The audit season had swallowed Sandhya whole this quarter.

Between the closing books of three different clients and the internal audit calendar that never seemed to care whether it was raining or festival season or somebody's birthday, she had barely had two consecutive days at home in the last month. Her suitcase, a sturdy navy-blue trolley bag with a slightly broken zipper pull that she kept meaning to replace, had practically become a permanent fixture near the shoe rack. Two to three days in some outstation town, back home for a day or two to catch her breath, do laundry, eat her mother's food properly instead of hotel buffets, and then off again to another site for another round of vouching, walkthroughs, and endless client queries.