The Mumbai morning didn't so much arrive as it imposed itself. The heat was already a physical presence, and the air in Bhuleshwar was a potent cocktail of diesel fumes, incense, and the unmistakable, greasy aroma of vada pav. Harsh stepped out into the chaos, the two hundred rupees in his pocket feeling like a live wire. Today wasn't about curiosity; it was about a hunt.
His destination wasn't random. His feet carried him back to the repair lane, the air already buzzing with the tsss-zzzt of soldering irons and the rhythmic tap-tap of tools. He didn't just see men fixing radios anymore. He saw an ecosystem. He saw a supply chain.
He zeroed in on the same repairman from the previous days, a man whose name he'd learned was Ramesh-ji. Ramesh-ji was hunched over a gutted transistor radio, his movements economical and sure.
"Back again?" Ramesh-ji grunted without looking up. "My 'pension fund' is looking thin today, boy."
"Maybe I'm not here to buy today, Ramesh-ji," Harsh said, leaning against a nearby wall. "Maybe I'm here to learn."
That got the man's attention. He looked up, squinting against the sun. "Learn? You want an apprenticeship? I don't have time for that. And I don't feed extra mouths."
"Not an apprenticeship," Harsh clarified. "Just… observation. I'll stay out of your way. I'll even run for your chai."
Ramesh-ji studied him for a long moment, his eyes crinkling. He saw something in Harsh's face—not the desperation of the other street boys, but a focused intensity. He shrugged. "Suit yourself. But no touching. And my chai is two sugars, no less."
For the next two hours, Harsh became a shadow. He watched how Ramesh-ji diagnosed a problem not by looking at schematics, but by listening to the hum of a circuit, by smelling for a burnt resistor. He saw the old man's clever shortcuts, the way he could salvage a capacitor from one completely dead device to breathe life into another. This wasn't taught in any manual; it was street-level alchemy, passed down through generations of making-do.
The lesson was invaluable, but Harsh's eyes kept drifting to the growing pile of discards Ramesh-ji deemed unsalvageable. To the old man, it was junk. To Harsh, it was a goldmine.
"Ramesh-ji," he said during a lull. "That pile… what happens to it?"
"The kabadiwala takes it once a month. Gives me ten rupees for the lot. Why? You see something I don't, future Ambani?"
Harsh's pulse quickened. "Sell it to me. Today. For twenty."
Ramesh-ji laughed, a sound like grinding gears. "You're a strange boy. Paying me double for my trash? Fine. But don't come crying to me when you can't turn rust into gold."
The "trash" was a heavy, greasy bag of components, broken casings, and half-cannibalized circuit boards. It was a puzzle with most of the pieces missing. But Harsh didn't see the missing pieces. He saw the ones that remained.
He didn't retreat to his usual temple spot. Today, he needed to be in the thick of it. He found a sliver of space not far from Ramesh-ji, spread a piece of newspaper on the ground, and began the meticulous work of sorting. Wires here. Potentially good transistors there. Speakers. Gears.
A few passersby glanced at him curiously. A boy sitting among a spread of electronic entrails was an unusual sight. He ignored them, his world shrinking to the connections his fingers were trying to forge.
He was so focused he didn't notice the three boys approach until their shadows fell over his work.
"New spot," one of them said. His voice was low, threateningly casual.
Harsh looked up. They were older than him, maybe by a year or two. Their clothes were dirtier, their expressions harder. The one who spoke was the same boy from the paan stall.
"It's a free street," Harsh replied, keeping his voice neutral. He didn't stop working.
"Is it?" the boy smirked. "Everything has a cost. You're making a lot of noise. Drawing a lot of attention. That's bad for business."
"What business?" Harsh asked, though he knew exactly what he meant. Their business was intimidation. Their business was claiming territory.
"Our business," the leader said, taking a step closer. "You think you can just set up shop? You pay a fee. For protection."
Harsh finally put down his soldering iron. He looked the boy in the eye. He'd faced down boardroom bullies and corrupt officials in his past life. These boys were amateurs. "Protection from who? From you?"
The boy's smirk vanished. His friends tensed. The air crackled.
Before anything could happen, Ramesh-ji's voice cut through the tension, sharp and clear. "Arre, Gopi! Your father is looking for you. Says if you have so much free time to bother customers, you have time to clean the latrines."
The boy, Gopi, flushed. He shot a venomous look at Harsh, then at Ramesh-ji. "This isn't over, outsider," he muttered, before turning and slinking away with his friends.
Harsh let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He nodded his thanks to Ramesh-ji.
The old man just grunted. "Don't thank me. I just don't like noise near my stall. And that one," he jerked his head toward the retreating Gopi, "his father owes me money." He turned back to his work. "Your chai is getting cold."
The confrontation left a chill, but it also clarified things. The market wasn't just a place of commerce; it had its own politics, its own predators. He had navigated the first one. There would be more.
By dusk, he hadn't built a single complete device. Instead, he had created a inventory of pristine parts, cleaned and sorted. He'd also repaired two cassette mechanisms by combining the best parts from three broken ones.
He sold the mechanisms to Ramesh-ji himself for thirty rupees each.
"Not bad," the old man admitted, handing over the cash. "You have an eye for the pieces."
It wasn't the tenfold profit of the previous days. It was a sixty-rupee profit on a twenty-rupee investment. But it was smarter. It was sustainable.
Walking home, the sixty rupees felt heavier than the two hundred had. It was earned not just through sweat, but through strategy. And a warning.
The spark of an idea had been fanned into a steady flame. He was no longer just fixing things. He was understanding the machine. And he knew the next step wasn't just bigger profits—it was finding a cheaper, more abundant source of parts. The kabadiwala Ramesh-ji mentioned. The railway scrap auctions he'd heard whispers of.
The game was expanding. And so were the players.