Arjun meanwhile ran back to his home and told Kavitha to inform Lalitha to hand the cheque to Tharun before coming back and hurried back to his school.
Bhargav and Arjun went to receive Lalitha and the gang when they came back as Bhargav wanted to check how Lalitha did on her first major deal though what he learned made him disappointed.
Bhargav felt he could have gotten the same goods for at least ten percent less had he been the one to go instead and informed Arjun about this but Arjun did not really mind especially after how Lalitha integrated into their family.
Everyone was bound make mistakes that too on her first deal it was expected that she was going to swindled, what was important was how she improves after this after all she too was on the side listening to Bhargav's complaints hiding her face in shame.
Arjun consoled her and explained to her that he did not really mind losing ten thousand as they would probably make much more if the new drawing books sell well.
But still Lalitha was disappointed with herself and wanted to better and learn how to negotiate better from Bhargav and started to bombard him with questions on how he would have dealt with the situation she was in and so on.
What was unknown to them however was the wholesale suppliers had already gotten news of the lumpsum amount of money Arjun had made on his previous venture and decided to increase the prices they would quote to him altogether.
Since they were currently solely relying on suppliers from Vijayawada to get the goods it would be difficult for them to spot it but had Bhargav gone to do the negotiation he would have spotted the discrepancies immediately which did not happen since it was Lalitha who had gone to get the supplies.
Even though Mallesh tried his best to get the supplies on insider rates most of his connections were of the people working for others and not at the top so they could only convince them to sell at ten percent over the wholesale rate.
Mallesh came to Arjun and explained what had happened at the suppliers while others were overseeing the unloading. Arjun got what had happened instantly but since he was already bogged down by work in the next couple of weeks he decided to take care of the matter once the other things occupying his time were taken care of. After all to solve this issue he had to travel to some other city and currently in his situation it was quite impossible with the upcoming exams Arjun doubted whether his father would permit him to go so far away.
The next day Arjun went to school as usual, since the exams were getting near most of the classes were already over and they were in revision stages which felt even more boring to Arjun. He wanted to go to the press to check out the progress but remembered his promise to his father and could only stay put at his desk.
Karan noticing his friend's mood took out a couple of pens and asked Arjun to join him in a game of pen fight. This was their favorite pass time at school during revision sessions as most teachers did not know about such games during these times and Arjun's mood quickly turned around after playing for a while.
Once the school was done Arjun hurried to the press. Since this was their first time working on hard cover books and high quality sheets for most of the workers Mallesh had to give proper steps to ensure nothing goes wrong. They even hired another three extra temporary workers to get the printing process up to speed.
When Arjun arrived at the press he could see his mother sitting there with Sari and Madan alongside her. It seems she too was interested in seeing how the books she poured her all into in the past month would turn out.
Mallesh noticing Arjun wanted to come to him but seeing how busy he was in instructing others Arjun calmly signaled him to go on with his work while he too took a seat alongside his family while Karan went inside the office to get on with his job.
It seemed he already got the hang of his job already and no longer needed Bhargav's supervision as Bhargav did not take a second look at Karan who was in the office.
The inner pages and cover pages were already done being printed an Arjun watched over as one of the workers did the light lamination in the new lamination machine Arjun had acquired recently.
Arjun picked up a couple sheets of papers that were being rested and being dried. while he was feeling the paper quality Mallesh joined him and explained how crucial drying was for newly printed sheets as without it wet ink can transfer from sheet to sheet and ruin the feel.
Mallesh had misunderstood that Arjun felt they were wasting time drying the sheets and although that was not the case Arjun welcomed the explanation. He had not spent much time at the press that had made him so much money and wanted to learn all he could in the limited time he had.
Just then one of the workers came along to pick the sheets that were done drying to cut them and fold them properly while one other worker was pressing the hard cover board that was glued to one of the cover designs as it would improve the hard cover quality Mallesh explained from the side as Arjun was watching the process.
Once they were done with inside pages and Cover board Mallesh personally collected the suing materials and assembled the book pages and cover board and started sewing.
Kavitha got curios about this and enquired with Arjun why they were sewing the book instead of staple binding like they had done to other books.
Arjun explained they had gone with this method to make the books look more premium and durable. Since they were targeting the premium market Arjun wanted to tick all the possible boxes they could tick to make the books feel more premium. Even though this step might delay the binding process a lot slower Arjun did not really mind since they were not going to produce many copies any way and if needed they could hire extra workers since most women of this era were very familiar with stitching.
Arjun had already proposed this to Mallesh but he was rejected as Mallesh had never worked with a women in workplace and felt it would defile the environment.
Arjun could not say much about this issue, even though people were progressively getting used to women in workplaces it was a different case for older men who did hard jobs since their childhood and felt women belonged to kitchen.
All Arjun could hope was for Gopal who was Mallesh's son to be more adaptable to conditions as the press would be in his care once Mallesh wanted to retire which Arjun could see happening soon since he did not want people with such thoughts to stay in his firm and he would make sure to hire a couple women to do the sewing once they get more orders and it would be up to Mallesh to adapt or retire.
Once Mallesh was done with sewing they did another pressing under heavy weights for another half an hour to make sure the book stays flat and durable after which they did the edge cutting and final clean up of excess glue and edge alignment.
Their first design book was finally printed and assembled. Arjun quickly took the book from the worker and handed it to his mother who was surrounded by Sari and Pratap who too were curios about the final outcome and looked at the cover intriguingly.
Kavitha slowly turned the book page by page inspecting every nook and cranny for possible mistakes and once she was done through the book she put it down and turned to her surroundings to see other's expressions while others were busy looking at her.
Pratap had never seen his wife smile so brightly in a long long time, perhaps even though she was happy with him he had deprived her of some freedom making her bound to four walls inside their home.
He could see how hard she worked on this book just by looking at first couple of pages and wanted to see her expression once she was done through the entire book but what he saw left him reeling, after all his wife who was smiling brightly till now had tears in corners of her eyes.
Kavitha noticing their strange expressions quickly recovered and handed the book to Sari who wanted to see it again and went ahead to hug Arjun and thank him.