The alcove was making more money than ever. The rupees piled up, a steady, swelling river of cash that should have been a source of triumph. But for Harsh, each note felt like a chain link. He was a puppet, and his strings were pulled by a ghost in a white kurta and a bureaucrat in a customs office. The twenty percent and the five percent were twin leeches, sucking the life out of his ambition even as his bankroll grew.
The realization he'd had on Marine Drive festered inside him, a quiet, burning coal. He watched the other market vendors with new eyes. He saw the successful ones—the ones with permanent shops, not just stalls—and he understood now. Their success wasn't just about having good products. It was about the politician's nephew who owned their building, the marriage alliance with a police inspector's family, the deep, unspoken understanding they had with the local municipal corporator.
They weren't just businessmen. They were small nodes in a vast, living network of power. And he was outside of it, just a juicy piece of prey they were all waiting to see devoured.
One evening, after the ghost had come and gone with his weekly tribute, Harsh didn't start counting the remaining money. He just stared at the closed ledger.
"We are mice," he said, his voice flat, cutting through the usual post-transaction silence.
Deepak and Sanjay looked up, confused. "Bhaiya?" Sanjay ventured.
"We're mice, collecting crumbs from under the table, thinking we're building a feast," Harsh continued, his eyes still fixed on the ledger. "We scurry around, working day and night, and for what? So we can give the lion his share. So the eagle can take its cut. We're not building anything. We're just... foraging."
He finally looked at them, and the intensity in his eyes made them both straighten up. "This?" He gestured around the cramped alcove, piled high with other people's discarded electronics. "This is nothing. This is a means to an end. A way to gather the tools."
"What end, Harsh Bhai?" Deepak asked, his practical mind seeking a blueprint.
"An empire," Harsh said, the word leaving his lips not with boyish excitement, but with a cold, grim certainty. "A real one. Not this... this begging for scraps from Venkat Swami. Not this paying a tax to Desai just to be left alone."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a fierce whisper. "I don't want to be the mouse anymore. I don't even want to be a lion in this jungle. I want to own the jungle. I want to be the one who decides which mice get the crumbs. I want to be the one who sends the ghosts. I want to be the one who sends the summons."
The ambition, once a vague dream of wealth, had now crystallized into something harder, sharper, and far more dangerous. It was no longer about having a nice house or a fancy car. It was about control. Autonomy. It was about building something so vast, so entrenched, so connected, that no ghost and no officer could ever threaten it again.
"This..." he tapped the ledger, "...is petty hustling. We're going to be more than hustlers. We're going to be industrialists. Builders. We're going to make things. Not just fix them."
The seed was planted. The vow was made not to the gods, but to the grim lessons of his own humiliation. He would build an empire beyond petty hustling. He would weave his own web of connections, so strong and so vast that it would one day ensnare the very men who now thought they owned him.
The goal was no longer just money. It was power. And he had just decided to go out and get it.
(Chapter End)