Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

Babu was a person who was extremely meticulous and punctual in his work. By 8:15 a.m., he had arranged all his bestsellers in the most prominent display cases in the bookstore. He then instructed his shop assistant, who had just got on duty, to sweep the store before customers arrived. Finally, before the start of the day, he performed a pooja, seeking the divine’s blessings.

Babu sat down in his chair, which creaked a little under his weight. at the corner of his eyes, the bundle of papers caught his attention. In his rush to arrange the shop and make it presentable, he hadn’t had time to inspect the bundle earlier. Even now, Babu couldn’t recall ordering this bundle of papers. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

He was curious.

He removed the jute bag covering the bundle, revealing three separate bundles of newspapers, each labeled *Bharatam Daily*. Upon seeing this, Babu finally realized what the bundle contained—it was the newspaper he ordered a few days back.

He was surprised, as he hadn’t expected the newspaper to be just a few sheets of paper. Although he hadn’t expected high-quality material or many pages, he had at least imagined the newspaper would be in book form, which was the usual reading format. Instead, it came in a lengthy and thin format, and it felt very delicate to the touch, like a thin leaf.

Babu was sure the newspaper would be ruined after three or four uses.

"Did I make a mistake?" he wondered, beginning to doubt his decision as the likelihood of selling the newspaper seemed less and less. Babu’s face grew grim.

*Sigh!*

In the end, all Babu could do was let out a sigh of disappointment and continue unpacking the newspapers. In fact, he could return the newspapers and get his money back since he wasn’t satisfied with them, but Babu knew this would leave a bad impression on the manufacturers. If it had been any other manufacturer, he might not have minded, but this one was part of the royal family’s company.

Though his majesty wouldn’t hold a grudge, and likely wouldn’t even know of him, Babu, who had been born a poor untouchable and now stood on his own two feet thanks to the policies made by his majesty, would never do such a thing. He would rather suffer a loss than disappoint his benefactor, even in the slightest.

Babu didn’t know how to market the newspaper, as he had never sold one in his life. So, looking at its form factor, he simply left them flat in a tray atop the table. He placed a wooden twig under one side of the newspaper bundle, giving it some elevation and a slope for better display.

After arranging everything, Babu took a newspaper for himself and started to read. Although he thought the newspaper wouldn’t sell much, since he had bought it, he wanted to see the product for himself.

The first headline caught his attention, "His Majesty Departs for a Lengthy Tour of the Northern states of the Empire."

His Majesty, Emperor Vijay Devaraya, heads on tour to the northern part of the Empire in order to inspect the efforts of integration. We interviewed Prime Minister Vinod—here are his words...

Babu unknowingly became immersed in reading. He found each topic in the newspaper fascinating, and reading everything that had happened in the empire recently left him contented and wanting more.

"Babu!"

Babu was startled by the loud shout.

"I’ve been calling you for the last few minutes, Babu! What are you so engrossed in?"

It was the shopkeeper from the neighboring store. Usually, the neighbor came to his shop to borrow a book to read, as his business had fewer but higher-value customers, leaving him with plenty of free time to read.

"You startled me, Ajay. Anyway, wait a moment, I’ll get you your book."

Babu quickly went to the shortstories book section in a practiced manner, picked out a book, and handed it over to Ajay.

Ajay looked at the title of the book, *A Collection of Short Stories by Bhagya Mandir, * He was very satisfied with it, however he had a doubt. "You got so engrossed in reading something that you even ignored my shout. What was it? Can you tell me?"

Babu wanted to go back to reading his newspaper, but hearing the question, he laughed and picked up a newspaper from the bundle, handing it over to Ajay.

Ajay was initially confused by the long paper, but as he started reading, his eyes brightened. He was mesmerized.

"Ajay Sir, you have a customer." It wasn’t until Ajay’s shop assistant called him that he realized he was still in Babu’s bookstore.

"How much is the newspaper?" Ajay asked hurriedly.

Babu, now engrossed in his newspaper again but paying attention to his surroundings, replied, "1 Varaha."

Ajay didn’t hesitate and took out 5 Varaha, handing it to Babu. "Give me four more newspapers, and make sure to keep five newspapers for me daily. Don’t sell them to anyone else."

Babu didn’t understand why Ajay needed five identical newspapers, but he didn’t ask much. He motioned for his assistant to pick out four more and handed them over to Ajay.

Taking the newspapers, Ajay promptly left for his shop, where he neatly arranged the papers in the seating section. He felt the newspaper would be a brilliant way to keep men sitting and waiting in the store while the women finished their shopping.

---

Initially, people were skeptical about the newspaper due to its unorthodox format and delicate build. But as they began to overlook these small details, they became infatuated with it, as it had become a window to the world.

"A large breakthrough in the chemical industry, learn more about it!"

An aspiring student studying in college was engrossed in reading the newspaper he bought at his local bookstore. Noticing the novelty, his classmates gathered around to look at the newspaper together.

