Sapno Ka Shaher

43. Strike Rotation

Rakesh finished performing pooja of Lord Krishna idol. Being Sunday morning, he was accustomed to the routines going at a slower pace. He too always liked Sundays personally; for someone working six days a week at a job, the importance of a Sunday would always be a bit higher. After his voluntary retirement, he had found it difficult to spend his weekdays. Even if he knew and was prepared for it, there had come a sudden emptiness in his life. His books were the best solution he must have found to overcome the boredom occurring due to the early retirement life.

He had always found solace in books... stories, novels, poems, plays... he liked every form of written art in Hindi. He had often found himself lost in the fictional world, many a times he had found himself in the same place as the katha nayak, relating to it. It was something that provided him with distractions from the real life problems, at least for some time. Working in a library was the best thing that happened to him, as he was always surrounded by books. Those wooden and metal shelves, the smell of new books, maintaining the books' quality, finding himself shouting at students when the books were damaged... he loved his work.

However, the school library at PVKM had obviously more books related to the students. So even if he wished to read something new in whatever little time he got, he used to find very little resources at his help.

But since the time he had started going to the State Central Library here in Mumbai, he felt as if he was a little kid lost in a toys' showroom. It had literally everything he wanted. Right from fiction to non-fiction, from old classics to newly published, from magazines in all the languages to educational and business related books. It had everything. Being a State Library, it had books primarily in Marathi, but it also had collections from Hindi, English, Gujarati and Bengali literature, and also their translations. He was almost eating books when in the library since he had increased his diameter in the various genres and languages.

He was fully satisfied from his work in the library. He was paid a salary he had never imagined, his work hours and days were set according to his wish, and as he had stated on the first day itself, he was receiving orders from nobody. The management was happy with his work, rather, they were asking him to join full time for a month now. He was confused about the decision and was still in the process of thinking whether he should accept the full-time job offer or not.

As a consequence to his continuing dilemma, he was being called to the library on some Saturdays too, and sometimes for more hours than what's decided on the other days. Yesterday too, he was called in the library when he actually wanted to stay at home since Naina has her half-day. He wanted to help her in the chores given that she had doubled her study timing. But when he returned home in the evening, he felt slightly guilty to know that she had finished all the work by herself. That's why when Sameer had asked him to help with the dinner preparation, he had happily agreed.

He realized he needed to take a call on these requests from the library outside of his working hours and days.

He gazed at the holy book of BhagwadGeeta and prayed to God to give him the wisdom to make the decision soon.

Entering into the kitchen, he saw Naina had taken all the steel containers of groceries and utensils out to clean the shelves. She had a broom, some old newspapers and a cloth in hand.

"Abhi Diwali par hi toh sab saaf kiya tha na... phirse kyu kar rahi hai?" He asked her, keeping his hands on his hips.

"Aise hi Papa." Her voice was low and a little hoarse.

Rakesh expected more, but she didn't utter anything further. He had noticed that her chirpy talks in the mornings were missing today. She had been terribly quiet since she woke up.