The First Trillionaire

Untitled Part 33

"Sister, can't you stand on the sidewalk and daydream there. Do you want to get run over?" one of the car drivers shouted when Shail stood uncertainly in the middle of the street.

Traffic jams in Begusarai could get really nasty, especially in the evenings when all the working-class people were returning home. The streets would be full of cars of different sizes. Cars and people on the roads and footpaths slowly progressed until it resembled a snail. The funny part was that most of these people owned SUVs and bulky jeeps while the roads were still narrow like those of some village. Shail felt thankful that she didn't have to live in the city and she preferred staying far from the crowds. She really hated getting stuck in traffic jams every evening. She longed to be home in her peaceful village without the constant stream of people jostling each other and the sound of loud honking.

Shail quickly reached her car and asked the driver to get them out of the city quickly. She sank into the plush seat of the car and threw her head back, thanking Maa Durga for finally bringing the tiring day to an end. She didn't regret anything that had happened that day except for the events in the morning. She knew that all the crying and scolding she had received in the office had successfully diverted her mind from the gloomy events and made her focus on her work. But now, as the day was coming to an end, her mind returned back to the events of the morning and she felt disgusted at not being able to do anything to the men who had killed an innocent person so barbarically. She felt frustrated at how helpless she was, and how powerless the poor man must have felt at having his life snuffed out so cruelly.

A murder, loss of life, was something that Shail had been unaware of all these years in her life. To her, life was a gift that no one but God could take away from his children. Although it had been two months since she had set foot in the outside world, the ways of the world were still unclear to her. For her, the world was a place where happy beings thrived without bothering each other. In that, Shail was no worldlier that she had been on that day that she had set out for Mumbai all alone.

Shail felt at peace when she returned home in the evening, more than she usually felt. She could feel her emotions on the surface and longed to let go of the burden somehow. The sight of her smiling mother waiting at the threshold made her happy that all the worries and gloom surrounding her since morning seemed to dissolve into thin air.