Tavaru Carpets

                                         

The little toe hit the corner of the bed and it felt that prana were sucked out of the living life. The sloth of sleep was still lingering when the accident jolted Bodhi Agueda and he fell on the floor holding his toe groaning in pain "Oh Dios Miooo", the only tear welled up at the corner of his eye. Bodhi let his toe go and lay on the floor watching this pain, waiting for it to subside, he could feel the throbbing sensation around his toe, he caught the side rail of the bed and got up with little effort and limped his way to the chair at the other corner of the room to sit. Having sat down, he carefully looked at his toe which had a bleeding nail..... he felt bad for the toe. Like every day, having finished his morning chores Bodhi headed out for the Tavaru carpet factory, which was almost four miles from his house yet it took him only fifteen minutes to reach the factory on his cycle, he was able to peddle his way to work really fast. Every morning before leaving for work Bodhi Agueda would take out his beige bag with two compartments, one of which was for his lunch-box which more often than not, was chutney sandwich, some overnight soaked nuts and a pear. The other compartment was the Pensamiento compartment, he used this compartment to carry his very carefully selected thoughts that he knew he would need at work from the stack of thoughts he kept in his closet. This kept his bag light and he was able to cycle his way to work faster. 

Bodhi parked his red cycle and walked straight on to the shop floor. " Oye! Agueda, we need to talk" called his manager. Bodhi hurriedly walked towards him" I know da.., but I really don't see any fault in the carpets, they all look perfectly woven to me", he answered back in a pleading tone. " Agueda, you are the executive fault finder on the floor, your job is to find faults and yet you haven't reported a single fault in last few months, our competency is being questioned... my competency is being questioned, someone can loose his job", the manager said with furious patience, turned around and left for his routine chai and snack.

"It makes sense, everything is a pattern, some threads are aligned to the bigger pattern seamlessly and some are not, but the threads that are not aligned also play a role, they make the carpet what it is, an intelligent build-up of threads that serve a purpose. There are no outliers" Bodhi said looking at Amala his colleague and friend, expecting her to understand what he was mumbling. " I know Bodhi each carpet is made with same intelligence and work and all will be useful to the user irrespective of the few misaligned threads" Amala spoke in a low voice as both of them walked towards the checking counter.

Days went by and there were no rejections at Tavaru carpets, until a huge lot was returned to the factory and Bodhi lost his job. 

" Bodhi Agueda, I told you... this was impending, what am I suppose to do with these rejected carpets" the manager said staring at Bodhi. " You can give these to me", he replied. Before the manager could react, " I will buy this lot, give me at a price you think these are worthy of", Bodhi added with a smile.

At the Saturday Flea market Bodhi would set up his stall with rejected carpets and a placard:

" Misaligned Carpets for INR 1800, if you think you have had a month without imperfections, please pick any for INR 900".

He was making a lot of money.