The Meethai box

Pinky had recently graduated from Bombay University. But her passion was cosmetics. So instead of working for others she decided to start her own company making beauty products. Pinky was trained as a chemist and she knew all about bleaches and exfoliants and other harmful chemicals, and so she decided to stay away from them. Instead, she would sell herbal and natural products that make you beautiful and radiant. Simple time tested good old stuff like haldi, chandan, mehendi ...you know. Ya the same old grandma stuff marketed in shinny new plastic jars ...
So she went about it systematically.She registered a company. Called it "Radiant and Glowing" The man who took the fees said "Congratulations Ms Pinky.Now you are the owner of a new company.Where is my meethai box?"Pinky went to chappan bhog and got some mixed barfi for the officer."Here" enjoy the meethai she told him and as she was preparing to leave the office,the chaprasi suddenly woke up from his sleep and saluted her and asked her for chay pani ka kharcha.
Pinky was taken a back. Is this the new place for begging she wondered and walked out hurridly. After a week she got letters of congratulations from different govt deptarments and other institutes. She did not even know they exsisted before this time.They were the sales tax,central excise, income tax, chamber of commerce, BEST, water dept, sewage dept, public works, dept of industries, mumbai municipality, dept of health, Mining ,Fisheries,Environment, pollution control board, public safety, Ministry of education scientific and technical research, MIDC, MSFC ,ICICI customs and police dept. Different security agencies and commercial real estate agents.
She was truly mystified. There were so many forms to be filled and so many fees to be paid and so many licences to be obtained.
"Oh My Gosh!" Thought Pinky "This is worse than exams. What are all these forms?"How many workers will I employ? More than 1 hopefully..How many cubic litres of sulher di oxide , ammonia, or chlorine am I going to emmit? None you idiots !Its all natural products.
How many cubic litres of water will I need per shift ? I wish I knew.
How many megawatts of power do I require? Who cares?
What are my projection plans for next five years? I dont know. What are you talking about?
Am I planning to export ? Sure! thought Pinky and decided to ignore all these letters in the true spirit of a budding young enterpreneur. Bidding for time.
She would just concentrate on her products.For unless she had some creamy haldi chandan blend to put into the hour glass shaped nude peach jars with oversized round caps, there was no point in filling out any forms. So she just focused on finalizing the ratio of creamy shea butter, cocoa butter,almond paste,cucumber extract, haldi, chandan, besan, malai,etc in her kitchen laboratory.
She put different combinations of these ingredients in different jars and put them in micowave , in deep freeze, in sunlight, in dark and cool place to study the best formula that would be stable and effective.Instead of guinea pigs she just used her left and right hand and left and right legs to test the different formulas.It was all done like Pastuer.Remember how he injected himself to prove that vaccines work? Pinky would carefully study her right and left hand and right and left legs in the same spirit : that of a true inventor.
But the agencies were not used to being ignored. They sent threatening and warning letters of reminder to Pinky and some more forms. She decided to face them this time.Since I have no pollutants at all I will go to the Poluttion control board first she thought.
She carefully and truthfully filled out the forms. Paid the fees submitted to the concerned dept.The chaprasi told her to wait.She waited patiently for her licence to be issued. The one thing she observed sitting there was that the officer was really having some digestive problems. Every few mins he would nod to some one in the waiting area and vanish to the public washroom. She also saw a lot of people in the waiting area had mithai boxes on their laps."There are lot of people celebrating here, but celebrating what ?" she wondered.
After she had waited and waited for half a day the chaprasi took pity on her and said,"Madam chay pani kuch lauon ?""No no "Pinky replied. "Ab mera licence ata hi hoga aur mein ghar jake khana khaoongi! Thanks ""Madam licence aaj nahi banega.Usko time lagta hein. ek do maheena." informed chaprasi eyeing her with interest.
"To pehele kyo nahin bataya? "Pinky flared up."Aur madam, agli baar meethai ka dabba lekar ana!"chaprasi flashed his rotting teeth and she fled hurridly.On her way out she saw the officer go yet another time to the public washroom. Poor sick fellow she pitied him even though he had wasted her time.
She went home and filled out all the other forms as truthfully as she could.She went to all those other depts and paid their prescribed fees.Then began the waiting game. All the hot and heady threatening letters were a thing of the past. No more warnings. No more reminders! No nothing! She waited and waited eagerly for replies.By now one entire year had passed. She had made trial runs of her best formula on all members of her family. Her friends swore by the radience and glow of her beauty creams.
Pinky paid a large amount of B&W money to lease a gala in an industrial estate. She got a commercial mixer, and employed a few girls to come and fill up the plastic jars, and pack them in nicely decorated cartons.She employed some salesmen to distribute all those jars and collect payments from scores of stores all over the city. Her business took off well. Her product worked its magic on the dry malnourished faces of teenage girls.It was an instant success.She was happy that she took the risks.
The only thing that worried her was that she still had not heard from any of those agencies and had not yet got a single licence. As far as those govt agencies were concerned she was completely non existant .One day she was passing by the pollution control office, so she decided to go up and collect her licence.
As she was about to enter the lobby, she saw the officer emerge out of the washroom. In his hand was a meethai box.It did not make any sense. Anyway. She sat in the waiting area and looked around.Several people with several meethai boxes waited there. Same as last time. And the officer kept doing the same thing too. Nodding to someone, going to the public washroom, coming out with a meethai box.Then chaprasi going to officer taking the licence from him, going to the party, giving party licence and taking partys signature. End of story.
By now Pinky had begun to understood the non taught non discussed unspoken terms of Indian Business. She knew that the meethai box contained no meethai at all.It was full of edible money..khaneka paisa.When you khao so much paisa, public washroom to jana hi padega na every five mins.Armed with her new insight Pinky prepared several meethai boxes and her salesmen handed them to different departments and soon she got all her licences too.Now she could take her business to an entirely new level.
"We Indians love our meethai na?!" she began next time she entered a licencing dept.