By the time they settled down it was already early evening, Madan alongside Karan left to meet with some of their family friends meanwhile Arjun was busy organizing his thoughts on how to go about the purchase and tried his hardest to remember everything he knew from his past life about the current circumstances in town.
Vijayawada was in very turbulent times right now, their beloved faction leader and local legislative representative being brutally murdered did not help the cause in any manner. Riots were rampant and with both the ruling party and local parties both being involved in the turmoil police were left helpless. These disastrous events were documented very well and most of Arjun's knowledge about these events came from the couple of movies that were released later on in his life. In his previous life he did not even know about such issues until much later.
According to what he had read in a later report the total cumulative damage was over 250 crores in the entire town of Vijayawada. Now all Arjun could hope was the printing press facilities were left undamaged but hope for this was quite low, the other best possible outcome was to purchase a minimally damaged one and repair it. Considering his purchase power buying a new one was almost impossible.
As he was contemplating this Bhargav finished freshening up and they both left to have a trip to local market for having a look around while also trying to check for the amount of damage done to the local facilities. They planned to visit the famous local temple the other day.
The local market too although bustling was filled with signs of destructions and with random people shouting at others from time to time. It felt like everyone was quite apprehensive about the upcoming days or months, Arjun was finally starting to get a good grasp of current situation.
It was quite late by the time they returned to their hotel. Karan and his father had not yet returned so they decided to get done with their supper and retire early to prepare for the upcoming hectic day. As they were walking to the in hotel restaurant they could hear high pitched noises coming from the restaurant main desk. Arjun curios and also hearing bits of Russian lead Bhargav alongside him towards the noises.
As they neared the desk Bhargav could notice a white haired guy shouting his mouth off at the guy behind counter in a language he could not understand while the receptionist was in the same situation as him and could only apologize profusely in his broken bits of English and Telugu which of course the other guy could not make sense of either. Then from the corner of his eye he could notice Arjun making his way towards the Russian guy.
Arjun who although not proficient in Russian could speak it to an extent, owing to his past life experiences went ahead and spoke to the guy in trying to diffuse the situation. After listening to them for a while he began to realize the situation. The Russian whose name was Vladimir a pretty typical Russian name was appalled at people having food with their hands was disgusted and assumed these people were deliberately trying to disgust him and so he had come over to question things. Since nobody around even knew a hint of Russian they were having quite the trouble understanding the tall guy and felt they had done something terribly wrong to piss of a foreign man.
Arjun slowly walked towards Vladimir and greeted him in Russian which finally managed to catch his eyes. He motioned for Arjun to come closer and once they were done with the introductions he explained his problem. Arjun although aware of his issues had enough patience to lend an ear to the guy who was already running on thin threads of patience. Once he was done Arjun very calmly explained about Indian customs of eating rice with their right hand and explained the situation to the worker nearby. Upon learning about the small issue they immediately offered to provide cutlery to the white man.
Arjun finally relieved about the dissolving tension said the same to Vladimir about the staff's offer to bring cutlery and Vladimir was finally satisfied with the outcome. But he was quite curios how this 10 year old kid learned to speak Russian in such a place, unbeknownst to him Bhargav had the same question in his mind, How come this kid know so many languages and that too with such proficiency, today morning it was English and now it was Russian, would he start speaking some alien language tomorrow?. Vladimir although curios managed to retain his interest and did not forget his etiquette to invite these both who had helped him resolve this issue to join him for the dinner to which Arjun had happily obliged and took Bhargav along. How could he say no to free dinner after all.
As they got seated Arjun helped Vladimir pick the dishes which were not so spicy and were more suited towards European tastes while also not forgetting to include couple of dishes for both Bhargav and himself. Once done he started enquiring Vladimir about the purpose of his visit as a Russian guy especially one with such etiquette were quite a rare site to see in these areas of the world. through their conversation he had come to learn that Vladimir was here on a business trip to gather local specialities like red chili powder, some long lasting Indian sweets and pickles to take back and sell in Russia. He learned that Vladimir was touring India for this purpose and had already bought considerable sum of exportable goods which were now currently stored in a storehouse in Delhi.
Arjun was very much surprised upon learning that such businesses were still profitable but thinking deeply he began to realize India prior to and even for a couple years after liberalization was a gold mine to these Europeans who were already starved dry due to the lack of their colonial imports which had largely shaped the global scene until late 1950's. Vladimir who was already happy for finding someone whom he could finally converse with asked Arjun for his assistance in procuring the products he needed. Arjun although wanting to take up on the offer spoke with Bhargav for a while about upcoming day's itinerary and upon coming to the conclusion that they would be done by the afternoon offered to Vladimir that accompany him if it was after the noon. Vladimir gladly accepted the proposed schedule and they started discussing other daily matters such as his daily life in India so far and so on.
Once done with their dinner Arjun and Bhargav bid farewell to Vladimir and returned to their room. Bhargav upon returning started bombarding Arjun with all sorts of questions like Where did you learn to speak Russian and why? what are you going to do tomorrow while accompanying that white guy and so on. Arjun quickly covered up saying he only knew bits and pieces of Russian and that too were learned from hearing to some Russian news actors, couple Russian books and a Russian dictionary in their home. Bhargav although skeptical could only stop asking these questions and reasoned with himself that perhaps this was how geniuses were. After all managing to make thirty thousand rupees off of Madan was not an everyday occurrence after all, especially while the guy in question being a 10 year old boy. Arjun's first day to Vijayawada which was quite eventful finally ended and he slept quite early wanting to get up early to plan for his purchase of the small scale printing press.