Have you ever felt inadequate or incompetent when you walked into a room full of experts and felt those countless eyes are gauging your each move and waiting for you to make that one wrong move so that they can quietly have a hearty laugh at your expense?

I feel that every Monday, each time I visit the sabzi mandi (Vegetable market). Yes you read it right, it’s not any conference, review meeting or seminar. There, I can bluff my way through. However, I just feel so out of place, each time I have to go buy vegetables or fruits. It’s not because of anyone’s body-language or that someone has passed any remarks, but, ok let me just spill the beans; I do not know how to choose vegetables or fruits.

I cannot decipher if the vegetables or fruits are of the right quality. It amazes me, how men or women can just by the smell know if a musk melon is sweet, or by the weight of a brinjal know that there aren’t too many seeds. They would be able to fine pick good sponge gourd from a stack of slightly marred ones. Well, whereas for me, I would do the exact opposite; trust me to pick the wrong ones from any assortment of fresh vegetables. I’m just unable to get it right, even if my life depended on it. It’s not as if I have not made attempts to learn it. I’ve gone through YouTube tutorials, made calls to my dad in Mumbai to know how to pick round gourd (tinda), but I still seem to struggle. 

In the 14 years of marriage, I had smartly delegated this responsibility to my husband without him getting a hint of my insecurity. And, now that I am on a sabbatical and he is extremely busy, I have had to take up this task. Till such time my parents were visiting us, I would nudge my dad to come along and he would sweetly oblige:-).

Well, I could no longer let my insecurity come in the way of smooth running of my house. So I followed the advice of a wise man, ‘Fake it, till you make it!’

At the mandi, I used my two decades of work experience. After a well-designed screening process, I’ve identified two fixed vendors in the enormous line of vegetable and fruit vendors. Given them a download of their KPI (Key Performance Indicators) metrics and now I’m sorted.

I simply go to them and tell them what all I need; I let them choose, measure and pack, while I act as if I’m keeping a close quality watch on the things they are packing for me. Whereas, to tell you the truth, I have no clue:-).