Loyalty Bonus

During my training as a salesperson, the focus was always on the mindshare of the pie-holder. Either we adorned to grab the eyeballs or bowed for the footfalls. Customer Lifetime value was injected in our blood and soul. Ages seem to have passed between then and now. The hitherto sought after loyalty and the lifetime have squeezed in timescale, it seems.

In Scent of a Woman, the Academy Award winner for best acting Al Pacino, portraying as a blind retired Army officer invites Donna, a young woman waiting for her date for a dance. Upon her reply that her date would be arriving in few minutes, the Colonel asserts, famously now, “Life can be lived in an instant”. A spectacular tango followed thereafter on the dance floor.

The floors are now everywhere. Opportunity has become the new ‘life’, and being explored every instant. This loyalty salsa or the opposite thereof is widespread - the suppressed coup in Turkey, the agitated Kashmir, political cauldron in Delhi, the newest form of password by an anciently named bank. The messiahs and the masses - all are eyeing for share of the pie. With battles aplenty, the war is on. Loyalty, now, is being lived (or leveraged) every instant!

The happenings around us have raised doubts about whether it should still be taught as an eternal virtue. I have grown up with a notion of belongingness to one’s family, culture and country. Amidst these teachings, doses of great Indian philosophy Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is my home) were also imparted.

When the governments (nee MLAs, nee public representatives) can change allegiance overnight, when a swashbuckling cricketer turned politician turned rebel again turned presidential nominee and again turned rebel swaps parties, when players shift from one team to another every IPL season, when a classical singer starts humming on orchestra and drums, when popular figures are oscillating with their marital ties, then how do we answer the question of lifetime belongingness. When the leaders are donning different robes daily, the followers are bound to fumble and look stupefied.

Masses follow the messiahs. And with so many Godmen, more so!

The span of loyalty - the act of binding yourself intellectually or emotionally to a course of action, as defined – has evolved. High fidelity (Hi-fi) is being masked by Wireless fidelity (Wi-fi). With no strings attached, we are apparently graduating to a newer environment where the permanence in any affair is going to be history. Clarion, perhaps, needs to be blown to seek reworking of certain definitions in what is a stark shift from loyalty bonus to a loyalty (R)evolution in the “Modern Times”.