre to help themselves to other masalas from the table and every time any of them opened the dabbas, the entire place would be washed over with an aroma of spices. Not far from this dabba-table was a book-stand with Kannada books. The stand had a notice that from afar read “Books for Sale” but when I went closer, there was the word “NOT” written in pencil between “for” and “Sale”.  I read one of the Kannada titles : “Laif ees byutiful”, and another read “Ai em yu”. Right behind the bookstand was a notice board on the wall. One of the things pinned up was what I understood to be a promotional card for the masala dabbas on the table- “D N Condiments” (if I remember the name right). Another small poster was an advertisement for the other “manager uncle” whom I saw sitting in the inner room that was in view from the foyer. I somehow assumed that he might have been a business-partner/ finance manager. The poster however portrayed him as a mentor for Personality Development ranging from “Confidence boosting” to all those other phrases that are so hard to remember when it comes to building a strong personality. Just when I began to think that this place couldn’t get more quirky, I sat down in the foyer waiting for my prints and picked up what looked like a boring college/ university publication- something from a medical college of Kolar university. A random page that I opened had listed academic papers and their abstracts in brief. One of the paper’s titles went something like this: “How to educate diabetic patients in buying the right footwear”, and another was something like “The effects of Selfies on the performance of… (some category of people)”; all this interspersed by other serious academic papers about pulmonary heart conditions and their various sub-complications. I actually couldn’t put that journal down, every title was fascinating in its most boringly presented schema. I was very tempted to talk to the manager-uncle and ask him more about all these details in his “Business Centre”, take a few photos and record the experience. But the cloudy weather, cool breeze and partially busy street in the residential locality just left me in a state of inertia; to experience this odd and quirky world of a printing centre that I had rediscovered. I was afraid that I would miss something in my zest to record anything, even in a few moments of taking my eye away from absorbing as much as I could of what was going on. As for my digital prints, they were just perfect!