about a year ago, i was contacted by a guy in california about becoming a distributor for the Rudra Centre in india. he said the rudra centre doesn’t have any distributors in this area, so would hybrid elephant be interested in taking on the role. of course, i was, and i immediately added a page of rudraksha malas and other jewelry to the hybrid elephant pages, and bought 20 8mm malas with the expressed understanding that i would be ordering more product as i got orders.

earlier this month, i actually got my first order for something other than a rudraksha mala. i sent it in, and there was the previously reported SNAFU concerning it, which got worse before it got better, but was finally resolved last week. as a part of the afore mentioned SNAFU, i called the guy in california again, and he said that the problem was because i had ordered from the web site, and next time i should call him before ordering from the web site, because he can fill my orders much more quickly, and then i won’t have to pay the surcharge for ordering from india.

so, a few days ago, i decided that i would consider adding more of the rudra centre’s product, so i called the guy in california again. this time he said that i would have to order from the web site, and go through the home office in india, because he couldn’t fulfill my orders (!?!?!?). when i asked him why he told me that he could – last week – he said that he hadn’t said that, that he would never say that, and ms. neeta in the home office in india was the only person who could fill orders. so i wrote to ms. neeta. she didn’t respond (and yes, i know that they’re on the other side of the world, and 9:00 am my time is 4:00 pm tomorrow, or something like that, their time), so i called the guy in california again and he said that he would send ms. neeta a message as well. then he called me back, and said that ms. neeta had not received any email from me at all, and dictated exactly what i should send her, so that she would recognise it. that did the trick, and so i sent her a message that said that i had been a distributor for almost a year and i still wasn’t listed on their web site. she wrote back and said that i hadn’t ordered anything in over a year and my distributorship needed to be “reexamined”.

so i went to their web site again, and discovered that they actually have a distributorship agreement, which i have never seen. so i called the guy in california again, and he said that he doesn’t know anything about a “distributorship agreement”, he doesn’t have a “distributorship agreement”, and he’s the american representative for the company, and that ms. neeta would know everything about it, because she’s the president of the company. so i wrote to ms. neeta again, and asked her about this “distributorship agreement”, and she said that to be a distributor, i would have to generate orders of $500 or more per month, and i had only generated orders for less than $100 in the past year…

fortunately, i didn’t do what my brain-injured, massively-depressed first inclination was, which was to write back and say something along the lines of “well, in that case, i’ll find someone who does want to do business with me, like that guy who wrote to me, asking if i wanted to be a distributor for his (bogus) rudraksha business, which is right down the street from you in mumbai” (even though i’m fairly sure, from independent research, that this other guy probably sells fake rudrakshas, i’m sure he must be major competition for the rudra centre), but at the same time, now i don’t know whether i am a distributor or not, and i’m not sure if i’m “allowed” to list their products on my web site, and even if i am, i’m not sure whether i really want to or not any longer. naturally, i haven’t heard anything from the guy in california, who i found out (once again, from my own research) is “a ‘sidha^®‘ trained in TM meditation”, which i know to be the worst kind of bogus – and the fact that he is a “trained sidha^®” means that he must be at least partially aware of how bogus it really is, especially if “he has deep knowledge on Hindu religion and has read various scriptures” as the web page says he does…