‘Ma, please pack my breakfast. I am running very late.’

‘But we earn so we may eat peacefully. Food that is not eaten with love isn’t worth eating at all. Tell me, what’s the point in working so hard?’

‘There’s more to life than just food,’ he retorted.

Madhav was a bit nervous as he drove to his new office. It seemed like a paradigm shift, from college to office. He would have to wear uncomfortable clothes and mind his language and behaviour. It all seemed extremely daunting. He tuned into his favourite FM channel and his thoughts wandered to what he had done to Meera. While he waited at a traffic signal, a beggar in a wheelchair knocked on his window. Madhav’s heart skipped a beat as he stared at the wheelchair. He swallowed hard and sped off the second the light turned green.

His firm, Emarket, was a branding company situated in an imposing monolith. Madhav entered his details at the reception and went to the lift lobby. He saw a few really pretty, petite girls, dressed in formals, shooting him interested looks, but he only had Radhika on his mind. The lift stopped at the eighth floor.

A beautiful woman sat at the front desk. ‘Hello, how may I help you?’ she asked, flashing him a well-trained, fake smile.

‘Hello! I am Madhav Mehra. I’m a new employee. I was asked to report to Mr Rao.’

‘Let me call him.’ She dialled a number and asked an HR executive about Madhav.

‘You can go in and ask for Mr Rao,’ said the receptionist. ‘Welcome to Emarket.’

Madhav walked in and entered a huge space, with hundreds of symmetrical cubicles. It looked like a maze to him, a puzzle of sorts. He saw a man walking hurriedly towards the door and stopped him.

‘Do you know Mr Rao?’ he asked. The man looked very tense.

‘I am going to his cabin. Come with me,’ he said as he took off at a slow jog.

‘Why are you walking so fast?’ Madhav ran behind him.

‘Mr Rao is strict about time and despises latecomers.’

Madhav looked at his watch. It was 9.45 a.m. He was already forty-five minutes late. They reached a cabin where the name on the door said, ‘Vinesh Rao, Senior Manager, Analytics’.

‘Sir, may I come in?’ the man asked, trying to catch his breath. As Madhav peeped into the room, he saw a man in a white shirt rifling through papers.

Mr Rao scolded the man for sending in the reports late and asked him to redo all of them. Madhav waited for his turn. He finally called him in ten minutes later. A pair of glasses was perched on his nose and there were files strewn across his table.

‘My name is Madhav Mehra,’ he mumbled.

The man looked at the watch and then at Madhav.

‘You are fifty-two minutes and forty-six seconds late, Mr Mehra,’ he proclaimed.

‘Sir, I am sorry. I got stuck in traffic,’ Madhav said.