The advantages of knowing Tamil30
Sometimes when I speak Tamil, it is all wrong, but the owners of one store in Singapore were very pleased with my Tamil.I wanted to buy something, so I asked, “Can you not reduce the price?”
They said, “Of course we shall reduce it.”
They reduced it and I asked, “You won’t reduce it any more?”
They said, “Oh, no, no!”
Then an elderly lady, the aunt, said, “If you can say correctly the total price in Tamil, then we shall reduce it more.”
I was very happy and I said the price correctly. So when the total figure came, the old lady said to reduce it by three Singapore dollars.
The younger one, who was around 14 or 15 years old, said, “No, Auntie, he speaks Tamil, so please give him a five dollar reduction.”
So I got a five dollar reduction by knowing Tamil.
LS 203. 28 December 1988↩
Sri Chinmoy, I love shopping, part 5, Agni Press, 1994
