The Sewri warehouse was a problem for tomorrow. Today's problem was parked in a dusty, fenced-off compound belonging to the Mumbai Port Trust: twelve skeletal trucks, the remnants of Swami's "Coastal Logistics" fleet.
Where the warehouse was a passive, decaying liability, the trucks were a more active drain. They were accruing daily impound fees. The back taxes and fines—a staggering ₹4,00,000—were a ticking time bomb of debt attached to their rusting hulks.
Harsh stood with Deepak at the compound gate, a Port Trust clerk scowling at a carbon-copy form.
"Twelve trucks. Only two are maybe, maybe roadworthy. The others are for scrap," the clerk said, sucking on his teeth. "You pay the dues, you take the problem. Or we auction them next month. Save you the trouble."
Paying ₹4 lakh for two functional trucks was insanity. But the alternative—losing them—felt like surrendering. These trucks were the literal vehicles for his logistics dream. He had to start somewhere.
"Deepak?" Harsh asked, his voice low. "Can you get the two runners operational? A basic service, new tires. What is the minimum cost?"
Deepak, ever the pragmatist, had already done the math. "For two? ₹80,000. Maybe one lakh if the engines are worse than they look. But Bhaiya, that is for them to just move. To be reliable for clients? More. Much more."
It was another gut punch. Nearly ₹5 lakh all-in to get two dubious trucks on the road.
"Do it," Harsh said, the words tasting of financial recklessness. "Get the two best ones out. We'll deal with the scrap later." He turned to the clerk. "We'll pay the dues. We want the two with the blue cabs."
The money transferred, the paperwork stamped, the compound gate groaned open. The sense of occasion was utterly absent as Deepak carefully drove the first truck out, its engine rattling ominously. It was a hollow victory. He had just spent a small fortune to acquire a massive headache.
The real battle, however, wasn't mechanical. It was commercial. And it fell to Sanjay.
His mission was simple: find clients. Any clients. They needed revenue, now.
Sanjay, who could sell sand in a desert, found the going tougher than expected. His old contacts in Bhuleshwar and Lamington Road dealt in goods, not freight. He spent days in the cramped, chaotic offices of cloth merchants, spice traders, and small-scale exporters.
The pitch was always the same: "Patel Holdings. New company. Reliable. We have trucks. Good rates."
The response was also always the same: a skeptical once-over, followed by the same question, phrased in a dozen different ways.
"Aapka broker kaun hai?" (Who is your broker?) "Who do we talk to for...special clearance at the docks?" "You new boys don't know how things work.There are... costs. Who handles your costs?"
They weren't asking about his trucks or his rates. They were asking about his bribe network. His ability to grease palms at checkpoints, warehouses, and docks to ensure their goods didn't "get lost" or "face delays."
Sanjay, following Harsh's ironclad rule, would smile and say, "We don't have those costs, sahib. That's why our rates are good. We run a clean operation."
The meeting would invariably end with a patronizing smile and a promise to "keep his number." The door would effectively close.
After a week of this, Sanjay slumped into the chair in Harsh's makeshift office—a small table in the corner of their still-empty warehouse. "It's impossible, Bhaiya," he said, frustration bleeding into his voice. "They don't want a clean service. They want a service that knows how to get dirty. They see 'clean' as 'amateur.'"
Harsh felt a cold knot of dread. His principle was noble, but it was about to bankrupt them before they even started.
Then, Sanjay remembered a lead. A distant cousin worked in the office of a mid-sized textile mill in Parel. The mill was struggling, its old, loyal transporter had retired, and his sons had sold the business to a larger firm that had immediately raised prices.
"It's a long shot," Sanjay said. "They're traditional. Maybe... maybe they're tired of the games."
The owner of the mill, Mr. Agarwal, was a man in his sixties with tired eyes and a firm handshake. His office was a testament to fading glory—polished wood furniture covered in a fine layer of cotton dust.
He listened to Sanjay's pitch in silence, his eyes on Harsh, who had come along for this crucial meeting.
"No hafta?" Mr. Agarwal asked, his voice quiet.
"No, sir," Harsh said. "The price I quote is the price you pay. The truck arrives when I say it will. If it doesn't, you don't pay."
"And when my shipment is 'randomly' selected for a full inspection at the checkpost, causing a day's delay? What then?" Agarwal's question was pointed. He knew the game.
"Then I will personally sit at that checkpost with the driver," Harsh said, meeting his gaze. "And we will wait. And the delay will be on me. Not you."
A long silence stretched out. Agarwal steepled his fingers. "The other companies, they promise no delays because they pay. You promise no delays because you are stubborn. It is a very expensive form of stubbornness."
"It is, sir."
Agarwal almost smiled. "I am an old man. I am tired of envelopes of cash. I am tired of lies." He sighed. "I have a shipment. One truckload of cotton goods to a port warehouse. It is a small job. The price you quoted is fair. Do this one job. Do it clean. Then we will talk."
It was not a triumph. It was a trial. A single, low-margin job that would barely cover the diesel and the driver's salary for the week. But it was a start.
The day of the job, Harsh and Deepak personally prepped the truck. They didn't pray for luck. They checked the tire pressure, the oil, the brakes. They gave the driver, a nervous young man named Ravi, a simple instruction: "Follow the law. Exactly. Call us if anyone stops you."
They waited. Hours ticked by. The phone didn't ring.
Late that afternoon, Ravi called. He was at the port warehouse, the shipment delivered. His voice was buzzing with disbelief. "They just... waved me through, sahib. Every checkpost. It was... easy."
It wasn't easy. It was a miracle. A tiny, inexplicable pocket of smoothness in the city's corrupt machinery.
When Sanjay presented the invoice to Mr. Agarwal's clerk the next day, the man paid it without a word. The amount was deposited into the Patel Holdings account: ₹8,500.
It was a pittance. A laughable sum against the hundreds of thousands they were bleeding.
But as Harsh looked at the line item in the ledger—Revenue - Logistics: ₹8,500—he felt a jolt of something purer than any profit from the oil short.
It was clean money. Earned not by a trick or a bet on the future, but by a simple, honest transaction. A promise kept.
They were in the game. The wheels of commerce, however slowly, were beginning to turn.
(Chapter End)