Raju: Oh, if only you are a little less impatient and our people have a little more alacrity. Of what avail is working capital once his unit becomes sick?
Rajiv: Is it your idea that I should wait to pick up that sick unit or what?
Raju: I’ve a much healthier mind than you may like to credit me with. What if you lay a pipeline to his oil unit with the margin money of your proposed venture for mutual benefit? Besides being sensible it sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Rajiv: You know I want to be an industrialist and not a money lender.
Raju: Be patient for once. What’s your problem if he takes you as a partner? Won’t that open the doors for some future projects of your own?
Rajiv: Instead, why not I take over the unit? Won’t your bank facilitate that?
Raju: But why should he sell it to you?
Rajiv: To follow suit, let me borrow from Casanova.
Raju: I suppose the topic is not about sexual exploits. Looks like you want to delve into it taking advantage of your wife’s absence.
Rajiv: Jokes apart, I tell you he had a better grasp of life being a playboy than you guys have of money being bankers.
Raju: Is it so?
Rajiv: During one of his sojourns, he had for co-lodgers a poor widow and her three daughters. Seeing him dole out money to all and sundry, when the hapless woman had gone to him to make up leeway, he sought as barter the charms of her eldest daughter.
Raju: What an indecent proposal!
Rajiv: Protest she did but to no avail. Why he was all logic, cold logic you may say. Whatever be his charity, he reasoned it out with her, it wouldn’t last forever and before long she would have to approach other men for succor. Well, their line would be no different from his and her response too could be the same. But for how long was the question. It was only time before she would lose hold on her daughters’ chastity. When push would come to shove at some future time, won’t she let them grant their final favour to someone or the other? That being the case, he said, why should he not be the lucky guy?
Raju: What an abominable fellow he was!
Rajiv: I don’t think so.
Raju: Well!
Rajiv: Lest she should mistake his character, he clarified that he wouldn’t have attached any strings if her daughters were plain looking.
Raju: Didn’t she spit on him thrice over in spite of that?