tender bender

Mr. Yadav hinted at the staircase and started moving his long legs, wearing a casual jeans and a shirt (for a senior government employee above 55, it seemed cool) and a swarm of people followed, some in their best formal attire, with clean shaves, hairdo and polished leather shoes. The others, though not much in quantity (like me) were just wearing some-clothes to do us good. With a big beard on the face, i must have looked sick in front of these people. Anyways, i followed, too. We were moving down from the 4th floor to the ground to sit in a conference room

Todays scenes were flashing in my memory, the Pizza lunch, me in the same place submitting the quotation (and before that running up and down 3 times to find the exact location of the department). The classes that never took place and some discussions about the quotation for the tender (a lot of them actually). well, i was assisting someone for tender of lights to be installed in some department in chandigarh. and here i was back again, in the conference room, with a secret in my mind. the price which no one in the room knew, (but same applied to them). in a few minutes, quotations were to be opened in front of us and we would be witness to a game, similar to casino, a game of numbers, a game of having the best bet and a game of probability. seeing everyone's faces, the swanky businessmen around, i was sure about their lack of technical expertise in the field the tender was. further, this class smelled of greed, the sealed envelopes must have high prices in it, my belief. i had got a seat now n i was analysing the people around. people were asking questions from Mr Yadav, one person even mocked at the specifications mentioned in the sheet. "thats old technology". A curt response to finish him off and some more questions followed.

People which are most likely to give-away are the insecure ones. Their minds know about the possibility of losing and they've already experienced it before, though dreaded it, but still have given it their shot. with more questions, more of their insecurity and personality kept coming clearer and when the envelopes started opening, all businessmen were reduced to some 9th grade children wanting to keep on scribbling to know more about their 3 competitors.

1) 9.48 Lacs
.... some pause, some scribbling, some details asked for and told about etc etc. people were just being so bumbly dumb n i was sitting there, expressionless, with the secret in my mind.

2) 9.75 Lacs
a suppressed sigh of relief from the party no. 1, of which 2 people stood up, in their late 20's and another colleague, a 35+ chap scribbling down as fast and illegibly he could.
The team sitting in front of me had bee scribbling down and a sense of queer arrogance in the face of the sardarjee (whose tender was just opened, took my mention)

3) 7.15 Lacs for some bullshit and 6.95 Lacs for another ..
ooooooo .. the difference ! this guy must be the real one, the supplier of the products who's quoting the correct price for the job. the rest clearly have to be middlemen. clearly, there clothes did mention that only.
2 to go... myself still emotionless, but the thought making me consider a possibility that its decreasing in a spiral manner, we dont want to go lesser than this .. ...
this was ours.

2)(the reason why i sat there) .. 6.37 Lacs .. hmmmmm .. my secret was in front of everyone, just read out by Mr Yadav, who was now signing the pages he'd just read. people were just seeing the backbenchers now, the people who quoted this must be sitting in the backseat cause the ones asking the questions and have used up all their emotions are the frontbenchers... who me ? nooo .. not me someone else's it must be.. still n straight was the way to go .

1) 10.something .. n i just didnt want to hear more .. plus he wanted 1 more( for his wife i guess).
the game was over n battle won.

Going out, a person saw and just said, "from whom you'll get the stuff ? china ? but its impossible to get at this rate. you have links there ? "
"I am making them myself"
" your experience? "
" 3 years"
" we've spent 10 years and swear its not possible to make it in india !" .. some curses n i had decided to step in.
"i guess your technical knowledge was a little lesser and mine a little more then.. "
muted by words, agreeing now, it turned out that people were really not that red-taped as they looked to be.
N i was just left with the thought" O people .. why cant indian brains make things which the bloddy chinese can ?
is it necessary they have to be cheaper ? "
god bless