Merchant of Hope

Bauji, who was nearly 70 years old, had to be administered insulin injections daily. Sushil purchased a new house in Roop Nagar and Babu ji and Chai ji shifted to his house. For the next ten years, Bauji spent a sedentary life and attained his divine serenity, not being upset with any living soul. I visited him daily to seek his blessings. One morning, shortly after I had met with him, I received a call that Bauji had collapsed and was unconscious. Chai ji was taking him to the bathroom, and he had collapsed in her arms a few steps before reaching it. I rushed to Sushil's house, where Dr. Shrivastava, who had already been called, declared our father dead. I was stunned and called Dr. Gupta, our neighbor, who confirmed the sad news. I called a third doctor, Dr. Manohar, who convinced me to accept the death. It was a difficult moment for me as I had not been able to say my final goodbye. We performed his last rites, and Chai ji tried to guide me towards spirituality. As part of socia...

Bauji had returned to his base in Amritsar a few months after the surgery. Sickness had taken the wind out of his sails. The Amritsar business was now mainly handled by Ajit Bhai Sahib and Pawan. Though Bauji eventually joined them, he was not very active. In the meantime, Pawan was to get married, and the responsibility to arrange it fell on Ajit Bhai, who lacked such experience. He spent 30,000 on the marriage, which was a huge amount for the family. It was decided that I would fund 50% of it. I worked hard in Delhi to arrange the money to get my elder brother married.  I always traveled in the third-class railway. This was all I could afford. Out of nowhere, once I got curious about experiencing the second-class railway compartment. Without a second-class ticket, I entered the second-class railway coach. It was fascinating. Then I entered its washroom. First, I was excited, and then scared, and I ran back immediately so that no one would catch me. Those stolen 5 minutes left a l...

 We were hopeful that Dr. Talwar's diagnosis and pending surgery would cure Bauji of his pain. While we all pushed our boundaries to make ends meet, keep the cooking stove burning, and run the business to get much-needed cash, fate threw an unexpected curveball at us. Two weeks later, a massive rainstorm flooded the city and Surinder, my brother, watched all our belongings in Dharamshala flow away. Unfortunately, our office didn't have a phone for Surinder to reach me immediately. Instead, he called a number at Lala Banarsi Dass ji's shop, located half a kilometer away. For every phone call meant for me, Lala Banarsi Dass ji would put the call on hold and send one of his men to fetch me. It took me 20 minutes to run to his shop to attend the call. Till this day, I am awed by Lala Banarsi Dass's patience and kindness, as he never once got irritated by my decision to use his number for all my business and personal communication. We needed a place to stay clos...

  With the assistance of Dr. Prabhakar, Ajit Bhai was able to bring Bauji to Delhi. I arranged for an ambulance to receive them from the railway platform. Sh. Roshan Lal, a supplier from Amritsar, used to enquire about Bau Ji's health daily as his shop was also on the same street. Ajit Bhai had informed him that we were shifting Bauji to AIIMS in Delhi. He immediately recommended a doctor who was his neighbor in AIIMS and gave a letter of recommendation for the treatment. Despite knowing nothing about medical procedures, we took Bau Ji to AIIMS and requested to see Dr. Talwar. Luckily, his OPD was on Wednesday, and we reached there on that day. We went into his chamber, handed him the letter of recommendation and the treatment papers. After checking, Dr. Talwar immediately ordered Babu Ji to be admitted to the hospital. It was a rare opportunity to secure admission in AIIMS, as it was a top government hospital dominated by bureaucrats. Perhaps Bauji's good karma helped him secu...

  Bauji's trip to Bombay for a wedding proved to be an opportunity for the business to expand further. Bauji was successful in securing orders from the market for crochet hooks, gunny bags, and needles. He had brought samples from Bhagat Singh and received a good response from potential customers, which encouraged him to expand to other cities like Patna, Lucknow, Kanpur, and beyond. He worked hard to sell goods to the topmost dealers of each city. Bauji didn't have a formal official way for booking the orders. He took orders on the letter pads of his customers and accepted payments in the form of bank cheques. To my surprise, not a single customer defaulted on his bank cheque. Bauji could engage customers leading them to open up their dealings, revenues and finances. According to Bauji, a skilled salesman can sell even dirt, but the shrewd salesman is the one who can exactly gauge the purchasing capacity of his customers and never sell more than what the customer would be able...

As the in-charge of the Delhi office, my immediate focus was to acquaint myself with the market in Sadar Bazar. Delhi office was not setup to generate income for the family business. It was merely a procurement branch for the Amritsar shop - not for too long though. At the time, there were only two factories in India that manufactured Gunny bags, needles, and crochet hooks. One of them, owned by Sardar Bhagat Singh, produced high-quality products despite being a small manufacturing unit. Sardar was a good friend of Bauji, and his only competitor had a unit that was 100 times more productive. During one of his visits to Delhi, Bauji ran into Sardar's belligerent competitor, who was boasting about his ability to annihilate Sardar's unit due to his superior production capacity. However, Bauji remained nonchalant and reached out to the competitor's customers, offering to fulfill their orders in case the big guy was ever unable to do so. Some of the customers who were v...

 I completed my B.Sc degree. In all my past generations, I was the first college graduate, and I wasn't done yet. I applied and got accepted to Banaras Engineering College. I was oozing with hope and excitement for the possibilities that an engineering degree could kick open for me in the future. The day had finally arrived, and I was scheduled to catch the night train from Delhi to Varanasi. My few belongings were packed, and I reckoned it would be a good idea to carry a few stuffed paranthas for my train journey. That night, a friend of Bauji visited us, and Bauji shared his happiness for sending his son to an engineering college. However, his well-wisher friend snorted disapprovingly and chided Bauji for sending his able grown-up son away for five years just to sit in classrooms when he could be put to better use - let your son take on the responsibility of running the Delhi office. Convinced, Bauji cut off my engineering aspirations with a snap of his finger. That ...