00 Prologue

I'd love to tell you that this is a story of a common man. Whether the story is common you tell me. Our account will chronicle a year of the life of Mr Samadhan Pandey, a simple Civil engineer who passed out from IIT-Biralpur, the 37th one at South Central State of the Union of Democratic States of India in the year 2020.

It was a headache for the ruling party to rename the fragmented state of UP in English. But it was a necessity, the tribals and villagers had to support the Maoists in wake of the rigid oppression from central government. Anyways, we'll come to that later.

Mr Pandey works at an eight to six design firm, has two kids and a wife who always reminds him of his mother, never satisfied in him, always pushing him harder to his limit. 'Study more,' she said, 'take a drop,' 'take another one'. Finally when he had made it to the largest IIT in the Union, he had to get a course he least liked-'Informatics', got a change in department to 'Structures and Construction Design', it was a training he had to get in one of the better IITs to match his rising credentials.

The job he landed with took him to the most dangerous of the states Bihar, Bengal and the North East Transitory Region, the odd South Central State and now in United Punjab. He was happy now to be near a capital. The capitals are a well guarded continuous chain of superlinked cities that run through the main corridors of transport- NS, NE, NW and EW.

The southern states are a vast expanse of jungles interwined with the Bio-cities, spanning a few hundred kilometres each. He had read in his courses how through excellent recycling of the natural resources, fully nuclear fuelled and virtually non-polluting technology had helped in establishing the first Bio-city of Hyderabad. Now the region was a spectacle, which due to political vendetta was restricted to green card holders- people allowed to pass through by the southern capital of Belgaum. Mr Pandey was trying hard to get one for a few years now.