Whatever the world may say, the truth is, they’re visible :0 You have been taught wrong 🙂 The world around you is someone’s thoughts made visible.
6 April we return to Delhi and our invisible, intangible thoughts begin their journey to becoming visible, tangible, viewable reality.
By 13th we’ve finalized the name. Got the domain name. Concrete work begins. It’s all very easy. It’s not stretching anyone. We all are in our comfort zone. We joke. We laugh. We argue.
Books.
Anubhav finds out, friends of books, an online library is closing and selling their stock 🙂
There’s just no contact number! We want to meet. We intend buying the whole lot in little less than a lakh. We must keep some money for cart. Then salary. Then reserve.
Finally Anubhav manages to trace his number somehow. We’re losing time. We call for a meeting and reach East Delhi at 8:30 in the night. Wrong time but what to do.
We talk. Make our offer. He refuses. I’m crestfallen. Where will we get selected library 8500 books in one go? He says they may not be 8500.
No problem. We’ll take as many
He says maybe 7000.
No problem
Price ?
Around 2!
We can’t.
We plead, try, raise our budget to 1.2 to no avail.
How will we sort 7000 titles at Daryaganj:/
It’s going to take days !
We ask him why he started, how he started, why he’s closing etc etc. Like eager beavers we want every morsel of news. During the course of the conversation he remarks you can get cheap books from a container. It’s just a remark. Nothing else then. We ask for a way to reach the container. Uh huh no help 🙁
We return. We’ve no books. No cart.
We plan going to Daryaganj to buy second hand books this Sunday. We’re running short of time now.
Before Sunday somebody in Anubhav’s office buys books. Gives a card to Anubhav that says whole sellers. Anubhav calls. They’re container people 🙂
We can’t believe it.
Wednesday.
For some reason Anubhav takes a work from home with a call at 3.
I am moving as per my schedule to Laxmi Nagar when 2 stations before he calls and says container guy is saying come right now to GT karnal road :0
I reach Laxmi Nagar. It’s 10:45 already. I stay for 5 minutes. Catch the metro back. Anubhav picks me from Kirti Nagar metro station and we reach God forsaken part of the world and voilà there are our books.
We hope to bargain. We fail :0
We trust the container man and take what’s on offer.
The cart is procured from Jama Masjid on 25th I think. We go for the cheapest one we can get. Order tubeless tyres for we don’t want issues. 3 lakhs has to last us 2 years! A man has to be located to man the cart and paid for one year. We’re not closing before one year, need to conserve resources. We intend opening on 1st May. Schools closing 10th so want to test all tech before.
The cart reaches Prasoon’s contact. He’ll do the fittings.
The cart designing takes time. Instead of allotted 4 days it stretches to 7 days. Then Sunday. They won’t deliver. Then Monday we can’t take delivery. We’re closed. No manpower. So we go for Tuesday. We’ve already crossed 1st May 🙁
The cart is here
The books are here
The man is here
We’re ready to roll 🙂
Simple. Not much effort required. Anyone could have succeeded.
No. Not really.
Abhi toh party shuru hui hain ?