The Hard Boundary

The staff room was hotter than the corridor.

Professor Anu’s cabin was one of four along the same wall, separated by thin plywood partitions and a door that didn’t block much. The tube light hummed above us, flickering faintly at the edges. A ceiling fan rattled overhead, pushing the same stale, warm air around the room.

Tea and old paper hung heavy in the air.

I closed the door as quietly as I could.

Two cabins down, someone coughed.

Anu didn’t look up.

Her laptop was open in front of her. A stack of papers sat beside it, still clipped together and unread. The little cooling fan inside the machine whirred loudly against the heat.

“Sit.”

I sat on the edge of the chair, keeping my bag flat across my knees.

Anu finally looked up from the screen.

“Twenty percent.”

I didn’t speak.

“Vora announced the deal after lunch. Vardhan locked almost immediately.”

She turned the laptop slightly towards me.

Vardhan AutoSystems was still bright green.

+20.14%

On the small notepad beside her hand, she had written in pencil:

Buy: ₹5,000

Now: ₹6,007

“I haven’t sold it,” she said. Her finger rested against the edge of the paper. “What should I do? Sell, or hold?”

I looked at her, but I didn’t answer right away.

The question caught me completely off guard.

Only a few hours ago, in the seminar hall, she had looked at me like I needed medical attention. Now she was sitting across from me, asking what to do with her actual money.

I couldn’t tell if she genuinely believed me or if she wanted to see whether I would start guessing the moment real cash was on the line.

My eyes went back to the screen.

When I saw Vardhan, the glow had wrapped itself around this exact price.

It hadn’t gone past it.

It hadn’t shown me tomorrow.

It had simply stopped.

“Sell.”

Anu blinked.

She stared at me for a second, almost expecting me to take it back.

I didn’t.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“If I sell now and it opens higher tomorrow, I threw away the rest of the profit because you told me to.”

“You bought it because of what I told you.”

She stopped moving.

“That is different,” she said.

“No, it isn’t.”

I kept my voice low.

“You asked me what you should do. I’m telling you what I actually know.”

She waited.

“I only saw it up to this price. If I tell you to hold, I’d just be guessing so I sound like I know what I’m doing.”

Anu watched me for a few seconds.

“I’ve only seen this happen twice,” I continued.

I glanced towards the thin door before lowering my voice even more.

“The first time was Tasha. Before I blacked out, I saw the price falling. It stopped at one-thirty.”

Anu didn’t interrupt.

“That was where it stopped falling.” I pointed towards her screen. “With Vardhan, the glow stopped at this number.”

I hesitated.

“I think that’s the limit.”

She looked back at the laptop.

“So you’re saying it won’t go higher?”

“I don’t know.”

That made her look at me again.

“I’m saying I didn’t see anything higher.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

The fan rattled overhead.

Somewhere outside the partition, a chair scraped across the concrete floor.

Anu looked down at the ₹6,007 on the screen.

Her fingers rested on the trackpad.

Then she clicked.

A tiny confirmation sound came from the laptop.

The green position disappeared from the screen.

The balance updated.

Profit: ₹1,007.

Anu stared at the number.

Then she closed the order tab.

I wasn’t sure which one of us looked more nervous about what she had just done.

✦ ✦ ✦

The eighth floor of the Nariman Point office felt like another country.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass, Mumbai was still hot, noisy and crowded. Cars crawled along the coastline below, their horns barely reaching the office.

Inside, the air-conditioning hummed quietly at twenty-one degrees.

Two Bloomberg terminals glowed on the corner desk.

Vardhan AutoSystems had finished the day twenty percent higher.

Sanjeev Mehta, the chief financial officer of Vardhan, stared at the green number on the screen.

+20.14%

Nearly eighty crore rupees had been added to the company’s market value in less than three hours.

None of it could pay an overdue supplier tomorrow morning.

His collar was unbuttoned and his tie had been pulled loose. Beside a thick folder of vendor payments sat a porcelain cup of black coffee that had gone cold.

Across the glass table sat Tarun Parekh, an executive director on Vora Holdings’ investment team.

Tarun closed the news feed on his tablet.

“They’ve run the ticker four times since three,” he said. “They’re talking like Vardhan became a monopoly overnight.”

Sanjeev turned a pen slowly between his fingers.

“They saw Vora’s name.”

“And the commercial vehicle contract.”

“And forgot everything else.”

Tarun looked at him.

For months, Vardhan had been squeezed by delayed payments, short-term borrowing, and suppliers who had finally stopped believing promises that their money was coming soon.

Today, everyone outside the company seemed excited about its future.

