That evening, after coming out from my bath, I found that Padma was alone at home. Uncle and aunty had gone to a friend’s place. This looked like a perfect opportunity for me to give her a counsel. I was four years elder to her. I hoped she would listen to what I had to say.
She was seated in the living room, watching TV. But her mind seemed to be elsewhere. She switched off the TV as soon as she realized my presence in the room.
“So, what have you decided?” I asked her bluntly.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
Hearing her reply, I saw half-a-chance for me to pull it off. Now I wasn’t trying to hold her back from pursuing her dreams. I only wanted her to make a proper decision after considering all the facts and circumstances of the situation, rather than just jumping into conclusions like she was doing right now. Padma loved her mother the most. And this looked like an opening for me.
“Padma, do you know about Nandi aunty’s dreams regarding your marriage?” I asked. She looked confused. “She wants to arrange a marriage for you,” I went on, laying stress on the word ‘arrange’ to drive home my point. Padma pursed her lips on hearing this.
“To her, a marriage is not just something between a man and a woman,” I continued, “It is a relationship between two families. The families provide support to each other during tough times. Moreover, if the husband and wife face a problem between each other, it can be solved through timely intervention from either family’s folks. They can discuss with each other and can come to an understanding. This is what’s acceptable to aunty.” Padma was hooked. She listened intently.
“Do you know what her concept of an ideal son-in-law is?” I asked her. She once again kept mum. I answered my own question, “An ideal son-in-law should be well-mannered. He should be educated so that he’ll never become jobless. He should be employed. Aunty wants to insulate you from business problems. The boy should have a good family background.” Padma looked at the floor. Maybe she was thinking about the contradiction between her mother’s dreams and that of her own.
I continued with my lecture, “The ideal marriage for you is an arranged marriage. You are not mature enough to evaluate your prospective groom and his family. Leave that task to your parents.
“Of course, an arranged marriage must be fixed only after ensuring that both the families believe in the same values. The real love starts between a man and a woman only after their marriage. A husband and wife will encounter problems entirely different from that of boyfriend and girlfriend. The boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is actually ill-defined.
“Think again before piercing aunty’s heart,” I said to her, stressing the word ‘piercing’ to give maximum impact to my argument. Her face began to wear a guilty look after my reproach. I left the room leaving her to ponder over what I had just said. Although what I told her sounded more like a boring religious sermon, it was the hard-to-accept truth. But I was awe-struck wondering how she managed to listen to all that nerve-wracking stuff from me.
***
The next morning, we started off with our most important task—the Work Study. We proceeded to record the time taken to do a piece of work. We then changed the motions of workers and noted the time saved. We found out easier and better methods of doing the same work and standardized it. We were able to get rid of unnecessary movements and simplify necessary movements of workers. This was indeed a breakthrough, as we had hoped.
But soon, we were in for a shock.
We discovered a flaw in a certain work procedure. Our guess was that the flaw had resulted in a defective product. Anto traced the batch of the product carrying the likely defect. To our utter dismay, we found that particular batch of product to have passed our quality control checks and dispatched last week to a client.
We were 99% sure that there was a defect in that product. Till now the client had not rejected the goods. So these may have got past their quality control checks too. These could be either have been held up as inventory or it could already have been used in producing other products.
We were betwixt the devil and the sea. In the first case, we would have to replace the defective product with new ones because the defect could not be corrected. And we were already short of cash. In the second case, the defects would be passed on to end-consumers and there would be nothing we could do. If our client found out about the defect from end-consumers, we would surely lose a valuable client. This was a real nightmare.
We started to do some positive thinking. Our biggest plus-point was our ethics. We could bank on them in any crisis. We knew that business is based on honesty and trust. Cheaters never prosper. It was a tough call to make. But Radha and I knew that we had to make the call. Our client was our God. We had to inform him about this mishap. I convinced Lok uncle that even though our financial condition would be affected quite adversely, we had no other choice. But we did have something to feel relieved about. We had found out ways to reduce our costs. If we could manage this crisis successfully, we were safe for the future.
Lok uncle communicated the matter to the client’s office and fixed up an appointment to meet him at 11:30 am the next day. We would have to tell this to him in person.
***
At night, I didn’t speak a word to Padma. Counseling could wait for another day. Crisis management was the order of the day.
Negative thoughts began to play in my mind. If we lost that client the next day, I would probably be made a scapegoat. I had never felt so tense before. Just when I began to feel helpless, the mobile beeped. I answered the call. It was Radha.
“Abhinav, it’s me. Didn’t sleep yet?”
“No.”
“I know what you’re thinking about. It’s no use worrying, my friend. I just happened to read this line from The Gita. Would you care to listen?”
“Cut out the suspense, will you?” I replied with a chuckle.
“It says: ‘Do your duty, but you don’t have any right over the outcome of your effort. Success will come in its own way.’ Just remember, don’t be concerned with the results. Just concentrate on what you have to do. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And always look down on the problem. Don’t let the problem look down on you. Right?”
“The Gita says all that?”
“What?”
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do?”
“I was clarifying things for you. You…Dodo.”
Dodo? She just called me a Dodo. Did she really mean it? Nah!
“Ok? You got it?”
“Yep.”
“Chalo. Perfect.”
“Thanks Rad.”
It was a verse, which I had forgotten in this time of crisis. It had given me consolation in the past. And Radha’s reminder gave me consolation now as well. “Let the best thing happen,” I prayed to God. By the way, was ‘Rad’ a nice nickname, I thought. And dozed off.
***
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