It was a month back that my daughter said she had to put together an entrepreneurship project for her last semester in college, and what ideas did I have? I must admit to having no bright suggestions right off, but over the next few days I did attempt to come up with a few I thought might be interesting for collegiates — a serial book writing project (“Are you serious?” my daughter giggled), a savings scheme for the slum clusters in our neighbourhood (“Da-ad!”), tour itineraries off the beaten track (“You want us to become guides…”), even a kitty-party version of planning monthly savings to buy luxury goods on EMIs which I thought was really cool (“…or salesgirls”).
A bunch of them formed a group and they brainstormed over endless orders of takeaways. “Now, that’s a plan,” I suggested, as I made payments for deliveries of pizza and Chinese and shawarma, “why not set up a combined takeaway service that would keep the menus of all the neighbourhood restaurants, and undertake the responsibility of ordering and delivering for the consideration of a small fee?” “Why would anyone pay extra,” said my daughter’s friend, “when you’re doing it for free?” — thereby eliminating any hope that I could put the payments down to their outlay. But at least they did give consideration to my plan for monthly installments for luxury buys with the additional twist that they would all be shareholders (“Imagine a Louis Vuitton bag we can all share”) but which came undone because of differences over choices (“I’d prefer a Birkin bag”; “Darling, have you seen the new Burberry!”) and over sizes (“If we have to buy a coat in Keya’s size, it will look like a dressing gown on me”) to, well, fights over why Puja should have Dior shades when Riya wanted an Armani aftershave for her boyfriend.
As time passed and the pizza bills kept mounting, it became evident that they were no closer to a working plan. Should they simply trade — buying goods from the wholesale market in the hope they’d be able to sell it on entrepreneurship day at college? There was now a growing sense of panic too — they were to be marked on their projects, and this would reflect in their final grades. Finally, it all came down to my wife. “If you bake us some muffins,” my daughter’s friends pleaded, “we’ll sell them for a profit.” “I’ll teach you how to bake,” my wife promised, “but you’ll have to do the rest yourself.”
Huge quantities of goodies were ordered on credit from the grocery store – white flour and sugar, eggs and butter, essences and baking powder, cream foam and candy sprinkles – and the neighbourhood aunties were persuaded to part with moulds and ovens, and the baking marathon got underway. My wife having issued instructions, it was time for the actual baking to begin. The girls lit themselves a hookah to ponder over why their mixes had gone wrong; cakes were abandoned for having too much sugar, or none at all; came out burned, or collapsed, or ill-shaped; more orders for white flour, eggs and butter, more phone-ins for meals, and by the end of the day there was a pile of inedible cup cakes and desserts and only some that could be rescued for the following day’s project for which banners were made and posters drawn.
Even so, the next day, by the first hour they’d sold the whole lot off — to boyfriends, and wannabe boyfriends, at astronomical sums, declared huge profits, and got the highest points in class for undertaking everything themselves. What the invigilators failed to see is the scores of discarded cakes and the bills that I’ll have to pay on their behalf — in equated monthly installments.
