Rishi reached Suman’s Office to find it closed. There was nobody around as expected. He however found a dazed and sleepy watchman who had been woken up from his slumber by Rishi’s arrival. The watchman would not answer any of his questions. It was obvious. He was still sleepy. There was no point shaking him up. No, money would not work on a drunken and sleepy watchman either. He had to use other methods. Before he did anything, somebody walked down from the office. Fortunately for him, this colleague of Suman’s knew her. In fact, he knew too much about her to his liking. He introduced himself as Rohan.
Rohan told Rishi that Suman took the metro to get home. Even today she had left on time with Rekha to go home. Rekha and Suman always left work together and lived nearby. He offered to take Rishi to the metro by the route that Suman took everyday. Once there, he left the place without a trace or a goodbye. This astonished Rishi. He was not used to such disappearances from the folks who helped him or offered help.
At the station, Rishi could do nothing but look around. He found Suman’s bag lying thrown on one side of the road. It was lying strewn and the contents of the bag emptied. Nothing in it seemed to be in order. The money was missing. Nothing that remained was valuable. It was clear that someone had taken all the valuables from it. Was it still possible in that case that the phone really was with Suman and not with this person who had emptied the bag. He rummaged through the bag once again. He found the bracelet that he had gifted her hidden in a corner.
He was now not sure if what he had was a bread crumb trail or a real one. He was not sure what to be done now. He started looking around at the surroundings once again. May be some clues may have been left behind. He found pieces of paper that looked like they had been torn only a while ago. Next to it lay a bottle of Black Dog and two broken glasses. He picked up the pieces of paper. They were pieces of a torn photograph. He quickly got around to placing them together. A few pieces had flown away with the wind, but the face could be reconstructed partially. Only the upper half of the face remained. The face was known. It was Suman. He quickly pulled out his smartphone and clicked a photograph of all the evidences.

He flipped the pieces. It had random numbers scribbled. It did not look like a phone number. But then he was not able to understand what it could be. He pulled his phone out and tried to see if it was a location co-ordinate. He quickly punched the numbers on his screen. It was a location.

The previous few weeks have been entirely hectic for me. So much so that I literally wanted to pull my hair off! My in laws were to come over for a few days, my wife decided she had to go into labor and my youngest daughter decided that she had to make her presence felt physically! Yes, we had a second daughter in our life and we decided to call her “Aarna”!

Moving beyond that, I decided I wanted a short break and so I took an extended leave to sit back and retrospect on my life. This meant I had to get other sources of income as well. This so that incase I ever go out of job, I would have something to fall back upon. Smile I decided to dabble in stocks, more so, the derivatives market. The place where if I had made loads of money, I had lost loads as well! Sad smile Now if I am to go by the stint that I exited the derivatives market in 2007 by, I can only keep my fingers crossed hoping I would make some money! Lets see…

In other news, I am still looking for a new job. So in case you happen to drop by my blog and see this post and think that you could help me get hired, here’s my LinkedIn Page –> http://in.linkedin.com/in/niravthakker/

It’s been too long since I last blogged, in fact I don’t even remember what topics I had thought back to blog about back then. Times have changed and I have gotten as busy as hell. Family takes up most of my time. All my hobbies, interests and anything and everything that I called my own are no longer so!
How i wish I could get back to those carefree days of life. How I wish I could go back to writing the 10 things series.
In all, given the kind of work life I live, I would not be wronging myself if I called my life and utter trash.
Anyways, i am looking to get hired again. So if your company is looking for an experienced Project Manager, drop me a comment and i will send across my profile to you.