Customer says I'm cheating him out of his food, so I give him exactly what he wants.

When I was 13 or 14, I decided I wanted a PS3. My dad refused to buy me one, but my uncle made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

He said that if I worked at his sweets shop for the two months of summer break, he'd buy me

a PS3 and some games in lieu of payment.

For teenage me with no commitments, this seemed fantastic.

Uncle sells almost every type of Indian sweet and snack, from Rasgolas to samosas

to even dosas now.

Come for the samosa, stay for the chai, I used to say. But we sold

a special kind of snack known as a mini samosa in his shop. They're like samosas, but smaller,

about 3.5 to 4 cm in size, which is about one in 2,286 of a football field for my American friends who use Freedom Units.

They were sold by weight in sealed packs of 250 grams and 500 grams, as these were the most common amounts people bought.

Making those packages turned out to be my job.

You see, sometime between now and when Uncle started his business, he realized

that 250 grams was roughly the weight of 28 mini samosas, and thus 56 were 500 grams. So instead

of weighing each packet, I was told to just pack by counting individual items, which was easier

and saved time.

We also sold them individually for people who wanted larger, smaller, or unusual amounts.

This was also around the time when our government started airing customer awareness PSAs,

Jago Grahach Jago, for my fellow Indians.

Basically, just telling customers to be aware of fraudulent business people.

This is relevant. So one particularly hot afternoon, it was just me and my uncle at the shop.

In India, frequent power cuts are very common during summers, and thus there were no fans or

...