The men, dapper in their suits, dress shoes and cleanly shaven faces exchanged perplexed glances. 

In their midst stood a man, draped in a simple cotton waist cloth wrapped in a shawl that barely covered his frail upper body. His face was radiant, accentuated by the vibrant insignia of a vermilion streak flanked by two white streaks of limestone chalk that went parallel to the tip of his eyebrows, converging at the bridge of the forehead and extending down almost to the tip of his nose. He wore a rosary made of basil beads. The few that cared to take a good look at him also notices that he had no footwear on. The sentry told them he was the priest of a local temple.

"We were told you were here on important business," a member of the board broke the silence, "we have no ghosts to bust here." The others laughed at this wisecrack. The priest remained undaunted.

"I am sure there aren't any although I know skeletons keep tumbling from closets every once in a while in places such as these." Some groaned at the priests retort, while few others scowled. One or two had the grace to acknowledge his presence of mind. "I am here to tell you how to run your business. You need to bring your prices down. My son asked me to tell you that you need to open up your platform to other vendors if you need to stay alive, although I don't know what it means."

"So, good sir, you are here to tell us how to run our business. May we ask what made you think you are capable of that? We, here, collectively have hundreds of man years of experience in running organisations and deciding how they work. What makes you believe you are smarter than we are?" An irritated board member snapped at the priest.

"I bought a laptop that runs your operating system and I heard it makes up fifty percent of the cost of the laptop. And so I thought I had the right, if not the qualification to tell you what you ought to do."

"Ha! You buy one copy of our operating system and tell us how to do our job? We have dedicated our life to studying and practicing the science of writing and selling software and you have the cheek to tell us what we ought to do?"

"So, are you suggesting it is preposterous for a mere user, a priest to tell you experts how to do your job?" 

"Yes it is. Don't see you how absurd it is, sir?"

"Yes I do," said the priest, "and so, I request you to please drive that very point into the head of one Venugopal who is a member of this board. He has been trying to meddle with the running of many a temple and trying to tell us what we must do and what we must ditch. He comes to the temple once a week, drops a hundred rupee note into the offering box and then partakes of the food offered to the deity to more than make up for his offering. If that qualifies him to tell how we - who have dedicated our lives to studying the scriptures and ritual code, and to the upkeep of the temple  - must run the show, I am more than qualified to tell you how you should run your shop. Aren't I?" 

Saying so, the priest left without waiting for a response, hoping a bell would ring in the heads of some, if not all.