Noticing it was already past twelve in the noon she invited Arjun for lunch.
Arjun profusely rejected the invitation, Even though he realized she did not have any ulterior motives for him he was still afraid of spending more time with Saheri. But upon her continued insistence he had no choice but to comply.
Especially after she changed her form of address from Arjun to Chinna(Telugu way of intimately calling someone younger) he was left defenseless. The lunch was nothing exciting, it was just simple Rice, dal with lentils and curd. Arjun was curious, living in such an expensive bungalow yet having such simple food.
When he enquired Saheri just laughed it off and said this was her favorite food. Once they were done with their food waving back at Arjun who was taking his leave she warned him to be careful on his way back and to take good care of his mother.
Once he left out her sights she went to her telephone and redialed.
"Have you met him?" hearing the rust old yet authoritative voice from the other side she was filled with respect.
"Yes sir, he just left"
"How was he?"
"Way better than we imagined" She said and went on to give detailed account of their conversation.
"Good, good, good. continue keeping tabs on him, let me know if you need any help" The same voice was filled with a bit of enthusiasm now.
"Yes sir" She could hear voice of call being disconnected and let out a sigh of relief. This was her first time seeing him commend someone, but it made sense considering this was their kid.
Meanwhile Arjun walked out of the bungalow still engrossed in his thoughts, not aware of the weird stares he received from the chief guard at the front gate he quickly reached the end of street where he hired a auto to take him back to the hotel.
Arjun was thinking about his next set of steps. After his conversation with his aunt he realized he had been far too naive. If she could investigate him to this extent he wondered what lengths would people with real motives would go to. Even though he did not have any enemies at the moment, there would eventually be a time when he stepped on others toes. He decided he needs to be more careful from now but also be more proactive.
He did not like the feeling of getting advice from someone who was technically below his age. Still he had to give credit where it was due, without her perhaps he wouldn't have realized his short comings. He decided he needed to hire more capable people under him.
Even though Karan, Bhargav and Tharun can be considered to be his people, they still needed experience and opportunities to grow. They were not yet ready to enter the ruthless market. In the meantime he would need to hire some suitable people to handle his companies which would only continue to grow in numbers.
Arjun realized he was getting bogged up by trying to do everything himself, for start he decided to recruit a good assistant. After getting dropped off at the hotel Arjun proceeded to the nearby local market to buy the telephone directory his sister kept bugging him about.
Once he was done he joined with Bhargav who was still in their room. He was apparently waiting for Arjun to have the lunch together. Thus Arjun went on to have a second round of lunch at the hotel and returned to the village in the jeep.
On their return journey he expressed his desire to purchase machines needed for a packaged dairy beverage unit and asked Bhargav to do more research into the topic and find out what machinery was needed but also informed him to make the enquiries in the name of packaged dairy unit rather than a beverage unit. He also mentioned about wanting to get a new assistant and asked him to look for a good recruitment agency in Vijayawada.
He also wanted to enquire Vladimir about the possibility of importing advanced UHT system considering the economic situation in soviet union he hoped for a possibility of acquiring them for a much cheaper rate than in other countries.
Once Arjun returned home he explained what happened at his Saheri's office to his mom. Kavitha started laughing upon hearing about his encounter with Saheri. She asked him to forget about the encounter explaining what Saheri loved most were conspiracy theories.
As for the favor she mentioned it was up to him to decide what do to when the she decides to cash it in since Saheri already mentioned the current him would not be of any help to her.
Sari meanwhile kept tugging at his trousers asking for the directory or something her brother had promised to get her on his next visit to town. When Arjun took out a huge telephone directory from his backpack and placed it on the table Sari was dumbfounded.
She had never seen such a huge book in her entire life. Now Sari was thankful her text books were not even one tenth of this gigantic book which she tried picking it up but unable to do so, she pouted at Arjun and carried her stool to get some elevation. Sari stood on her stool and started to flip through the book with a wide grin on her face.
Arjun had already torn the pages containing numbers of emergency services and government offices. As for the rest he did not really care who Sari dialed to as most of them would just cut the call once they realized it was kid calling them to speak nonsense.
He went ahead to take a short nap as he was already quite tired from the hectic journey and all the thinking he had to do during his conversation with Saheri.
When he woke up it was already past eight in the evening, seeing his sister was finally away from the telephone, Arjun picked up the receiver and made a call to Moscow. It was not Vladimir who picked the call but his housekeeper who informed that Vladimir was not at home and told him Vladimir would dial back once he got back to which he replied it was already quite late and would reach him on the next day.
The housekeeper meanwhile was dumbstruck. How his boss put a kid on important numbers to take note of was something he could not understand. He felt his boss changed after his last trip to India but seeing his big boss satisfied with Vladimir's progress he was happy too.
The next day Arjun went to his school as usual only to find Karan absent for the day. He figured Karan must have gone to the printing press after learning about the fresh batch of orders. Arjun loved how dedicated Karan was about the press, He was the first in line to offer any assistance they needed. But skipping classes for work seemed too much. If his grades dropped in the final exams even if Madan did not mind his father would. Arjun decided to have a proper talk with Karan about this issue.
Slowly he drifted to sleep and amazingly nobody woke him up till the lunch break. During lunch Venkateshwar Rao the principal met him at the corridor, he enquired about progress of All in One's and learning they had already sold over five thousand copies he felt liberated. As a principal who endorsed this project had it not been a success he would be the one to take the blame.
Arjun returned to his classes and started to work out numbers about how many All in One's could be sold in the next period. Selling five thousand copies in a week was a very huge surprise to him. If they could go on like this then perhaps selling seventy thousand copies would not be a pipe dream.
This figure scared him a bit, according to his calculations they'd be able to make around twenty lakh rupees even after taxes. Even if they managed to make only fifty thousand sales they would make over fifteen lakhs. Granted he had to give twenty five percent of his income with Madan he figured he'd decide when to give them after establishing his dairy beverage factory.
He estimated he'd need at least fifteen lakhs at the minimum to open a medium scale beverage factory, that is even without proper data about the machinery prices from Bhargav. On his return back to home he met up with Karan at the printing press.
He noticed all the four employees together with Karan and Pratap were engrossed in their work. He approached Karan and signaled to meet him outside. when Karan arrived Arjun gave his pre-prepared warning speech to Karan and asked him not to skip too many classes.
Arjun jokingly said if your grades drop Karan i am afraid Madan might kick me out of the village to which Karan gave a shy laugh. These days he was starting to feel Arjun was acting more like a father than his father himself. He hated that feeling, he wanted his best friend back not a new dad.
When Karan expressed his feelings to Arjun, Arjun too felt perhaps he was thinking too much. People needed time to grow, for Karan who took a liking to his new role at the printing press maybe he was asking too much from him to do two things at the same time.
For a 10 year old kid to grow interested in business and spend most of time learning ins and outs at the book keeping from Pratap while also learning inner workings of the press from Mallesh Yadav, advising him to stop focusing so much on business might not be the right thing to do.
Karan was one of the few people who stuck with him in his past life, he did not really care if he was doing good at school or not. Instead he decided to let him do what made him happy. If things did go wrong in the future Karan had all the wealth his father had amassed, being a single son everything would eventually go to him. Even if he lost his inheritance Arjun would be there too.
He apologized to Karan for trying to micro manage his friend's time, but still asked him to focus more on his studies and strictly warned him no more going to press from two weeks before the exam. As for what he would do before that Arjun promised he would no longer meddle in his business.