Chapter 241 Slaves
Yadav means "cow herder" and Halvi means "sweet maker", both of them are from the low caste Shudra.
In North India, cows and sugarcane are everywhere. They are symbols of agriculture and economy.
It is not surprising that the castes representing these two are huge in number.
Yadav has 20 to 30 million people, and even if Halvi cannot compare with them, it will not be far behind.
Ron had some vague ideas in his head, but they hadn't yet taken shape.
"Brother, how did things go on this trip to Lucknow?" Ratan came over.
"It's settled. The Daily News won't report on us anymore." Ron shrugged.
“Didn’t those lowly Yadavs extort money from you again?”
"You guessed it right. The bill will be sent to you in the next two days."
"A bastard is a bastard." Ratan cursed.
Muna's heart ached. In the past, he would never take such words seriously.
This is the fate of their caste, they are born this way.
He didn't know when it started, perhaps it was when he picked up his books again, or perhaps it was the recent marches, but he was no longer indifferent to such words.
"Yadav was a decent man. He gave us the coal mine in Sonbhadra."
"No one wants that thing. It can't be taken away or sold. It's useless." Ratan was dismissive of it.
"Something is better than nothing. At least we can solve the electricity problem of cement plants and mines."
"Brother, you are too disciplined, so the Yadavs bully you. Sometimes you have to show them your guns..."
"Okay, okay, we're all cooperating pretty well now, there's no need to create unnecessary complications." Ron hooked his arm around his shoulder and walked into the manor.
"This business is too much trouble," muttered Ratan. "Come on, let's go for a drink. You haven't stopped since you came back from Bombay. Dorje! Muna! Let's buy some whiskey!"
"Yes, master." The two servants responded.
There would be no high-end goods like whiskey near Kana Village, not to mention that the landlords wanted to drink foreign liquor.
Doji doesn't like Muna, but he has to hold his nose and act with him.
They had to go to the town of Mirzapur, where there were shops selling foreign liquor.
The streets were bustling with activity, and occasionally one could see leaflets distributed by the parade from the previous two days.
Some were stuck to the wall, and some were stepped into the soil, covered with footprints.
"Country Mouse, what books have you read recently?" Doggie asked for small talk.
"A collection of poems."
"A collection of poems? What's that?"
“Great text.”
"Only God is great. Are you stupid?"
"You don't understand."
"Tsk~" Duoji pointed disdainfully, "Do you know those words?"
Muna looked up and saw a newspaper thrown on the ground, in English.
"Look, if you're not devoted enough to the gods and the written word, you're just a half-wit."
Muna was speechless. Doji was right. He was just a half-baked person.
Not only him, most people in this country are half-baked and have no chance to complete their education.
They are somewhere between illiterate and literate, with their heads cluttered with a bunch of things, like an unorganized museum.
A few years and events learned from history textbooks, a few formulas learned from mathematics textbooks, political discussions read in newspapers while passing by on the street, a few triangles and pyramids seen on the pages of the tattered geometry textbook used to wrap snacks in the tea shop at the village entrance, and a few news items heard from the All India Radio and Television news program.
All this muddled, half-understood, half-right, half-wrong information gets mixed up in their heads with other half-baked ideas, fighting each other out and ultimately giving rise to more half-baked ideas.
This is the process by which the worldview of most Indians is formed, and it is also the principle by which they conduct themselves.
Muna suddenly realized that he was essentially a dabbler. He couldn't even read English, so how could he have the nerve to study poetry?
"Country mouse, we're here, get ready!" Doggie shouted from the side.
The shop in front of them had a sign outside that read, "First Prize British Hotel."
This was the only foreign-style hotel in town, and nearby landlords would send their servants here every week to buy alcohol.
Moreover, they always went out with two servants, probably because they were afraid that the other servant would escape with the wine.
The shelves of the "First Prize" hotel are filled with colorful and various wine bottles. Behind the counter are two teenage boys, who are busy collecting money and serving wine amid the noise of customers.
A red-painted price list was taped to the store's white walls, showing hundreds of liquors divided into five categories: beer, rum, whiskey, gin, and vodka.
Whisky is the most popular, with three categories. The top-tier ones include Johnnie Walker, Black Dog, and Teacher's Strong Drink...
The price starts at one thousand rupees, and it can be sold by full bottle, half bottle, and quarter bottle.
There is a line of small print at the end of the price list. Our store also sells more affordable whiskeys. If you want to buy, please ask the counter.
The interior of the hotel is not very big. The three-meter-wide area in front of the counter was packed with more than fifty people buying drinks.
Everyone was waving large banknotes and shouting at the top of their lungs:
"A litre of Kingfisher beer, please!"
"Half a bottle of Old Monk's rum!"
"A bottle of Pili! Pili!"
They did not drink the wine themselves. Muna could tell from their tattered clothes that they were servants who bought wine for their master, just like him and Doji.
