A new beginning

She ran into the building, only just managing to register how impossibly tall it was. Last she had been in this part of the world, structures that stretched a 1000 feet into the stratosphere, were a rarity.

She came abreast a bank of ten tall high-powered elevators - opening-shutting-beeping, making the world aware of their super-tech presence.

Immediately stepping into the one that opened up, she looked around for the floor buttons and could not find any. And then out of nowhere, a flap clicked open in the wall to her left and a head sprang out. Yes, a head. After her heart had crawled all the way back from the back of her throat to the chest area, she noticed that it was not a human head.

"I am the lift genie. Which floor please". Trilled the head in what can only be described as a robot's version of a sing and a song.

Shaily was stunned. Admittedly, she had spent the last five years in Motihari, trying to teach advanced and efficient techniques of breeding cows to farmers, but she had no idea that the world had transformed so much. And this was Bombay, Mumbai. The city she had mostly grown up in. The city which she claimed to know like the back of her hand. The city which she had thought would never be 'India's Shanghai' in her lifetime at least. And here it seemed to be making Shanghai's high-rises look like caves..

"Don't worry, I am here to help. Which floor please".

At this statement, Shaily looked around trying to locate a camera perhaps, through which some person someplace might be monitoring her reactions and accordingly feeding in speech to the robot. Anyway, she was getting late, so she looked at the head and said - thirty-five.

"Thank-you. We will have you there in no time at all".

The lift gave a lurch and started ascending speedily and suddenly like somebody had set its rear-end on fire. She looked at the mirror and saw a weather-beaten, but still attractive thirty-five year old face. Maybe slightly disoriented at the moment. But the determination shone through nevertheless, to clinch this one.