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The right shoeshine and smile got you jobs in these industries and gave you access to networks full of fellow-shoeshiners and smilers happy to do business with you. In some industries (share broking, wealth management, hospitality, travel and recruitment, to name a few) these skills continued to be valued well into the 2000s.

In post-Independent India, dominated as it was by British multinational companies, success in executive life meant having the right shoeshine (read, the right public school and Christian undergrad college and being a member of the right Gymkhana Club) and, of course, charm in dealing with the customer who was often a person with a similar 'shoeshine and smile' background.

Though the play was a tremendous hit in 1950s America and the rest of the world, the role of a salesman, with his characteristic 'smile and shoeshine' continued to be seen as the key to success in the commercial world. And when they start not smiling back - that's an earthquake.' He's man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. You don't understand: Willy was a salesman. He dreams of being a success with both wealth and freedom and believes that the key to this success is to be well-liked, but also believes that, unfortunately, people do not like him as much as he thinks is necessary to be a success.Д®ven a schoolboy like me was struck by the tragic ending, when Willy's friend Charlie eulogises at his funeral: 'Nobody dast blame this man. Its protagonist, Willy Loman, is 63 and a travelling salesman based in New York. I found my thoughts drifting to an American classic play that I had read in my high school days - Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Or is it because they feel that by making prospective customers like me go to their Web site they stand a better chance of increasing my desire to buy enough to make me actually place a trial order at least, if not the full order. Is it because they do not trust him not to make a mistake?

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