Fortunately, today is not the weekend, otherwise the counter would be crowded like a war.
At this point, Muna and Doji suddenly became in perfect harmony. He was responsible for holding the enemy back, while Doji led the powerful attack from the front.
He pushed forward, yelling, "Johnnie Walker! A whole bottle!"
Johnnie Walker was the first of the first-class whiskies on the price list. Ratan never drank other brands.
Dorje took the wine and held it like a baby while Muna started to punch hard, cutting a bloody path through the crowd.
He was already eighteen years old, much taller than before, and thanks to the chicken curry, he was also much stronger.
Only in the liquor store did Doji and Muna have a sense of cooperation, and did not ignore each other like they did in the mine.
On the way back, Doji would stop from time to time, then carefully take the bottle out of the box and play with it in his hands.
He said he was checking to see if the Jackpot Hotel was selling inferior goods, but Muna knew that was complete nonsense.
He just wanted to handle the bottle, to experience the feeling of holding an unsealed bottle of first-class whiskey in his hands, and imagine that this was the wine he bought for himself.
After satisfying his craving, he put the bottle back into the box and walked back.
Muna's clothes were also tattered, but he looked down on Doji's little actions.
He recalled the line from Iqbal's collection of poems:
They remain slaves because they do not know where beauty lies in the world.
The Daily News indeed shut up, its front page replaced by a kidnapping case at an exclusive English private school.
Such incidents are so common in Uttar Pradesh that they are not even news.
But there has to be something on the front page to fill the empty space.
The Times of India took over from the Daily News and its coverage took a complete 180-degree turn.
The farmers marched for the Sur Cement Plant, yes, but it was to thank the great Mr. Sur.
Ron transformed himself in The Times of India and became a blessing to the people of Mirzapur.
He brought in factories, created thousands of jobs, and planned to fix the east's crumbling roads.
He is obviously a good man, and the previous reports were all false.
To increase the persuasiveness, the newspaper also published two illustrations.
One photo shows a celebratory parade in the town of Mirzapur, with all the slogans praising and eulogizing Mr. Sur.
Another photo shows a long queue in front of the Sur Cement Factory. They are all villagers who came to apply for jobs.
The Times of India has readers from all walks of life in Uttar Pradesh, and Ron Soul's reputation reversed almost overnight.
After the news spread for a few days, prominent figures in Uttar Pradesh began to pay attention to Ron.
They called him, not for any reason, but just to say hello.
We are all businessmen, and if there is a suitable opportunity in the future, cooperation will become a natural thing.
One of them was Subrata Roy, a Bihari man who urged Ron to meet him.
Ron asked Latan about him, and he didn't expect that this guy was so famous.
When he was young, he studied in Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh. After graduation, instead of looking for a job, he rode a Lamborghini scooter to deliver fast food.
Roy doesn't like working for others, he likes to run his own business.
After saving some money, he bought goods from low-end factories and then sold them to make a profit from the difference.
However, there are too many poor people in India, and those things that seem ordinary in Roy's eyes are still unaffordable for the lower class people.
One time, a poor customer he was selling to said bluntly, "When I give you money, I have less. Unless you have a way to make my money more, why should I trust you?"
This sentence opened Roy's mind, and a bold business plan took shape in his head.
Roy found that most banks in India were only located in big cities, and even in small towns there were few bank branches.
However, most of the population of Uttar Pradesh or North India lives in rural areas. Where do they keep their money?
The poor may not have money, but they at least have one rupee or ten rupees.
In the late 1970s, Roy bought the bankrupt Sahara Financial Company for 2,000 rupees and officially established his own private financial bank.
His main clients are in rural areas, and he provides high-interest investment projects to poor people such as farmers, rickshaw pullers, servants, small businessmen, etc. who do not have access to formal banking services.
He accepted everyone who came, allowing customers to deposit as little as ten rupees and promising them an annual interest rate return of 300%.
At first many people didn't believe it, so Roy simply spread piles of money on the table, and everyone was stunned.
After attracting the initial batch of customers with high interest rates, Roy began to lend money to those in need.
In his words, it is "savings mutual aid", where people with spare money help those in need, and the latter pay interest to the former.
Gradually, he attracted more and more customers, and when he had more money, he lowered the interest rate to around 15%.
Because they are deeply tied to each other, poor customers did not leave Roy.
His Ponzi scheme was successful, and his poor clients would crawl on the ground every time they saw him.
More than a decade later, Sahara Finance has grown into the largest private bank in Uttar Pradesh.
Its business is no longer limited to the financial field, but has begun to expand into the real economy, with presence in real estate, electronics factories, hotels and other industries.
The bank that can make a Ponzi scheme a reality is considered to be one of the best in the world of weird things.
Ron planned to meet him. Since they were both in Uttar Pradesh, it never hurt to say hello.
(End of this chapter)
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