The vow was made in the shadows of the alcove, a silent pact between Harsh and the grim future he now envisioned. But grand ambitions, he knew, were worthless without a ruthless strategy to fuel them. The very next day, a fundamental shift occurred in their operation, a change so subtle Deepak and Sanjay almost missed it at first.
It began with the money. The thick stacks of cash that once represented their weekly triumph were now treated with clinical detachment. Harsh produced a new, larger ledger. In the old one, he had only recorded sales and basic expenses. This new book was different. It had columns.
On the left page, he meticulously logged every rupee that flowed in. On the right, he created three distinct columns for the outflows. The first, and largest, was labelled The Ocean—Venkat Swami's twenty percent. The second, smaller but no less significant, was The System—Officer Desai's five percent. The third column was simply titled Us.
"What is this, Harsh Bhai?" Sanjay asked, peering at the new ledger with a frown. "We already know what we make."
"We knew what we had," Harsh corrected him, his voice calm and focused. He didn't look up as he entered a figure into The Ocean column. "Now, we will know exactly what it costs us to operate. We will know the price of our safety. And most importantly," he said, finally meeting Sanjay's gaze, "we will know what we are left with to build with."
It was a simple act, but it was revolutionary. By physically separating the extortion payments from their net profit, Harsh was reframing their entire existence. They were no longer working to earn; they were working to fund something. The leeches were just a cost of business, a toll on the road to something greater. The money in the Us column, though significantly smaller, was theirs. It was sacred. It was the seed for the empire.
This new discipline bled into every aspect of their work. Harsh became a relentless optimizer. He renegotiated with their parts supplier, Meena, not for a lower price per capacitor, but for a bulk discount that would increase their margins on every repaired unit. He analyzed which refurbished items sold fastest and for the best profit, instructing Deepak to prioritize those—calculators and digital watches over larger, more time-consuming radios.
He even turned the ghost's weekly visits into a perverse form of market research. He noted the types of goods that arrived from Venkat Swami's network. He saw a pattern—an excess of certain components, a lack of others. He began to make requests, couched in the language of increased profitability for their mutual benefit.
"The Japanese calculators move fastest," he mentioned offhandedly one week as the ghost counted the money. "If the supply of those could be prioritized, the weekly contribution would be… larger."
The ghost had paused for a fraction of a second, his dead eyes flicking up to Harsh, before giving a minuscule nod. The following week, the crate contained twice as many calculators. Harsh had successfully, and safely, nudged the beast to his advantage. He was learning to steer, ever so slightly, from within the cage.
This newfound austerity extended to his personal life. The second-hand scooter, once a symbol of his success, was now just a tool for logistics. He continued to give his parents a modest but believable amount of money from his "tutoring" job, carefully laundered through his fake bank withdrawals. But the rest of the money in the Us column was untouched. There were no celebratory meals, no new clothes, no flashy displays of wealth.
His mother noticed. "Beta, you work so hard," she said one evening, her voice laced with concern as she watched him eat a simple dinner of dal and rice. "You should enjoy some of it. Buy yourself something nice."
Harsh looked up, and for a moment, the mask of the obedient son slipped, revealing a glimpse of the fierce calculation beneath. "This isn't for enjoying, Maa," he said, his tone softer than his words. "This is for investing."
The biggest test of his new resolve came from an unexpected source: Prakash Rao. The scrap dealer, finally cleared to bid at the railway auctions again, came to him with a brilliant, risky opportunity.
"Harsh Bhai, there is a lot," Prakash said, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "A whole container of damaged electronics from a German office. Computers, Harsh Bhai! Not just calculators. Real computers! The bidding will be high, but the potential…"
Computers. In 1990, they were mythical beasts, incredibly complex and valuable. The profit from refurbishing even a few would dwarf their weekly earnings. Deepak and Sanjay listened, their faces alight with the possibility. This was the big score they'd been waiting for.
Harsh felt the old pull, the thrill of the gamble. He could almost see the stacks of rupees. He could use the money from the Us column. It would be enough for the bid, just barely. It was a chance to make a monumental leap.
He closed his eyes, the image of the ledger clear in his mind. The Us column. The sacred seed money. To gamble it on a single, risky bid, no matter how tempting, was the old thinking. It was the mindset of the hustler, the gambler, the mouse looking for one big crumb.
He opened his eyes. The excitement had died down, replaced by a colder, more strategic light.
"No," he said, the word final.
Prakash Rao's face fell. "But Harsh Bhai, the opportunity—"
"—is a risk we cannot afford," Harsh finished for him. "That money is not for gambling. It is for building. A single failed bid, a single container of unsalvageable junk, and we wipe out a month of our savings. We stay the course. We grow steadily. Not recklessly."
It was the hardest decision he had made since facing the ghost. It was a denial of instant gratification in service of a distant, harder goal. He was choosing the slow, disciplined growth of an oak tree over the flashy, rapid bloom of a firework.
As Prakash left, disappointed, Sanjay looked at Harsh, a new kind of respect in his eyes. It wasn't the excited admiration of before; it was quieter, deeper. He was seeing a new side of his leader—not just a brilliant hustler, but a strategist.
Harsh picked up the new ledger, running his finger down the Us column. The number was small. Pathetically so, compared to what they were giving away. But it was clean. It was theirs. And it was growing.
He wasn't just saving profits instead of showing off. He was laying the first, painstaking brick of his fortress. And he would guard that single brick with everything he had.