The teacher wrapped up as the clock hit 6:15. The students were tired and jaded, having been in the class for well over four hours. They had given their first marketing presentations, and it had sapped them through. Some bundled towards the canteen for a sip of cola, some to their respective rooms to just lie down and some to the tea shop across the highway.
Barely 500 metres away from the gates of the institute, the little tea shop had become a beacon of light in the rural abyss that the metropolitan students found themselves in. Standing at the entrance of the nearby Kurol village, the tea shop catered to passing by cars, trucks and local population. That was until now. Since the first batch of MDI-M had come to town, the business of the small joint had taken a sharp upward turn. Not only did student’s flock the place for the tea, but also for the variety hu3of food that was on sale. Things that gave them faint reminders of the homes that they had left behind.
Not only the tea shop, but the local sweet shops and photocopy shops were also seeing an increase in sales. Even the locals have gotten accustomed to the new arrivals with their large cell phones and fancy clothes. The locals, to their credit, have been as co-operative as the students could ask for. Help with directions, requirements of rations and other demands have been met with gloriously by the ‘Jangipurians’.
Also, frequent visits to Raghunathgunj and the football match against the local veterans have created a great deal of goodwill among the locals regarding the students of the ‘Rice-Mill Institute’. If twenty students, can generated such a stir among the people of Jangipur, we at MDI wonder, how the place would look in five years after the Food Park and other industries within the vicinity took off. Maybe our beloved tea shop owner would be expanding to make a chain of restaurants someday. Who knows? He has a bunch of twenty managers at his disposal to help him in such ventures.
