4 out of 5

“Guerilla Marketing” sucks.  …No, not the story itself, which is enfaging in its cant-look-away quality and appropriately crushing in its lead’s – H1 visa worker Vikram – personability, but in the way it depicts an experience which we must fear to be true for some, if not many.

 At a high level, this is a snapshot of the shitty work-for-scraps experience of some people, specifically the aforementioned work-for-citizenship class, trapped in a cycle of cultural servitude, pinging between jobs run by those too familiar with people in his financial / family situation and happy to exploit it, “asking” for double shifts every day, “providing” housing in the form of cramped, broken apartments, and generally viewing work effort as a commodity.  The financial / family situation may be cast, as suggested, in a cultural lens here (the cast being of various Indian descent), but the reason Guerilla Marketing is effective is because of the way it extends the experience to our realm of understanding: Vikram is a man trying to, essentially, maintain respect for himself in a world dictated, to some extent, by chance.  Men and women with less scruples and less education than his accounting degree are somehow driving around in big cars and sitting on money, while Vikram is practically homeless.  Yes, there are cultural affectations littering Vikram’s story, for sure, but I think what separates this from other similar tales is the way it downplays that, in a sense: Vikram and his similarly over worked flatmates talk back and forth with the kind of coarse chatter friends use, swapping out the Indian aspect for scenarios recognizable from any kind chuckle chuckle banter sitcom.  But the background ain’t chuckle-worthy.  So again, I go back to noting the frightening sense of believability to this tale.

 If there’s an aspect I don’t understand, though – and admittedly this might just be more telling of my reading tastes – it’s that I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do with this story.  Not that any given piece of work has to tick off action items, but in a longer firm, Guerilla might serve as a deep dive into a variation on the human condition.  In short story format, it’s limited to just that: A short story.  Author Sanjay Agnihotri makes a slight fiction-telling concession in his tale by dangling some half-known info about Vikram before later revealing the details, and this sort of underlines what I mean: bereft of a definable or semi-definable intention, this plot detail floats out there, rather pointless, as it feels like it’s just stuffed in for unnecessary intrigue.

That being said, perhaps a short story is the ideal place for the cloudy-intentioned tale: I know I’ll certainly be looking at the next family-run shop I see and wondering how closely its staff aligns with what I’ve read here.

…And then go back to my warm apartment and probably read comics.  I’ve learned so much?