“Charu, I’ll have lunch with Ravi, so don’t wait for me,” I said as I got in the car.

“Looking smart in your uniform,” said Charu, giving my water bottle to Bhajan Singh, my loyal bodyguard. She always saw me off whenever I went out.

“As if you’re seeing me in uniform for the first time,” I said, smiling at her.

The guards at the gate saluted as the car drove out of my bungalow. It was good to be back home. I always felt much happier in a small city than in the chaos of a metropolis. But this idyllic life would only last a few more months. After all, the post of a big city commissioner of police beckoned.

“Wow,” I exclaimed as my car approached the swanky, new, ultra-modern building where my batchmate, Ravi’s office was located.

As I was escorted down the corridors by the guard, I could see Ravi surfing TV channels through the glass walls of his chamber. I knocked on the door and entered.

“What a nice workplace, Ravi Bhai! Very corporate and quite unlike our sarkari (government) building,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. Unfortunately, only the building has changed, not the work culture,’ said Ravi. ‘And to make things worse,...