The cold, polished threat of the man in the kurta lingered in the alcove long after he had gone, a scent more chilling than the monsoon damp. The satisfaction of defeating Ravi turned to ash in Harsh's mouth. This was a different league. This was corporate predation disguised as an offer. Incorporation. The word echoed, a sterile term for a hostile takeover.
He had no doubt the offer was a veneer over a threat. Refusal wouldn't mean a smashed stall; it would mean being erased, swallowed whole by a entity with far more reach and resources than he could imagine. Panic, cold and sharp, tried to claw its way up his throat. He forced it down. Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford. He needed to think. His mind, his greatest weapon, scrambled for purchase.
He couldn't fight them directly. He was a mosquito against a bulldozer. But even a bulldozer could be stopped by a well-placed rock in its gears. Or by a swarm of mosquitoes.
The plan formed not as a brilliant flash of insight, but as a series of cold, logical steps. It was reckless. It was dangerous. It was the only move he had.
He found Deepak and Sanjay at their usual chai stall, their relaxed postures tightening as they saw his face. He didn't waste words.
"The man who visited… his employer wants to buy us out. Or break us." He watched their faces fall, the fear he'd felt moments ago mirrored in their eyes. "Saying no isn't an option. So we're not going to say no. We're going to make them say no to us."
They stared at him, confused.
"We're going to make our business toxic," Harsh explained, his voice low and intense. "We're going to make it look like the worst investment in Mumbai. We're going to get messy. And we're going to need everyone."
He laid out the plan. It was a masterpiece of street-level misdirection.
The next morning, the character of their operation changed utterly. The clean, efficient repair shop vanished. In its place emerged a chaotic, sprawling bazaar of questionable goods.
Harsh sent Raju and Vijay to every scrap dealer and low-level hustler they knew. Their instructions were simple: buy the cheapest, most broken, most pathetic-looking electronics they could find. Not to repair, but to display. Radios with no innards, televisions with shattered tubes, tape players chewed by rats. They stacked this junk around the alcove's entrance, creating a facade of dealing in pure garbage.
Then, he deployed his secret weapon: the people.
He went to the street kids, the chai-wallahs, the kaali-peeli taxi drivers who idled nearby. He didn't offer them money. He offered them a role in a performance.
"I need you to be my customers," he told a group of wide-eyed boys. "But not happy ones. I want you to argue. I want you to complain. Loudly. Tell everyone the speakers are cracked, the sound is terrible, that I'm a cheat." He gave them a few rupees each, not as payment, but as "refunds" to make the scene authentic.
He had Sanjay, who could turn on a theatrical whine, pretend to sob over a "defective" calculator he'd just "bought." He had Deepak, his solid presence perfect for playing the angry, betrayed loyal customer demanding his money back.
The alcove became a stage for a daily drama of failure. The air, once filled with the productive hiss of a soldering iron, was now thick with shouted arguments, fake tears, and the clatter of deliberately dropped and broken devices. To any observer, especially a discreet one sent by the man in the kurta, it was a beautiful disaster. Harsh Patel's business was not a rising star; it was a collapsing circus of incompetence and customer rage.
Harsh played his part perfectly. He became the flustered, overwhelmed vendor, desperately trying to placate an endless stream of "angry" customers, his clothes perpetually disheveled, his expression one of panicked despair. He let the actual quality of his work—the few real repairs he still did—be completely hidden by the orchestrated chaos.
For three days, the performance ran. His real profits plummeted, but it was an investment in a far more valuable currency: obscurity.
On the fourth day, the man in the kurta returned.
He stood at a distance, observing the spectacle. Harsh saw him from the corner of his eye while in the middle of a loud, fake argument with Vijay over a "broken" radio that was actually just unplugged. The man's expression was one of pure, undiluted disgust. This was not a business. This was a dumpster fire. The stench of failure was palpable.
He didn't approach. He didn't need to. He watched for less than five minutes, his lip curled in a sneer, before turning and walking away, disappearing into the crowd without a backward glance.
The moment he was gone, Harsh held up a hand. The arguments ceased mid-sentence. The fake tears stopped. The crowd of "angry customers" looked at him, waiting.
"He's gone," Harsh said, his voice quiet.
A collective sigh of relief went through them. The performance was over.
He paid his impromptu actors their promised rupees, a pittance compared to the fortune he had just saved. As they dispersed, Deepak came to stand beside him, looking at the staged wreckage.
"Do you think it worked?" he asked, his voice weary.
Before Harsh could answer, a familiar, stout figure ambled into the alley. Constable Malvankar. He looked around at the mess, his expression unreadable.
"Patel," he grunted. "I heard your business took a turn." He picked up a gutted radio and tossed it back onto the pile with disdain. "Looks like a war zone."
Harsh met his gaze. "Just a rough patch, Constable Saheb."
Malvankar's eyes held his for a long moment. He knew. Of course he knew. Little happened on his beat without him knowing. A slow smile spread across his face.
"A rough patch," he repeated, nodding slowly. "I just had a chat with a well-dressed man. Asked about you. I told him you were a flash in the pan. Too much, too fast. A mess. A liability." He leaned closer, his voice dropping. "He seemed to agree. He won't be back."
The confirmation was a physical release of tension. It had worked. They had fought back with the only weapon they had: the perception of worthlessness.
Malvankar looked around one more time, his cop's eyes taking in the hidden order beneath the chaos, the quality tools amidst the junk. He gave Harsh a look that was almost… respectful.
"Clean this up," he said, not unkindly. "And try to be less interesting for a while. My sixty rupees a week prefers a quiet life."
He walked away, leaving Harsh, Deepak, and Sanjay standing amidst the beautiful, glorious mess they had created.
They had won. They had faced down an invisible, powerful enemy and won not with force, but with a collective, cunning lie. The fight was over. They had escaped.
But as they began the long task of restoring order, Harsh knew the victory was temporary. He had drawn attention once. He would draw it again. And next time, a performance might not be enough. The cliffhanger of the man in the kurta was resolved, but it had been replaced by a far more enduring one: the constant, looming threat of being noticed. The fight was never truly over; it just changed forms.