The Royal Bengal Tiger

He would walk his eight year old son, Sumit, every morning to the point from where the school bus picked the kids up from, at around 9am. Thereafter he would meet up with Nandini, his colleague at FCI (Food Corporation of India) at the metro station. They would travel together and reach office exactly at 10.30 am, wind up exactly at 5.00pm and travel back together by the 5.40pm train. He would enquire daily with Pakrashi, his tenant, whose rent was due for the last three months, come back home with renewed hopes of getting his rent within the next couple of days, which he would share with his wife Aparna, who was definitely more worldly than him, and then dinner. That's exactly how Abhiroop Banerjee's life panned out on a day to day basis. However, Abhiroop was a contented man. He was happy. He loved his family. He was sincere to his work and was rewarded with a promotion from being a B grade officer to an A grade one. He really couldn't ask for more from life. Aparna too lead a happy life; she loved Abhiroop. She adored Sumit and had no qualms in life inspite of belonging to an upper middle class family prior to her marriage. However, Aparna had one and only one grievance, she wished her husband was more worldly. She wished he would not take people at mere face value. She wished he would protest when things were not right, like the senior student who would regularly push Sumit out of the line and stand in his place, like Pakrashi, who for months, made Abhiroop believe that the rent would come in, in the next couple of days and like most of the colleagues at office who would make Abhiroop complete their work on one pretext or the other. How Aparna prayed that her husband wasn't so naive. But all of this was about to change.