Suresh Bhai had run the cold storage on the edge of town for nearly twenty years, and he could feel the season before the calendar said so. The first trucks of potatoes were still eleven days away when he walked the chambers at six in the morning, as he did every year, with a cup of tea and a growing list in his head.
In his early years, the rush had arrived like a flood. Trucks queued down the road, farmers argued about whose turn it was, and by the second night the staff were tired and the register was a mess. Every mistake in those first days was still being untangled in March.
Three seasons earlier, a farmer had come in angry about a number. He remembered bringing more bags than the register showed. Suresh Bhai remembered nothing of the kind. There was no way to prove either version, and the farmer left, taking his produce and, over time, two of his cousins' as well.
That winter he made himself a rule: nothing is real until it is written where both people can see it. It sounded slow. It turned out to be the fastest thing he ever did.
Now the quiet days before the rush are for preparation. He calls the farmers who have promised produce and asks how much they expect and when. He sorts the chambers by what each can safely hold, and decides in advance where the first lots will go. He checks that the compressors have been serviced and that the backup power actually starts.
He briefs the loaders on a simple order of work: receive, count, write, then stack. No stack without a written entry. The staff grumbled for one season. By the second, they said they could not imagine doing it any other way.
The trucks still queued down the road that year. But every farmer left with a slip in their hand, every lot had a place, and Suresh Bhai could tell anyone, in under a minute, what they had stored and where. The arguments that used to fill the first week simply did not happen.
On the last night he sat on an upturned crate with his tea and realised he was not tired in the old way. The rush was the same size. He was just no longer fighting it.