Pranati works in a food processing plant, Grannis Pickles. She is chief accountant there. The plant is one of the best. They buy best quality ingredients and strict process control. Pickles they make taste good, but Pranati knows the difference.
In her childhood days, Pranati used to help her Grandma in those chore. Grandma used cut the mangoes and then put lots of salt and spice. Then she will dry it in the sun. Salt dehydrated mango. In this slow dehydration process some fermentation will also take place. That will turn the sugar into vinegar. Once the fruit is properly dehydrated She will preserve it in oil. In her plant the process is different. They will boil the mango and spice in vinegar. After good amount of boiling they preserve it in oil.
In this process, most vitamins and antioxidants are destroyed. Fruit will have lots of sugar so it will spoil easily so they add some preservatives. The taste is also not same. But plant can’t spend one month to mature the product. It will be a financial nightmare.
Many times Pranati thought of quitting the job but she needs the money. She has to pay for the car loan that she took. More over inflation has made everything so costly. Even her child’s toys cost almost her weeks salary. Car has been invaluable help in her commuting to office. She thought again: no she can’t quit. In her guilt, Pranati put a reminder to buy a toy for Minu on her way back to home.
As Pranati was returning she went to the toy shop. As usual, she went straight to the barbie doll section. But suddenly Ravi’s sermons came to her mind. She knew Minu won’t like anything other than the best. Just to prove Ravi false, Pranati bought an ethnic doll. She was getting a sadistic picture of Minu trampling Ravi’s idea of ethnic consumption. She could imagine Minu ripping the flimsy doll apart. She was thinking of making a video of the destruction and giving it to Ravi and see how he defends bad quality ethnic stuff over good quality imported doll.
Minu was happy to get a different doll. She put it in the doll house. It was too big for the other furniture designed for Barbie doll. “Lack of standards” Pranati thought. Minu cleared some stuff to make room for her new doll. Result was some more broken Barbies but surprise of surprise, new doll remained intact. Pranati was not sure, if she was disappointed of the lost opportunity of proving Ravi wrong or was happy that Minu liked her gift.