The roof let the rain in as if the hut could hold any more occupants. Half a dozen people were already stacked on the floor like sleeper logs piled beside railway tracks.
Five of them shuffled wordlessly as the sixth, the mother, got up to place a bucket below the leak.
When she did not return to the thin mattress on the floor, her youngest, Susheel, got up too.
“You sleep, Ma. I’ll keep an eye on the bucket,” he said.
Susheel picked up a book from his corner of the family shelf where the meagre belongings jostled with each other.
He was careful with the book, as it belonged to the lending library around the corner. In the light of a battery-operated lamp gifted by his school for an award-winning essay, Susheel plunged into the world of a dashing young policeman who lived in a high-rise apartment and protected the city from thugs.
When the day broke, Susheel put the thriller aside and picked up his school books. He was the only one the family hoped would graduate from their midst. He was the one who would buy an apartment in that sky-scraping building they saw outside their shanty.
On a balcony overlooking the shanty, Shane sipped his protein shake while leaning dangerously over the banister. He was healthy, busy, successful, and yet empty. It was time to quit. But quit what? His job? His part-time hustle? Or this life? He turned around to look at what success had meant to him all these years. The tastefully done apartment, his numerous achievements hung on the wall, the various knick-knacks collected from trips abroad, the high-end electronics, and the luxury furnishings.
Shane’s eyes fell on a book lying on the balcony chair. It brought a long-lost smile. He got it from the corner library on his mother’s recommendation. It was about a man who found peace in the mountains.
Shane listened to the voice note from his mother for the second time. She spoke about how much she loved the book.
He cuddled into the chair for a quick read. The office mails could wait. When he looked up after a while, the mountains he saw from his perch on one of the tallest buildings in the city enticed like never before.
Far away in the mountains, Anil and Reena giggled at a word, chuckled at a sentence, and roared with laughter when they remembered something. They had spent forty years together, worrying, working, building their family. Sometime during their journey, they learned to laugh and cry together. And, now, they had found a book that
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