Arjun remembered how proud Madan felt upon noticing him making a mistake while allocating allowances to students and teachers. He did not want to make another similar mistake especially when all of his money was already poured into the printing press.
Arjun sat at the nearby beach observing the setting sun lost in his thoughts. By the time sun was at the end of horizon he felt someone tugging at him.
Sari who was now in her casual clothing was pulling at Arjun's shirt "Anna what are you doing here? Dad and Mom were worried that you had yet to return home".
He returned to his home together with his sister and rest of the evening passed on normally. The next evening Arjun took a trip to Karan's house to meet up with Bhargav and enquire about his next visit to Vijayawada.
Bhargav mentioned that he would be visiting the town in the next day as it was the weekend and he had some stuff to handle for Madan. Arjun informed Bhargav about his needs of a thermostat that could be used in chemistry lab environment and handed him thousand rupees. He also asked him to acquire some beakers and other chemistry lab equipment if there was any remaining change.
Bhargav accepted the cash and enquired why do you need a thermostat for Arjun? did you come up with something interesting again? to which Arjun denied politely, "It's not that anna, I have a senior in my school who wanted it so i am helping him acquire it".
Bhargav who was already acquitted with Arjun for a while now sensed that things might not be so simple, but whatever he would soon come to know of it if it was worthy of his recognition. In their small village where everyone was a tightly knit community no news could be hidden forever. Especially if it was related to Arjun as he was regarded very highly among the populous.
Bhargav returned by the next day evening and handed him thermostat he wanted and explained this costed him nine hundred and sixty rupees and there was not much change left to purchase any other lab materials. Arjun then proceeded towards Shiva Ram's house.
When Shiva Ram noticed Arjun near his house he quickly ran towards him and greeted Arjun, "What is it Arjun, do you have something to say?". Arjun then handed him the thermostat, "would this suit your requirements or do you need something of better quality?".
Shiva Ram who had only seen this kind of equipment in some chemistry magazines felt this was too costly of equipment to be wasted on his small scale experiments. "No Arjun actually this is too much, what i wanted was a small scale thermostat but this is one is normally used in industry scale labs".
Arjun : "If it's useful it's enough, i was afraid it would not meet your needs so ordered the best one that was available".
Shiva Ram : "Thank you Arjun, i don't know how to repay for this. If my parents knew about it's cost they would probably never allow me to operate it".
Arjun : "Ha ha ha, well maybe don't mention it's price to then".
The next day which was also Monday Venkateshwar Rao wanted Arjun to visit the staff room once the school hours were done. When Arjun went to the staff room in the evening he could sense the excitement in the room.
Noticing him Venkateshwar Rao gathered the finished versions of the material after proofreading and handed them to Arjun. Arjun was very happy with the material being finished ahead of schedule. He asked whether the head master would help in doing the proofreading for the final version of the assembled All in One before it would be printed.
The head master was very willing to handle this task, he also mentioned he would do it without the need for any monetary compensation too.
Arjun was satisfied with the promise. Offering compensation to a person who was in such positions would be derogatory. Their school being mentioned in the book would be more beneficial to the guy than any amount of money.
What surprised Arjun though was the kids whom he had commissioned for proofreading the question and answer sheets were waiting for him outside the staff room. When they handed him the final versions of these assembled into a book but divided by subjects and another stack of pages which they explained were the facts and puzzles Arjun wanted, he was double happy.
He then took them towards Karan's home where he met up with Bhargav and handed the kids the amount he had promised them earlier. Most of these kids who had never had over ten rupees with them suddenly receiving over thousand rupees proceeded to the nearby general store to have a small cola party and made Arjun join the celebration too. The money he had promised to teachers were already handed to head master who would take care of this matter.
Arjun then handed the facts material and finished All in One material to Kavitha who remarked she would be done with assembling the preliminary version of All in One within next couple of days.
Arjun then proceeded towards the P.K Printing press where he could notice the father and son duo being immersed in some discussion while the other two workers stood by the side not interfering.
Noticing Arjun approaching them, They shut their mouth and embarrassingly turned towards Arjun who did not mind the commotion. He then handed the Question and Answer books to them and wanted them to start the production for these. For start he wanted them to produce twenty thousand copies of previous year questions book and ten thousand copies of Answer books.
Arjun reasoned people would be more inclined towards purchasing the question paper books more than answer books. They would probably share the answers book among themselves while question books could be sold in more volume.
Kavitha had already designed the cover pages for both of them. Even though it was nothing extraordinary looking, it was still far ahead of current times with attractive looking colored covers with their logo printed on them.
Mallesh who took the final versions of the two books remarked that they were very well designed and would be very suitable for current demographic of kids.
The father and son duo who were usually bickering all the time started working seriously and started scowling at the idle workers to start moving.
Arjun happy with their work ethics left them to it. Now he had to start thinking about sales of these books. He could approach distributors for selling these couple of question and answer books but considering this would be their first cooperation expected there to be some hurdles along the way.
All in One on the other hand required more thought. If he sold them in the usual stationary shops he did not expect them to have considerable amount of sales. Especially with this being a new book not many would be willing to give their shelf space for free.
Arjun did not want to pay for this and wanted to find some other ways to deal with this.
The next day Kavitha handed him the preliminary version of the assembled All in One who then handed the same to the head master for final proofreading. He requested Venkateshwar Rao to get this done as quickly as possible who gladly obliged.
Arjun was slowly starting to realize that proofreading a single book took more time than actually assembling and writing the material. Perhaps he needs to take this more into account in his future ventures, Arjun put this thought into back of his mind and carried on with his daily activities.
Couple of days later Venkateshwar Rao handed the finished version of All in One layout book to Arjun. The head master had personally written the epilogue and authors section of this book. He had a smile on his face whenever he remembered the epilogue he had written. It was very favored towards the school administration and staff.
Arjun noticed this too but chose to turn a blind eye to this. After all most of the kids would not pay any attention to this section of the book. As long as their experience was not interfered with, he did not mind. If this could help him get on good side of this principal he did not mind giving another extra two or three pages to do their school campaigns through his book.
These people even though they took some money for their work, they would be more looking forward to their reputation being boosted. If they could accomplish both at the same time the teachers would be even more happy. After all they too had put their names on the line, if the book was a success they would receive more accolades but if it failed they too would receive some backlash, especially from the local populous who would accuse them of wasting their valuable school time to do other tasks even though they had never done so.