Short Story: Deadline by Surbhi Dadhich

In this short story, Surbhi Dadhich captures the challenges of living in big cities, the struggle for survival, and the dreams that turn into the fuel that pushes us every day.

She turned away from the dampness of the Rajouri Chawl with a firmness in her mind that she was different now and the shrieks of men lined up for the latrine or the hullabaloo of children trying to duck into the narrow staircase together did not concern her. She kept on walking wondering at the slithering spread of the locality. She paced hurriedly and felt herself to be caught in the tangles of these tenements the hold of which she could not resist. It was the advertisement boards of Villas available for sale and rent that became her shifting goalposts in this run towards closure. She turned sharp right and gained breath at the sight of the high-rise buildings jumbled together in unison. There she was, amongst the patterns of crowd, clusters, and commotion that she was a part of with millions of others. Here she was no different but is not the difference or the feeling of it a deliberate phenomenon and whose construct, is it? For her, it might rather be indifference to herself, her self-definitions, or maybe the absence of them.