Sakib had always been a man of routine, traipsing the same concrete thoroughfares of the megacity where the bowwow of cornucopias and the haze of pollution were as familiar as the reverse of his hand. Every morning, as he walked once trash- bestrew lanes and the murky conduit that ran like a crack through the neighborhood, he felt a pain of helplessness. He had, like utmost people, accepted the megacity’s malaise as ineluctable. That is, until Salma walked into his life.








