Avinash ended the call with a smile.
"Proud of you, son. This is the kind of news that brings life back into a poor man's bones," his father had said — the joy in his voice punching straight through the speaker.
Avinash stared at the screen for a second longer after the call ended, as if hoping for a chance to pull his words back.
But the words were out.
Said.
Done.
"I got the job."
He hadn't.
He'd been rejected.
Not because he wasn't good — they'd said he'd impressed them — but because company policy didn't allow hiring non-IT graduates for tech roles. And his degree said Civil Engineer, even if his mind had long moved past cement and soil.
The smile faded.
His phone slid into his pocket like dead weight. His legs carried him to the beach on autopilot.
The sand was cool, the sky black, the city lights behind him — loud and uncaring. He sat barefoot for almost an hour, bag by his side, letting his thoughts rot in silence.
Until footsteps disrupted them.
A girl in office clothes, heels in one hand, clearly irritated, was pacing nearby, scanning the sand with her phone's flashlight.
She crouched. Cursed. Got up. Cursed again.
Avinash raised an eyebrow.
"You okay?" he asked.
She didn't even look at him.
"Do I look okay?"
He blinked.
"Fair. Just… thought you might need help."
That got her attention. She turned to him, breath annoyed, expression exhausted.
"Obviously, I need help. I'm not beachcombing for fun."
"What are we looking for?" he asked, standing.
"My flat key. Dropped somewhere here. Might've fallen out when I was here earlier."
He joined the search, flashlight from his phone now aiding hers.
"So what does it look like?" he asked.
She gave him a deadpan look.
"It's a key. It looks like… a key."
"That narrows it down. Any special features? Glows in the dark? Plays music?"
She sighed.
"It's silver. Small. Has a tiny yellow rubber band on it. That's your profile."
"Nice. Sounds like a Tinder bio for metal objects."
She laughed under her breath.
"Swipe right if you find it."
They combed the sand in silence for a few minutes, occasionally muttering to themselves, occasionally almost colliding.
"This would be so much easier if your keys were, say, five feet tall and neon pink," he said.
"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind next time I design house keys for visibility."
"Good. Also, maybe GPS-enabled. Or voice-activated. 'Key, come home.'"
"I can barely get my Uber driver to come home, forget the key."
Eventually, she gave up and plopped into the sand.
"That's it. Flat's gone. Life's gone. Time to become a beach person."
"Could be worse," Avinash said, dropping down beside her. "You could be a civil engineer pretending to be a coder."
She glanced at him.
"That's oddly specific."
He shrugged.
"Just a theory."
They sat in silence for a moment, both tired in their own way.
Then she asked,
"So what brings you here? Breakup?"
Avinash laughed.
"God, I wish. At least then I'd get sympathy and free beer."
"So… existential dread, then?"
"Something like that."
She nodded.
"Cool. I'm on the same plan."
"So are you telling me what happened, or shall I leave?" she said, dusting off her clothes. "I'm all ears for some tragic story."
"Nah, not today," he replied, eyes fixed on the sea.
"Okay then, I'll take your leave. Maybe the next time we meet, you'll be in a better mood to tell me what happened."
"There won't be a next time. This is Mumbai, it's a big city. Also, I'm leaving tomorrow. Anyway… bye. Sorry, I couldn't be of any help."
"It's all right," she replied softly as he picked his bag up from the sand
Next Morning.
The sun rose quietly over Mumbai, but Avinash barely noticed. With the same T-shirt from yesterday, a plastic file clutched under his arm, and sleep in his eyes, he stepped out of the station restroom and began his walk again. Another day. Another round of hope dressed as job hunting.
He had been at it for five days straight.
Some offices turned him away at the reception desk without even glancing at his resume.
"We'll get back to you," they said with a smile that felt rehearsed. They never did.
At a small startup, he was made to wait outside the cabin for nearly two hours before the HR assistant came out and said the interview was cancelled. No apology.
One company in Navi Mumbai flatly told him they don't hire non-IT graduates, regardless of their skills.
He had tried freelancing, too. Signed up on platforms, filled out every detail with sincerity. But clients didn't care about clean resumes or perfect grammar.
"What previous clients have you worked with?"
"I'm just starting."
"Sorry, we prefer experience."
Even civil engineering roles gave no better results. Every site visit ended with:
"We're only hiring locals," or
"You need at least two years of field experience," or
"We'll call you if something opens up."
He had nowhere to go at night. The station's metal benches became his bed: his backpack, his pillow.
Dinner was usually a vada pav from a street vendor, sometimes just water.
Each evening, he sat quietly at the beach, scrolling endlessly through job listings.
And every night, without fail, he opened his IRCTC app, filled out the return ticket details to Lucknow… but stopped at the confirm button.
He wasn't ready for that journey yet.
Not because he had hope, but because he was terrified. Terrified of the look on his father's face when he'd return and say, "I lied. I don't have a job."
One Evening-
He sat slouched on a plastic chair near the food truck, his shoulders heavy with exhaustion, a half-eaten vada pav resting in his hand, the only meal he could afford that day. His eyes were fixed blankly on the ground—mud-streaked shoes, gravel, and the legs of passersby forming a slow, endless loop before him. His stomach ached, but not from hunger; it was a weight much deeper, coiled tightly in his chest.
Just a few feet away, a man in his late thirties, clean-shaven with a red bandana tied across his forehead, was pacing with a phone pressed to his ear—clearly the owner of the food truck. His voice was audible even amidst the evening street noise.
"I told you before," the man spoke, frustrated but composed, "I need someone who can handle things when I'm not around… but these guys, they either don't know how to count change or can't even speak English. I want this place to grow, you know? Maybe add a printed menu, attract tourists. But no one decent wants to work for this kind of salary."
Avinash's eyes remained low, yet every word cut through the haze in his mind. The voice of the food truck owner blurred into the background, and in its place came a slow wave of memories—visceral and sharp.
The moment he told his father, he got the job.
His father's voice on the phone, brimming with pride, "I knew you'd make it. I always knew."
The receptionist at the startup, who smiled too politely, "We'll get back to you soon."
Waiting outside a glass-panelled cabin, never called in, watching one hopeful after another walk past him.
Opening the freelancing portal on his phone, reading "Do you have a portfolio or past client work?" over and over.
Staring at the booking screen of his return ticket to Lucknow—the date, the train number, the blinking Confirm button.
All of it flashing, one after another, in slow motion—voiceless but deafening, as if his soul was stuck between two timelines: one that never began, and one that had started to close in around him.
And then suddenly, the world snapped back into motion.
He blinked hard. Looked up. The food truck owner had just ended the call and turned to face the stall, muttering to himself.
Avinash stood up abruptly, his legs unsteady, but his voice clear.
"I'll do it, sir."