When Siddhartha came to the town, he was interested in Kamala. Kamala is austere and follows her beliefs and is proud of her role in society. In order for him to get to know Kamala, she told him that he must become equal to her and not seem like her servant. As a result, Siddhartha moved into Kamaswami’s house and started to work with business. Siddhartha’s attitude towards business was very bad though. He acted as if it was a game and did not really care about it. Siddhartha’s typical reaction to a bad business deal was imperturbable. “Oh well, this transaction has gone badly” (Hesse 67). He was more worried about making himself happy and was not avaricious in any way. He demonstrated that and also that he liked to satiation himself when Kamaswami asked him a question and he replied, “Certainly I have traveled for my pleasure” (Hesse 68). Kamaswami did not like Siddhartha’s bad attitude toward business and showed reproach, so in order to fix this, he decided to give Siddhartha a percentage of all the gains from each transaction. However, Siddhartha did not care about the money he was getting. He still decided to treat business as a game and nothing that Kamaswami does to change his attitude effects Siddhartha’s way of doing business.
One thing to think about while reading this novel is, why does learning about business not interest Siddhartha as much as the love her learns from Kamala, even though he knows that he can never fully love her and be with her?
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Siddhartha comes to town and meets Kamala, someone that he wants to learn from badly. She is austere in her ways of life and tells him he cannot learn from her unless he does not look like a Samana who came from the forest, looking like a peasant. Because he wants to learn from her so badly, he goes to live with Kamaswami, the merchant, who immediately starts teaching him about business. As Siddhartha becomes comfortable with the business, he starts getting the idea that it is not a big deal and uses it to help himself, and no one else. He uses the trips to please himself and worries only about the money, not about the people he is selling to and the things he is selling. To Kamaswami, that is not how business should be and tries to get Siddhartha involved by giving him some of the money, in hoping that that will make him see that there is a consequence to losing the money on silly gambling. However, this make Siddhartha keep doing it, and Kamaswami’s attempt is useless, because to Siddhartha, the gambling was indolent, and he had nothing to gain or lose from business.
Siddhartha has a very negative attitude towards business. Kamaswami tries to change Siddhartha's attitude by giving him some of his profit. When Kamaswami offers him some of his profit, Siddhartha just takes it and does not even care about it. He does not even want to spend it on nice clothes. Siddhartha is more worried about trying to capture the love of Kamala. If Siddhartha was more invovled in business maybe his head would not be so befuddled.
Siddhartha does not take business seriously. He learns the ways of business from Kamaswami, a man who is very serious about business and money. Siddhartha learns from him, but does not learn his attitude as well. He takes business like a game and does not see the importance that it has to other people. Kamaswami relies on Siddhartha to make buisness transactions, but Siddhartha does not care if the transaction is succssful or not. He uses the business trips for his own happiness and does not take it seriously. Kamaswami tries to make Siddhartha understand the reality of business. He even tries to bribe Siddhartha by offering him money for every transaction, but Siddhartha does not care about the money.
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