The garage became a sanctuary and a forge. The air, once thick with dust and the smell of neglect, now hummed with the precise, mechanical ballet of the Soviet milling machine and the low murmur of Yevgeny's explanations. Harsh spent every spare moment there, away from the watchful eyes of Bhuleshwar and the ghost, his hands growing familiar with grease and metal instead of solder and cash.
Yevgeny, freed from the despair of the docks, was a man transformed. The tired engineer was gone, replaced by a precise, demanding master craftsman. He spoke of tolerances measured in microns, of stress factors and thermal expansion, his English peppered with Russian technical terms that Harsh diligently wrote down in his notebook.
The "lessons" were not theoretical. Yevgeny believed in learning by doing. Their first project was born from a problem Harsh knew intimately.
"The voltage regulators from the local suppliers are garbage," Harsh said one evening, holding up a charred component from a failed radio. "They overheat. They fry the whole board. We have to import decent ones from Singapore, and it kills our margins."
Yevgeny took the component, turning it over in his hands with disdain. "This is peasant work. The heat sink is a joke. The trace widths are inadequate. It is a child's toy." He tossed it into a scrap bin. "We will make a better one."
For the next week, they designed. Yevgeny drafted precise schematics on large sheets of paper, his pencil lines sharp and confident. Harsh provided the practical knowledge—the common failure points, the size constraints of standard radio casings, the cost limitations.
The result was a new design. It used a different, more efficient transistor layout and incorporated a clever, folded aluminum heat sink that dissipated heat twice as effectively in half the space. It was elegant, over-engineered, and beautiful.
Manufacturing it was the real challenge. The milling machine carved the custom heat sink from a block of aluminum with microscopic precision. Sourcing the higher-grade electronic components required Harsh to dip into his secret cash reserve and call in a favor with a grey-market supplier he trusted from his early days—a connection completely outside of Swami's network.
They assembled the first ten units by hand on a makeshift bench in the garage, soldering under Yevgeny's critical eye.
"Not like a butcher!" the Russian would snap. "A surgeon! Precise! Clean!"
When they were finished, they looked like works of art compared to the clumsy local components.
The test was brutal. Harsh hooked them up to a power supply and ran them at 150% of their rated load for twenty-four hours. The local regulators would have burst into flames within an hour. Their units ran cool, the voltage output steady as a rock.
A fierce, triumphant smile spread across Yevgeny's face, the first genuine emotion Harsh had seen from him. "See? This is not garbage. This is engineering."
Harsh felt a surge of pride that was entirely his own. This wasn't Swami's money or influence. This was his. His idea, his risk, his secret workshop.
He now had a product. A better mousetrap. But how to sell it without alerting the world?
He couldn't go to the open market. He couldn't supply his own alcove; that would be the first place the ghost would look if he grew suspicious.
He needed a ghost of his own. A distributor.
He thought of the smallest, most struggling electronics repair shops in the city—the ones he used to compete with. The ones who couldn't afford the Singapore imports and were constantly battling the junk components that failed and cost them customers.
That night, he became a shadow. He visited three such shops in far-flung neighborhoods, places he never did business. He wore a simple lungi and a faded shirt, looking like any other technician.
To each shop owner, he told the same story. "New supplier. Small operation. Good parts. Cheap." He showed them the component, let them feel the weight of the heat sink, see the quality of the solder joints. "No branding. No invoices. Cash only. If it fails, you find me, I replace it." He gave them a phone number for a dedicated, untraceable pager he'd acquired.
The price he asked was halfway between the junk local price and the expensive import price. It was an irresistible offer.
The first shop owner, a skeptical old man with tired eyes, bought five, just to test. The next day, he bought twenty. The word began to spread in the deepest, most hidden level of the Mumbai electronics ecosystem. There was a new player. A phantom. His parts didn't fail.
Harsh's secret garage became a micro-factory. Yevgeny oversaw the machining while Harsh handled the assembly and distribution, making his rounds after dark like a medicine man selling miracle cures.
The profits were small but pure. They went straight into a new hiding place, funding more raw materials, more tools, and Yevgeny's salary. It was a self-sustaining loop of defiance.
One evening, as he was packing a order of fifty regulators, his pager buzzed. It was the code from one of his shop owners. He found a payphone and called back.
"The regulator," the man said, his voice excited. "It is magic! But a customer... he took apart his radio. He saw the part. He wants to know who makes it. He is a purchasing manager for a big company. They make intercom systems. They need thousands. Reliable ones. He wants to meet the manufacturer."
Harsh's blood ran cold. This was too fast, too big. A big company meant paperwork, contracts, visibility. It was the exact opposite of what he needed.
"Not possible," Harsh said quickly. "Small operation. We cannot handle that volume."
"But the money!" the shop owner pleaded. "It could be a fortune!"
"No," Harsh said, his voice firm. "Forget he asked. Sell him the radios, not the parts."
He hung up, his heart pounding. Success was a double-edged sword. His tiny rebellion was working too well. He was creating a demand he couldn't safely fulfill.
He had built the first product of his future empire. And now, he had to actively hide its success to survive the present.
The path to freedom was proving to be a razor's edge, and he was only just learning to balance.
(Chapter End)