Inside the company, they were still discussing which bills needed to be paid first.

Sanjeev glanced at the green screen again.

“That money buys us time.”

“It buys you production,” Tarun said. “What you do with that production decides whether it bought you time.”

Sanjeev looked at him.

“And the market?”

Tarun raised his eyes from the tablet.

“What about it?”

“They’ll expect another move tomorrow.”

“Maybe they’ll get one.”

“And if they don’t?”

Tarun closed the tablet.

“Then they’ll find something else to shout about.”

Sanjeev let the pen fall onto the desk.

“You make it sound simple.”

“It isn’t.”

Tarun stood and picked up his briefcase.

“That’s why Vora came in now instead of six months from now.”

Sanjeev waited.

“Vardhan was running out of time,” Tarun said. “Now you have some.”

He walked towards the door.

“Use it.”

Sanjeev looked at the folder of unpaid suppliers again.

“Disclosure goes up before midnight.”

“Good.”

Tarun placed a hand on the glass door.

“And Sanjeev?”

“Yeah?”

“I want line two running by Monday.”

“It’ll be running.”

The door shut behind him with a soft click.

Sanjeev remained at his desk.

On television, Vardhan was suddenly a success story.

On his desk sat a folder full of people waiting to be paid.

The Bloomberg terminal continued glowing green.

+20.14%

He watched it for another few seconds.

Then he closed the window and went back to work.

✦ ✦ ✦

I picked up my bag.

When I opened Professor Anu’s door, the noise of the staff room came rushing back in.

A kettle whistled somewhere near the pantry. Papers shuffled across desks. Someone near the notice board was complaining about attendance shortages.

I stepped into the corridor.

Professor Anand was standing at the far end near the tea tray.

He held a chipped ceramic cup in one hand.

The moment I came out of Anu’s cabin, he looked up.

He didn’t say anything.

He just watched me.

Not casually either.

His eyes stayed on me as I walked past, like he was trying to fit my face into a story he had already heard.

I kept walking.

Whatever Professor Anu had going on with him, I wanted nothing to do with it.

Sameer was waiting near the bottom of the stairs with his bag hanging from one shoulder and his phone in his hand.

The moment he saw me, he pushed away from the wall.

“Again?”

“What?”

“Professor Anu.”

He pointed upstairs with his phone.

“What does she want with you now? Bell rang ten minutes ago.”

“Assignment.”

Sameer stared at me.

I stared back.

He slowly slipped his phone into his pocket.

“Right.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That sounded like something.”

“No, no. Obviously your professor personally keeps pulling you into private rooms because of assignments.”

“Sameer.”

“I believe you.”

“You clearly don’t.”

“I believe that you believe I believe you.”

I started walking.

He followed.

“We’re going to miss the direct bus,” he said. “If I have to stand for forty minutes because of your mysterious academic career, you’re giving me your seat tomorrow.”

“Fine.”

“You said that way too quickly. Now I’m worried.”

We walked out through the main gates.

The afternoon sun hit me straight in the face.

I squinted and raised one hand over my eyes.

The bus stop ahead was already packed with students from the diploma wing and office workers waiting for different routes. Engines growled along the road as buses pulled in and out through clouds of dust.

Sameer started complaining about the upcoming internal lab test.

Apparently that was today's disaster.

“I'm telling you,” he said as we joined the crowd, “if that external examiner asks me to write recursion on the board, I'm dropping out.”

“You say that before every lab.”

“One day I’ll mean it.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I have dreams, Rishi.”

“Of dropping out?”

“Of sleeping past seven.”

I almost laughed.

Almost.

Sameer kept talking while we waited.

I nodded when I needed to. Said something whenever the silence lasted too long.

But my mind kept returning to one thing.

₹1,007.

✦ ✦ ✦

By the time I reached home, the sun was almost gone.

The front door was unlocked.

I pushed it open and stepped inside.

A business news channel was playing quietly on the television in the corner. Four people were arguing over each other beneath rows of flashing numbers I barely understood.

Mom looked over from the stove.

“You’re late.”

“Got held back after class and missed the direct bus,” I said, slipping off my shoes. “Had to wait for the next one.”

“Did you eat anything after college?”

“Not yet.”

She turned back towards the kitchen counter.

A few seconds later, she placed a steel plate in front of me with rice, dal and a small portion of mango pickle.

The same dinner we had often.

The same questions she asked almost every evening.

Somehow, home kept moving as if nothing had changed.

“You look exhausted, Rishi.”

“I’m fine. Just the heat.”

Mom looked at me for a moment.

She didn’t argue.

She pulled the other plastic chair away from the table and sat down while I ate.