Nearly two years after he started, the project supervisor noticed Vishal. He did not complain, and he worked faster than the others. They made him the operator of the high-speed material hoist—the open metal lift that carried concrete, glass, and iron up to the eighty stories.

It was a promotion. It meant more money, but it also meant he was no longer touching the earth.

Every morning, Vishal would step into the shaking metal cage. He would pull the heavy iron lever, and the lift would go up into the sky. The wind would scream through the steel bars. The noise of the street traffic would grow faint, and then disappear. The people below would look like tiny, crawling ants.

Only Shafiq disagreed.

Shafiq had spent nearly twenty years on construction sites. One evening, over paper cups of cutting chai, he looked at Vishal and smiled.

"Upar ka paisa achha hai."

"Par upar maut bhi jaldi milti hai."

The older man laughed. Vishal laughed too. Neither of them spoke about it again.

He spent his days in the sky, suspended between the clouds and the city. It was cold up there, even in the summer. When the monsoon arrived, the heavy gray clouds would wrap around the half-built building, hiding it completely from the world below.

When he sent her a video of the view from the seventy-fifth floor, Radha spent half an hour trying to download it on her phone. When it finally loaded, she texted him back immediately, her messages filled with worry. In her heart, the giant height felt terrifying.

He was closer to the sky than anyone in his village had ever been, but his heart remained firmly on the mud floor of Radha's home. He had lied about the safety harness—the rope was old, and he had retied the frayed harness-knot himself, without saying a word to the supervisor.

The tower was complete. The eighty-story luxury building was ready for the wealthy owners to move in.

Because Vishal had been the most reliable worker, the company did something rare. They gave him a permanent job as the head maintenance operator. He would get a regular salary, a small room in the basement of the complex, and a permanent contract. He had finally made it big.

The first thing Vishal did was book an official **IRCTC e-ticket** online for Radha's journey. He saved the digital PDF on his phone and sent it directly to Radha's WhatsApp. To make absolutely sure he didn't miss her on arrival, Vishal also printed out a simple **single-page paper copy of her e-ticket receipt** to carry in his own pocket.

That night Vishal sat alone in his basement room. The room was small enough that he could touch both walls if he stretched out his arms. Yet it felt larger than any palace he had ever known.

Against one wall sat two steel plates. Two steel glasses. A small pressure cooker. A blue plastic bucket. Everything had been bought one item at a time. Everything was waiting.

He picked up the pressure cooker and smiled.

"Radha is going to complain that I bought the cheap one."

For the first time since leaving Bihar, he did not feel like a migrant worker. He felt like a husband bringing his wife home. That evening he was assigned his last shift on the construction crew—a final inspection of the external maintenance platform on the eightieth floor before the building was handed over.