Life was simple and dreams limited in that small city! Barring the workers of the textile mills, almost everyone outside knew that their city was called the ‘Manchester of India’. So difficult it was for them, to meet both the ends amidst the never ending, injudicious strikes intermittently declared by the workers’ union. Also, there was the impending danger of dismissals announced at the end of each month by the mill supervisor. Existence was as if captured between the fractioned ridges of the blue thumb prints stamped on the first day of the month on the crisp, greenish pages of