Excerpt

It was June. Ash-coloured rain clouds had set up camp across the Chennai sky. Rajendran looked up at them as he kick-started his TVS Victor, hoping that they would stay still rather than scatter. The leather strap of his bag was slung across his shoulder; within the bag was the tomato rice his mother had prepared for his lunch. The fragrant aroma escaped the bag, wafted through the air in search of his nose, and floated inside.

"Amma is amma only!" he said to himself.

The bike started with the first kick.

Bikes are better suited than cars for the busy roads of Chennai. You can squeeze through tiny gaps between the vehicles and keep moving forward—which was just what Rajendran did.

He had to be in his seat in the office by ten o'clock. It was a big responsibility, the job of a reporter. Piled on his table was a mountain of papers, letters, stories, and poems. He had to read through them all carefully and select the most interesting ones. Apart from that, he had to find time to visit the local big shots and interview them. There were many incidents that tested his patience, but he had to always keep his cool. If he let his emotions get the better of him, a good story lead could fall apart, like a rolling egg cracking open on the floor.

His senior editor had told him that there was an important meeting that morning. Rajendran had enough experience to know that when his boss called for a meeting like that, it meant that he had hooked a big fish—maybe even an eel.