SPIRIT OF MUMBAI

"Oops, I have forgotten the keys , we have to return Home and collect it" - Sandhya, my cousin-friend declared with alarming hurry. We were already late due to the office-rush hour and to top that lateness, we had to return home. Our mobiles were constantly buzzing with friends, threatening to call 100 , 101 , 102 ,... if we didn't reach the venue within a second. As if we possessed couple of time-machines. Now that's typical of school-friends. They take you for granted. They think of you as Omnipotent and Useless in the same instance.  We pacified them with the coolest promise of Magnum Chocolate Infinity Ice-candies, if they didn't kill us on arrival. They bargained for 2 candies each, we cursed Foreign Direct Investment in retail but our taste-buds were already in raptures.  At last, we reached the venue for the get-#together / reunion of school-friends, exactly an hour after the scheduled time. We were fashionably late but still received the warmes...

A , B , C ... T ... I checked that list twice, thrice but my name was missing. There was no 'Sujata Tawde' in the passing list of Para Social work-entrance exam.  I don't remember how I returned  home   and collapsed in the arms of Aai, how she comforted me and made me sleep. I did not want to get up ever and face the cruel world. I wanted to die and that's that. But life is not that easy. It demands living, death can not be ordered on Flipkart. I had studied like a zombie for that exam. Every day I got up at 4 in the morning, so that I could study and reach office at 10 a.m. As soon as I returned  home  at 6.30 p.m., I would eat Varan-Bhaat and continue studying till 11.30 p.m. I had lost the sense of the world. It hardly mattered to me what's happening around, while I was preparing for the exam.  Next morning, after that horrible results, Aai handed me the news-paper and asked me to read a SC ( Single Column news ). It was about the ...