Free Bird Part 11

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 There were wafts of ground spices emanating from the garage. Sneha and her two helpers were having a busy time - raw mangoes were cut, oil crackled into the wok, spices were added, samples were tasted and finally packed into the plastic containers with the name Pa's pickles on it.

When Sneha had asked her father to suggest a name for her business, he had suggested mother's pickle. He couldn't complete a sentence without reference to Sneha's late mother. Even Sneha had liked that name. But there was another pickle in the market with the same name. So Sneha came up with a new name Pa's pickles. It sounded trendy, served her tribute to her father and certainly stole some good will of mother's pickle. Strange, but shoppers couldn't easily differentiate between mother's pickles and Pa's pickle, and Sneha's business was soaring.

'We can't work like this. We will have to get automated.' Sneha said. Her two helpers didn't understand what she said and they continued with their work. The following week when the mixing and packing machine arrived in the garage the helpers looked at it in awe. They had never seen anything like that.

Sneha was so immersed in the activities of her business that she hardly got the time to chat with her father. Sometimes she felt terribly guilty for not giving him time. But before she could ponder over the said thought for longer, some or other issue relating to her business would crop up and she would be busy handling it. Running your own business is not an easy task. Sneha had realized it once she had plunged into it.

Rupa, unknown to her mother was a dormant partner in the enterprise. She had invested some money into it and was leaving no stone unturned to make the pickle business a success. She would daily post status updates on her whatsapp which carried her pictures with the pickle bottle in different angles. For the first time in her life, Rupa was doing something which she felt was right and not meekly following the commands of her mother. The fact that she was hiding her role in the business surprisingly added to her excitement. When she received her share in the profit in the first month itself her joy knew no bounds. 'Yeah, we have become successful entrepreneurs.' She had said. She had planned to buy a nice saree for her mother from the said amount. She asked Sneha as to what she was going to do with her money. Sneha had told her that she was going to plough back the money into the business. On being asked why, Sneha told her about the additions she planned to make to the existing business. Hearing her elaborately drawn plans Rupa was super impressed. She too decided to reinvest the profits into the business. She laughed at the fact how much she was moored into the 9 to 5 job mentality which made her spend all the money which she got as a salary immediately. 'Not that I have become an entrepreneur I should act like one too. I release my mental patterns of salaried job mentality.' She said and patted on her head as if she was turning off some switch in the head. 
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