After they were done with the food, they had ice cream. They chatted while standing outside the restaurant. Yusuf told Vidhi that he could drop her at the hostel, but Vidhi said she wanted to look for a few old books on the roadside bookstalls in the Fort area. Vidhi left after five or ten minutes.

Yusuf and Hina sat in the car. Yusuf dropped Hina at the JJ flyover and went back to his shop. He went to meet his family on Saturday. After mentioning the trip to Aurangabad, he told Hina that she should go for the educational trip. Darakhshan was ready to express doubts about her safety, but before that Yusuf said that he had already spoken to Miss Thomas, who was a lecturer in the college. She was going to be present on the trip. She knew Hina and would keep an eye on her. This was enough for Darakhshan’s satisfaction. While Yusuf was leaving, Hina accompanied him till the ground floor of the building. When Yusuf was about to sit in the car, Hina asked him if he really knew Miss Thomas. Yusuf admitted that he had known her for a few years. She said that she could never gather that from the conversations she had had with Miss Thomas. He sat in the car and Hina returned home.

On her way back to the house, she kept thinking of how her father and Miss Thomas could have met and become friends. Miss Thomas was a strict, introverted, scholarly woman.

There was a traffic jam at the JJ signal. Yusuf’s car got stuck in the jam. He looked at himself in the rear-view mirror and read what was written on it, ‘Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.’ He smiled. Miss Thomas, wearing red lipstick, a T-shirt and a skirt, was smiling at him from the mirror.

Aymal had given Yusuf Miss Thomas’s number after the party in Pune and had asked him to meet her in Mumbai. He would get into a good circle through Miss Thomas. She had told him that Miss Thomas was the head of an organization of like-minded people in Mumbai. At the time she was attending a conference in Sri Lanka or else she would have been present at the party. Aymal had called Miss Thomas up and had introduced Yusuf privately.

Before meeting Miss Thomas, he bought an English novel to gift her.

The first meeting was pleasant.

Yusuf had indulged in less conversation and had carefully answered Miss Thomas’s questions on the party at Pune. Yusuf had said that it was as if the party had cut him off from his umbilical cord, once again. Miss Thomas had asked what he meant by that. Yusuf had said that every individual had a cultural identity. He was a prisoner of certain beliefs and spent his life with certain kind of people around him. This imprisonment, beliefs, restraints were like the bond between his soul and his umbilical cord. Till the time man did not break this cord, he would not be truly free. This made Miss Thomas smile and say, ‘Freedom is the ultimate desire of a human heart but unfortunately, the human himself is the enemy of that freedom.’