As he was thinking about what he could do next, Arjun saw the Amar Chitra Katha edition of previous month his dad had purchased for his sister on their previous trip to Vijayawada.
As soon as he saw it, the thought of introducing Manga to Indian audience stuck his brain. While Amar Chitra katha did great job in introducing the present Indian kids to various Indian mythology, history and culture in comic format it explored very little in other aspects.
It was very routed to the subcontinent and did not have export potential. Although it was famous throughout Indian kid demographic, it took inspiration from stories already known to many.
Manga on the other hand could be read by anyone not just kids. But finding a manga that suited the tastes of Indian kids would be very difficult especially when most of the current people did not have much exposure to the outside comics.
Getting the copywrite permission would not be cheap either, as he pondered more about what could fit the situation better he saw kids dragging along threads with a dragonflies attached to them. Yes why not do it, everyone loved to catch cute animals and flies. Arjun felt this would be the perfect fit for his needs.
He felt evolution monsters would fit the demographic like a fine wine. Even though it's progression in his previous life was completely different, he did not find it unsuitable for making a manga out of. In fact he felt it could be refined much more to suit his current needs.
He decided then and there to start writing a brief introduction and progression of the book and named it Chitra Sena. In this version the protagonist Arun would receive his first pet Teju from his mother which was his dad's favorite monster who left for his own adventure.
He would also receive a Chitra Lekha device from his school principal before starting his journey who informed him to capture a picture of all monsters he comes across on his journey to become the strongest Sena Veera, for which he had to travel across the continent and defeat stronger Sena Veerulu while capturing stronger Chitra Jeevam in his beast scrolls. Arun needed to collect nine Padma Veera honors in various cities to challenge the strongest Sena Veera and take over the position.
Arjun felt this would fit this world better than his previous world's implementation since most kids could relate more to these people. He proceeded to add further details like different nature types like Agni, Jala, Vayu, Bhoomi, Visa, Maanasik etc., Adding the evolution system though proved to be more difficult with him pressed to think of more creative names for each monster and their evolutions so that they would be more consistent.
It took him over two days to get all his ideas into a proper system. When he showed his outline to Kavitha, she loved the idea. It felt very new and unique but also in a strange way complete. The thought of battling through their monsters was very novel to her. She then helped him further refine the details which felt inconsistent with current world.
Together they drew a brief outline for monsters like Teju, Agnika and few others. Sari who saw the outline of Teju she instantly fell in love with it and wanted to keep the outline to herself which forced Kavitha to make a new poster for her kid.
Arjun did not want to offload this to his mother once again. She was already busy in making the drawing books, instead he decided to hire an external studio to work on it. After all this was an entire new branch of comic style not just for Indian audience but also for Indian painters and writers too.
Asking one person to draw an entire series would be too much. He would need to employ a whole team to get the first season done as soon as possible. Rather than doing it in a hurry he felt this needed to be a long term project. It could keep the press busy during off season while also help new recruits more experience in the future.
Arjun was even considering whether it would be a better choice to buy a comic studio outright. But since he was unfamiliar with their pricing and was already pressed for money he decided to further consider after doing further research into current Indian comic studios. He never considered the notion of this comic series failing.
It was one of those popular series in his past life which changed the entire perception of a franchisee, It had more yearly earnings than several countries combined. But he probably needed to properly explain the story outline and progression to the people who'll be hired. He did not want them to get mixed up in the already established Indian comic rules but wanted them to think out of the box.
If they could replicate even half the brilliance the creators of this series in his past life did he was sure it would be a huge hit. As he was lost in his thoughts their phone rang. Sari was the first to run towards it and pick the call.
Sari kept saying hello hello for thirty seconds but she could not understand what the other side was saying at all. Arjun then snatched the receiver from her hand assuming it was probably Vladimir who called seeing his sister's confused expression.
"Hello, who is this?"
"Hello is this Arjun, this is me Vladimir, was that your sister Arjun?" He enquired, Vladimir was beginning to think he had dialed the wrong number upon hearing a small child's voice from the other side, but finally hearing Arjun from the other side he reasoned it was someone else from his household.
"Yes brother, do you have any update on the UHT machinery?" Arjun questioned.
"Yes kiddo but there's a good news and a bad news which one do you want to hear first?"
"Let's begin with good news brother i am not sure what bad news could there be with me being so far away"
"Hehehe it's not such a bad news Arjun"
"I've found a factory manager in Ukraine who is looking to come back to Moscow."
"okay?"
"He owns a dairy factory in the outskirts of Kharkiv(city in Ukraine), and is willing to offload not just UHT system but also several other machinery like milk storage system, filtration machine, homogenizer and refrigeration system altogether. But..."
"But???"
"He wants to sell only if you purchase the whole system and he wants the entire money in single payment."
"Entire payment?"
"Yes Arjun full payment in single transaction."
"Does he own the factory or is it a government owned?"
"Government owned"
"How much does he want?" Arjun understood where this money would end up and wanted to know of the figure before he took any decisions.
"He quoted six hundred thousand rubles for the entire set up but i think i could haggle him down to five hundred thousand but did not proceed yet and wanted to seek your opinion before going ahead"
Arjun stood silently considering if buying the entire setup for fifteen lakhs would be a wise decision or not. First things first he did not even have the money to buy them.
"Is there no other choice?" Arjun asked in a depressed tone.
"No, i have tried to ask only for the UHT system but he's adamant to sell everything together and frankly i can't influence much in this decision as he would make more if sells them together."
"Can you stall him for a few days i will get back to you by Monday" Arjun replied.
"Okay but make it fast, considering he reached out to me he must have reached out to many others too." Vladimir disconnected the call after saying his piece.
Arjun was still lost in his thought when Karan came to his house for a visit. They went ahead to play beach volleyball for a while with the other kids. Once they were done Karan informed Arjun about their next shipment being ready and asked to take him along wanting to see the newly released movie.
Frankly Karan was just bored with his daily life. Most of his days now were filled with school time and then him being at the press. He wanted to take a break, he had never worked so hard in his life and now with both the orders finally ready he figured it would be the right time to take a proper holiday.
Arjun mentioned to Pratap that both him and Karan would be going to the town for delivering the goods. Pratap was already used to Arjun running away to town on weekends by now. He warned him to be careful on the way and let them go.
The next day Arjun, Karan and Bhargav left to Vijayawada along with both the deliveries. They had ordered for the shipping company to come along with extra trucks as they had more books to deliver than previous times.