✔️The single housewife (Completed)

The test

Era's POV

"Are you ready?" Neel asked as we stood outside the Council building.

Ready? He had no idea how ready I was for the test. I went through hundreds of pages of quantitative aptitude till late night. Got up early morning to finish the chores, avoided Deep's gazes as I manically packed his tiffin, avoided calls of my in-laws and dodged Deep's offer to drop me to whatever place I was going. I had told him that I was planning to spend my time with my bestie.

"That's nice. It will give you time to go through this rough phase. Talking to friends help to go through heartbreaks." He had assured me.

"hmmm" I simply said and went on to catch the cab. I was too busy to grieve.

"Era, focus!" hissed Nisha and I came back to the present.

"Come!" said Neel as he opened the door to the conference room. Nisha and Mihir patiently sat on the sofa in the reception room.

One of the council member, Richa escorted me to a test room. As usual, the room was painted fully in light blue color. There was a desk and a chair.

"There are two papers. You are required to answer them. The first paper in light blue is for the IQ and the second paper is for EQ. We will test your brain in terms of intelligence and emotional maturity. Here, in this city, both are equally important. The test is of 300 score. You need to earn minimum 290 to be the part of this place." she said.

The paper's time limit was two hours. The EQ paper was far easy because it gave me real life situations and some creative questions. I was supposed to answer how I would react to the situations in the real life. However IQ questions were pretty tough. The papers would have gotten much better if I wouldn't have got nervous and screwed up half of the sections.

The paper was over and I was asked to come the following day. As I strolled in the gardens with Neel, Nisha and Mihir, there was an awkward silence. I knew that they had guessed it right. My papers weren't great.

"Its not your fault. Our standards are pretty high. People over here are the best in their respective fields. Even if two people marry, their genes have probability to produce the super talented or highly intelligent child. I mean, look at Mihir's father, Satya uncle. He was the best journalist in the country and today he manages a huge team of journalists for the newspaper publications! and Mihir? Though he looks as stupid as a donkey, he has an IQ of 180" said Nisha as she broke the silence.

"Hey, I do not look like a donkey. Girls here die to have one glance at me." Mihir defended himself only to be given a look from Nisha. He decided to shut up.

"How can you be so sure that she would fail?" Neel got all defensive.

"Because, we all knew she screwed her paper." Said Nisha. She was a brutally honest person.

"Hey, I think what happened has happened. Lets not fight today. We will see what happens tomorrow. Right now, lets show her some more parts of our town." for the first time, Mihir sounded sensible.

They all grabbed the bicycles and I decided to sit behind Neel. We roamed the town and things became clearer.

"Why are all buildings colored blue?" I asked my first questions.

"Because that has been a kind of unspoken rule that was made by the Council years ago. People don't mind following it." Said Nisha who tried to keep up with us. It wasn't a huge problem because the roads were wide and clear.

"You can color the homes with different color if you become the citizen and manage to convince the Council." Mihir offered kindly but Nisha gave him death glare.

"Please. I am already worried about her result and you are asking her to talk to the council! first we all need to make sure that she is inducted. Though the chances seem unlikely." Again. Care plus concern plus the brutal honesty.

"She loves you. Trust me." whispered Mihir with dead seriousness. I decided not to let it affect my mood.

"Why aren't any animals here?" I asked my second question.

"There is another part of town that has animal care centers. We do not believe in cruelty. So the domestic animals are kept and reared there. Anyone who wants to go and play with them can happily go there anytime. The taxes we pay are used to take care of the city and the animals. There are separate dog centers, cat centers, bird centers, cow centers, bee centers and so on." Said Mihir as he drove his cycle on our left side. "we don't kill animals or use leather. The cows are reared for the milk products but they are treated very well." he added.

"You said that the place has people from the highest professional backgrounds. Then, who does the non-white collar jobs?" I asked.

Suddenly, Neel stopped the cycle. I wondered if I had asked the wrong question.

He pointed towards a bench in the garden. Mihir volunteered to get ice cream for all of us.

"The people over here work for 7 hours a day. They dedicate 4 hours daily to their profession and rest 3 hours to the other jobs. For example, a doctor has to work 4 hours in the clinic/hospital and give his services for the jobs cleaning his area, mopping the roads, serving in the restaurants etc. They get more remuneration for this job as compared to their original professions. Everyone is granted a time table where their other tasks rotate monthly. That way, everyone is working for the society without any discrimination." He said.

"The bartender who served us in the pub was actually a rocket scientist in NASA. He currently works 4 hours at our research center at the day time and creates the best mocktails for the rest 3 hours at the night time." laughed Nisha.

"Today is Saturday so its our day off. Else we would have been working our ass off in our offices and then working for the people of the city." chuckled Mihir as he handed us our ice-cream cones.

"What do you guys do?" I asked.

"I am a psychiatrist and a career counselor. I am here since my birth. My parents were the best cardiologists in the town that's how my family go the citizenship." Nisha said. "At present I am assigned to work as a librarian in the City Library." she said.

"I majored in Journalism and am working with my father as an intern. He is damn strict but I enjoy my work". Mihir chuckled. "I am assigned to clean the parks here for a month. He said.

"I am the Chief architect of this town. All the buildings are constructed under my watch." Neel tried to show off but Nisha slapped his head with a newspaper roll. "At present, I am assigned to manage the events that take place in this city every month." He said.

"You guys have events too?" I couldn't believe it. This town was the perfect blend of social and professional environment.

"Yes. kind of reunion. Everyone attends it as its the chance to meet and greet everyone once a month." he explained.

"So what kinds of events do you all have?" I asked.

"Oh, its the best time ever. We all meet and greet each other, exchange the gossips and wish each other goodnight." said Mihir excitedly.

That's it?

"And?" I asked.

"What's more can you expect?" Nisha said.

This town is so perfect. And yet, there is a scope for its improvement. I shrugged off Nisha's comment with a polite smile and asked Neel to escort me outside the portal. It was time to go home and cook the meals.