Hello dear TL
I don't know how many of you run small scale manufacturing companies. Probably not too many, given how cheerful and chirpy my TL usually is. Because times are tough. First there was the lockdown, which forced us to keep factories closed.
Closely followed by the sharp rise in the prices of everything. Steel, plastics, non ferrous metals, every imported thing, became suddenly and dramatically more expensive. Like 1.5x to 2x. This knocked the stuffing out of sales because the proletariat was broke because of covid
Naturally, all eyes turned to the government. Surely, they'd do everything within their powers to help out a sector which employs some 6 crore people (and supports another 20 or so crore people indirectly). Well, it turned out they weren't able to. Not much anyway.
Fair enough. The pandemic was a challenge like no other. And anyway, the things government is doing, infrastructure for example, will take a few years to really show up in the bottom-line. But today, i found out first hand how devastatingly stupid it can be.
Well, to be fair, not the government really but the Maharastra State Electricity Distribution Co. I feel compelled to tag @CMDMSEDCL because it's just possible we've been a victim of some petty bribe seeking, but who knows, it could be policy as well.
So here's what happened:
We had an electricity bill which due for payment yesterday. Just due. Not overdue or anything. For some reason, not lack of money (but which could well have been. Times are hard), we couldn't do yesterday. Well, this morning, they landed up and disconnected the power
Our employees called me and told me they're here to disconnect our power, please tell them not to. I spoke to the man. He said I will give you fifteen minutes. If the payment doesn't happen by then, I'm disconnecting it.
I couldn't, because I had to get to office and do it
By the time I did that, my fifteen minutes were up. The power was cut. Production was halted. Then we spent a hour or two looking for the guy. Finally found him. Had to pay him Rs. 500 towards reconnection charges. He turned the power on. We had lost a good 4 hours of production
I was seething. I wanted to rant at someone. Fine encouragement this is for industry, i wanted to tell him. No notice, nothing. Just land up and shut off power. But my workers told me jaane do na sahab. Waise bhi char char ghante power kat rahta hai. So, dear @CMDMSEDCL ,
I am not going to rant. Just wanted to share an opinion with you. This might not be the best way to encourage industry. We might not be very valuable, we small industry guys, but we do employ people. And it's been a brutal couple of years. We haven't folded up yet but it won't
take all that much to make us fold up. A few hours of power cut might not do it, but it will definitely help us along in that direction

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More from @shenoyn

30 Nov
After that unusually dark tweet thread (if you missed it, good for you. I'm usually a ray of sunshine but i was a wee bit upset when i wrote that. Anyway, back to the res), here's something you guys might enjoy. We've been invited out for dinner.
If the question that crossed your mind is "Why would anyone in their right minds invite old Naren?", you can pat yourself on the back for your extraordinary Sherlockian skills. And if you instantly found the answer, which is "Ah, it was Sheela they invited" you can add Poirot to
that list. She really does look heavenly when she steps out in evening wear. Unfortunately, in my case that's not a given. Every time I've selected what clothes I should wear, Sheela has had to overrule, necessitating an arduous redressal (haha) of that situation (I'm so witty!)
Read 5 tweets
16 Aug
Introspection: From time to time in a guy's life, there comes a moment when he wonders if he hasn't been a bit of an underachiever. I mean, all your friends from school and college are captains of industry and you're having to be nice to the watchman in your sister's building
so that he lets you park your car inside. If you were captain of industry material, you wouldn't be giving him weak, ingratiating smiles. You'd be making him wilt under the power of your gaze. But you can't, and you wonder why. Then the words of Hal Abelson, legendary professor
at MIT (the branch office in Boston, not the real deal in Manipal, attended by the likes of yours truly, @Rajeev_GoI and @satyanadella ), who said "If I've not seen as far as others, it's because giants were standing on my shoulders", run through your head. Just as you're
Read 6 tweets
8 May
My mom sent me out to buy bananas. "I want slightly unripe ones. Bananas that will be perfect for eating tomorrow"
Ok.
"Tell him 'kal ke liye chahiye', ok?"
Mom, I'm 56 years old. I am married. I have two grown up sons. I have lived all my life in Bombay. I KNOW what to tell him
I reach the guy's stall. A WhatsApp message arrives on my phone. Full of some really crazy stuff about how China, Russia, America, the middle East and Nehru are the ones responsible for the current situation. I write a stinging reply on the group, heaping scorn. The banana guy
is waiting for my order. "Ek darjan kela" I tell him. I have more scorn to heap, so I continue.
Back home, mom says "these bananas are ripe. I need slightly under ripe ones. You didn't tell him?"
I did, I lie.
Mom: "Ok. Go tell him again. Tell him 'kal ke liye chahiye', ok?"
Read 5 tweets
16 Mar
My dad, who passed away recently, had one incredible quality. He was just not afraid of dying in the way the rest of us are. Let me give an example. Way back, in 2001, he was diagnosed with oral cancer. The treatment was radical. They would remove half his jaw and most of the
tissue surrounding it. There was a problem though. Just the year before, he had had angina and chose not to have a bypass surgery. The oncosurgeon warned that while the mandible surgery itself was quite straightforward, his heart condition posed a significant risk. My mom and I
were there with him when the doctor said that. He was characteristically nonchalant. "If we don't do this surgery it's 100% death, right? And if we do it, it's only a 50% chance that I'll die. We'll go ahead and do it".
"Get these tests done" said the surgeon "and get admitted
Read 8 tweets
28 Feb
I was chatting on a friends group and as we shared anecdotes, I remembered this one. Many of the details are hazy so I've left out specifics but this is what broadly happened.
We used to live in a hostel called the D blocks. These were at the edge of the campus and beyond them
was a barren, rocky waste. In the evening, all the wise and worthy of MIT Manipal would gather here and basically stare at the aforementioned waste.
On one such day, someone had a brainwave. "Let's perform an experiment", he said.
This experiment was to determine if dogs get drunk, and if they did, to observe what happened when they did. A suitable dog, a friendly chap who used to hang with us, was chosen.The plan was to mix some alcohol into a little milk and make the dog drink it.
Read 10 tweets
6 Sep 20
I'm not usually given to dark, depressing thoughts - indeed, the sunniness of my disposition has been known to elicit comment from actual rays of sunshine - but I must confess I feel low this morning. Why, you ask? Well, two incidents. First one - a month or so ago, a bunch of us
college friends on a zoom call decided to get some tee-shirts made with stuff written on it that would evoke memories. One of our classmates living in California got them made and decided to ship them to everyone, including those of us living in India. He decided to ship them to
me and I could then ship them to the others. A grand total of ten customized tee-shirts. The shipment should have reached me in three days. It took three weeks. Why? Because it was stopped by the customs. Because it did not have an invoice. So I wrote a nice letter saying they
Read 13 tweets

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