This caught the attention of their teacher. She was initially angry thinking the boys were looking at something inappropriate, she marched over to reprimand them. However, she too was drawn in by the charm of the newspaper.

Greatly shocked by some of the news, she used her authority as a teacher to snatch the newspaper away on the grounds of disrupting study time, keeping it for herself and leaving the students dumbfounded.

In this way, the newspaper reached the managerial levels of various schools in the city, prompting school and college principals to order a dozen or so newspapers daily from the nearest bookstore.

"A new plot of industrial land for sale in the newly opened industrial zone in Mangaluru."

An entrepreneur, who had done well for himself, was taken aback. He did not expect the newspaper he had bought on a whim to actually contain such valuable news.

He hurriedly wrote down the details and went to the land audit bureau to confirm the claim mentioned in the newspaper.

Knowing that the claim was true, the entrepreneur happily left for Mangaluru to buy the plot of land as his company needed a new processing plant.

Similarly, many employees and managers of different companies bought the newspaper and took it to their offices to read during their free time, but it ended up attracting the attention of their coworkers and eventually the top brass.

The same pattern repeated with company owners in the capital, who immediately ordered a few dozen newspapers on a daily basis.

This scene played out in various organizations across the empire — hospitals, police stations, courts, and even post offices began ordering the newspaper from local bookstores.

People who read the newspaper were mesmerized by its content, which covered everything happening in the empire over the past few days: important royal news, new policies, auctions held by the bank, nationalization efforts, technological advancements, economic updates, sports news, local crime reports, public grievances, and more.

Reading the newspaper made readers feel ten times more knowledgeable than they were a few minutes before, and it quickly became addictive.

Shop owners like Babu were surprised to find that most of the newspapers they had bought had already been reserved by various organizations, leaving them with none to sell to their regular customers. They quickly placed orders for double the amount of newspapers with the *Bharatam Daily* newspaper company.

---

Meera Nair, who was nervously waiting for the verdict, was surprised by the news brought by Kabir Mehta.

"Miss, our newspapers have sold out! The bookstore owners are demanding a restock of no less than 50,000 units."

*Phew!*

Meera Nair immediately felt relieved, as the pent-up uncertainty in her heart was gone. If the news had been about 20,000 newspapers being sold out, she wouldn’t have reacted this way since those 20,000 were already pre-sold even before the newspaper’s launch, which did not give her much understanding of the consumers’ opinions.

But now, with bookstore owners demanding more, she fully understood that the newspaper was a big hit.

Then suddenly it hit her, *50,000 newspapers?* She didn’t know if it was possible to print that many within a few hours, but then she remembered that Raya Media Corporation had a contract with Raya Printers, allowing them to expand production by 100%. This meant that if she gave the order now, 20,000 newspapers could be printed within a few hours. However, she wanted to confirm.

"Raya Printers have some printers dedicated to us, haven’t they?"

"Yes, miss. There are two production lines dedicated to us for emergencies like today. With your order, production can start anytime."

"Okay, good. Immediately order production to start. As for the remaining 30,000 units and anything beyond that, we will have to negotiate the price according to the contract. I’ll handle that myself. You send our order to Raya Printers through the Arkha Drishti communication station."

Kabir nodded and quickly left for the communication station next door.

Meera immediately got in a carriage and left for Kaveri Bank Industrial Zone, where a branch of Raya Printers was located.

---

20 minutes later...

After receiving the orders of 20,000 additional newspapers from Raya Media Corporation, the two production lines that had been left vacant in the Raya Printers factory immediately started to work.

The workers fed the unique paper into the machine, the chemists made sure that the ink was of the right viscosity and physical properties, the mechanics ensured that the improved Gutenberg printer was working at its maximum, and finally, a representative from the Raya Media Corporation proofread the newspaper to ensure everything was correct.

The machine’s sound was like that of a rhythmic drum, running at 60 beats per minute, similar to a moving train.

The whole process was seamless and extremely fluid, like the laminar flow of water.

By the end of the day, Bharatam Daily sold 90,000 newspapers, and the production had to be expanded twofold. Even Bhaskar Acharia, who had been against daily newspapers, started to change his mind after witnessing the first day’s results and reading the paper himself.

Meera Nair was overwhelmed by the estimated demand for the paper, which had become nearly 100,000 copies, and that wasn’t even penetrating the middle class. Meera Nair immediately revised the contract to adjust the amount of production she required, raising the production from 20,000 copies to 200,000 copies in one go.

Surprisingly, after ordering so many newspapers, the cost of producing them actually dropped, which led Raya Printers to reduce the payment cut per newspaper from 10% profits to 6% profits. The profitability of Raya Media Corporation increased from 3% to 5%.

That meant Bharatam Daily could earn 10,000 Varaha per day for Raya Media Corporation in the capital alone. With further expansion of scale and market, the profit margin was bound to increase, the cost of production was bound to decrease, and Raya Media Corporation was bound to become the largest newspaper-producing company in the empire.