"I was telling my husband since a long time what a nice pattern your dress has. Where did you buy it from?"

"Thanks. I got it from Marshals"

"Really? I must check that out. You seem to have come here recently."

"Oh yes..."

They introduced themselves and I introduced myself. While we were talking one of my friends came over looking for me. There was a fresh round of introductions and then they left.

"Do you know them?" asked my friend.

"No. I met them for the first time. That guy even gave me his phone number and address so I could contact them if I needed any help. It was really nice of them to come and talk to a stranger like that. Don't you think so?"

"I don't think so and you don't go along thinking so either. I am sure I have a pretty good idea of who they are."

"But you asked for their name. How could you know them?"

"I can only hope that you did not give them your address or telephone number"

"Of course not. Do you think that I was born yesterday?"

I was getting an idea of what Dr. Watson must have felt like when Sherlock Holmes would ask for his opinion without giving away what was on his mind.

"Listen ... what is going on? I would be much obliged if Your Excellency would shed some light on this mysterious affair. Have you solved the case then?" I asked in a mocking tone of Dr. Watson.

My friend gave a smile of The Enlightened One. "My Child!! They were The Amway People"

"And what in the world is this Amway?"

"Oh... I could spend the whole evening lecturing you about it. But I will tell you about it all in a nutshell. As far as I know they make a large number of products for daily use like Skin care products, toothpastes, soaps and vitamins. If you decide to join them, you are sponsored by another distributor and you obtain their Business kit containing their products and some documentation that they for some reason refer to as "Literature" so you can go and find some other gullible victims. If these people decide to buy these products they become your customers. You can sponsor other people to become Amway distributors and they can in turn sponsor more. The more distributors in your chain, the more you earn. That is the basic concept."

"So what's wrong with that? Seems a nice enough business to me."

"The catch is that pretty much everyone knows about it here so you will have a hard time finding people to join. If you had joined it earlier, it might have been a financially beneficial venture but now all the advantage is for the people who are already up in the pyramid."

"Hmm... pretty interesting"

"You don't believe me?"

"Come on!! Give them a benefit of doubt. It's just your suspicion that they might be from Amway. They very well could be just another nice couple next door. This is all just a circumstantial evidence, Your Honor"

"If I know you, I am sure you are dying to go to one of their meetings and to find it out for yourself, right?"

"Right you are Sir. Let me call this guy sometime next week"

And so I did. My friend was proven right when the lady - lets call her Mrs. X - casually asked me what I was doing coming Friday evening. When I mentioned that I did not have any plan in particular I was invited to a little business gathering at their place.

Come Friday evening and I walked into their living room full of people - most of them were couples but I could spot a few bachelors -'Gullible Victims' as my friend had called them - like me. Most of them were from software field. Though I had expected something like this, I must confess that I was a little puzzled on seeing a white drawing board in the center of the room.

The meeting started by acknowledging that there were a few people in the room who were not familiar with the organization and giving them an idea about the whole thing. MacDonald's franchise was cited as a similar example of this idea. As the evening progressed I could see that my friend was right about the whole thing to the last syllable.

Mrs. X was sitting next to me and I asked her how often do these meetings take place. "We have them every weekend. Our whole friend circle is into Amway"

'Oh Boy!! This is not my cuppa tea!!' I was busy thinking about an escape route out of this meeting when it was declared that today's lecture would be on a vitamin that was part of Amway products.

A Lecture? I had thought that I was way past lectures and notes the day I graduated from college. What in the world was happening?

A guy came from the back of the room and started talking about the medicinal powers of a vitamin of a particularly tongue-twisting name. By the time he finished his yarn, I was ready to drop dead. I had visions of my place becoming a scene of such meetings every weekend and I could not think of having a friend circle full of people who would not talk anything but Amway.

The speaker was joined on the "podium" by his better half who too was supposed to say a few words.

"I do not know exactly what is in these capsules but we take it every day because it is Amway Product"

I am prepared to swear on anything that these were the lady's exact words. I do not know if they were meant to inspire the Amway Team present to sell more of it but I was shocked beyond belief at that confession. It maybe that we don't know what goes into many of the medicines that we take but we have our Friendly Neighborhood Doctor's prescription recommending it. But that anyone could consume anything without knowing anything about what goes into its preparation and that too without any malady was simply beyond me.

As I started to leave at the end of the meeting, I was approached by Mr. And Mrs.X.

"I hope you found the meeting interesting"

"Oh yes ... it was very enlightening."

"I will call you for the next one. You can leave your contact number with me if you like"

"By all means. But I am moving to a new apartment next week so I will myself call to leave my new number with you. You see, I don't have a phone in the office." I said keeping as innocent face as possible.

"So how was the meeting on the weekend?" my friend asked me when I called him the next day. "Hope you heard about how McDonald's was started"

"Don't you talk to me about French Fries or Chicken Nuggets for at least a month"