The Wrong Gate

At 6:03, Sana’s cab driver called to say he had reached the main gate. Sana closed her laptop with the joy of a woman whose final meeting had ended eleven minutes early.

“Coming,” she said.

Her office campus in Whitefield had six gates. This information would have been useful to establish before either participant introduced the word main.

At Gate Two, Sana saw three cabs, two office buses, and a man discussing a missing laptop charger with an intensity normally reserved for inheritance disputes. None of the cabs matched her booking.

“Which gate?” she asked.

“The main gate,” said the driver, Haroon.

“The one with security?”

“Yes.”

Sana looked at the uniformed guard beside her. He looked back. Both understood that the investigation had made no progress.

Haroon described a large glass building. Sana faced eight large glass buildings, each offering a slightly different reflection of her disappointment. He added that there was a tea stall nearby. She asked whether it had a blue roof. He said yes. She asked whether there were office workers drinking tea. He said yes again, sounding pleased that she had finally located him.

She had not.

The security guard, Mr Paramesh, asked for the gate number. Sana relayed the question. Haroon could see a number, but a bus briefly blocked it. Sana waited. The charger dispute beside her entered a complicated phase involving an employee who had left the company in February.

The bus moved. Haroon reported Gate Five.

Sana was at Gate Two. Her colleague Anoop, passing with a backpack and a banana, said the walk between them was short if she used the internal path. He demonstrated the route with the banana.

“Left, then right, then you’ll see the sculpture.”

“Which sculpture?”

“The one nobody understands.”

This was the first genuinely specific landmark of the evening.

Sana told Haroon to remain in the designated waiting area. She set off on the internal path, using the footpath and following Anoop’s directions. The sculpture appeared. It looked like an enormous paper clip experiencing career uncertainty. She turned right.

At the next building, she found Gate Four.

She called Anoop. He had forgotten one turn. He apologised sincerely, then offered a revised route that seemed to involve the cafeteria loading area. Sana declined further banana-based navigation and asked another guard.

He pointed to a campus map mounted beside her. Every gate had a number. Every internal walkway was shown. Sana studied it with the uncomfortable recognition that the solution had existed throughout the problem.

A campus shuttle passed with Gate Five printed prominently on its route board. Sana briefly considered boarding anything willing to declare a destination.

Her manager called. “Still here? Could you quickly check something?”

“I’ve left,” Sana said.

Technically, she had left several places.

Haroon called again. “Madam, I can wait a little, but please tell me if you want to change pickup.”

She gave him a clear estimate and thanked him. No chasing the car, no improvised roadside meeting. She would reach the correct gate using the actual map, an innovation she was now willing to support.

At Gate Five, Haroon stood beside his cab in the waiting area. They recognised each other through the profound relief visible on both faces. Sana fastened her seat belt and saved the correct pickup point.

“How was your day?” he asked as they departed.

“Good until the campus tour.”

At home, her husband asked why she was late. She explained the six gates, the sculpture, and the banana.

He considered the evidence.

“So which one is the main gate?”

Sana put down her bag.

“We are not bringing that question into this house.”

Read when you’re a passenger or safely off the road. Never while driving.