The attempt happened on a Wednesday.
She had been taking the auto-rickshaw to a client meeting — the architecture firm, the brand guide's final presentation, the kind of meeting she had looked forward to for two weeks because it was genuinely good work and she knew it. She'd left the tower at nine-fifteen. Not the car. Still not the car, still the auto-rickshaw, still her own specific resistance to that particular thing, though she was aware the resistance had become more habit than principle at this point.
The auto stopped in traffic near Mahim.
Standard traffic — the specific gridlock of a Wednesday morning in the western suburbs, the city doing what it did. She was looking at her presentation notes on her phone. She had seventeen minutes to her meeting. She was not alarmed.
The car
