The 'Nothing else to write about' Series: Har Shri Agencies

We run a small business here, which is called Har Shri Agencies. We are distributors of Milton and a few other companies. The business is in a perpetual state of recession owing purely to bad management and we really don't care. In the not-so-bad times, we operated out of an office and a godown. Later, in the downright shit times, we moved the godown to our house for many years. I was a kid then and would spend hours reading there among the buckets, water bottles, casseroles and a large assortment of such goods and our drawing room, with its ceiling-high rows of cartons of Milton goods and impossible narrow passages to navigate through, in between was the most magical place in the world for me. We eventually moved the business back to an office and a godown but the memories of those good times linger on.

Har Shri Agencies is like second home and the men who worked here when we were Rugrats-like work here today too. Rajesh bhaia is one of those people who have been around since forever. He was 18 when he started work at Har Shri Agencies and that was in the year 1994. The six of us were, then enormous blobs of lard between ages 4 and 12. How we managed, for 8 odd years to fit in a poor little Maruti every morning to be dropped off to school is a mystery that the best scientists won't venture to unravel because they know they cannot. Why I mention Rajesh Bhaia will come at the end of the post.

The best thing about Har Shri Agencies is that the boys who work here do very little actual work that relates to the business and a lot of other household work. So Gurmeet Bhaia gets milk from the dairy every morning and drives buaji to the temple every few days. He will also go to pick up family members from the railway station. Rajesh Bhaia gets vegetables, bread, eggs and other groceries. Akhil Bhaia usually pays Sonus Internet bills and gets her phone recharged too.

Our newest addition at Har Shri Agencies is Vinay, a guy with some qualifications for a change who had joined us in the hopes of diligently running Tally accounts and working with Chacha in handling the day to day running of the business. The poor guy soon realized that with Chacha, there is no day to day running of the business. Chacha spends a couple of hours at work, at best and that time is spent meeting people who want to consult him about his astrological prowess. In this scheme of things, Vinay prints birth charts from the software that he has installed on the office computer. I have been trying to explain to Chacha the concept of job satisfaction but the man is as thick as the come! I got up this morning and read something in the local classified that made me laugh: a quarter-page advertisement asking for people to call on a mobile number to consult on astrological matters. There will be three consultations per week and the clients should pay a certain quoted amount only when they are satisfied and if they so wish to. The number belonged to Vinay and I called him just for the fun of it, though he seemed to think it was quite unfunny!

So back to Rajesh bhaia- he is getting married a few after Monu and it is uncool because he says he may not be able to make it to the wedding. But today while talking to him after a long time (we were waiting for a bank employee to complete and hand us some papers and you know how efficient THEY are) I realized that these guys have been part of the entire ride with us- the highs, the lows and the statics.