In a Hurry - By Tenuli Perera

Written By: Tenuli Perera

Category: Short Stories

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Welcome to the evocative world of Tenuli Perera's short story "In a Hurry," presented as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. This beautifully crafted narrative captures the universal desire to rush through life stages, only to reflect on the passage of time and the moments that truly matter. In this exploration of life's journey, Perera masterfully weaves together the stories of different individuals at various life stages, offering a poignant commentary on the human condition.

About the Work

"In a Hurry" delves into the theme of life's fleeting nature, exploring how individuals at various stages yearn for the next chapter, only to later reflect on the moments they may have overlooked. Through vivid imagery and introspective storytelling, Perera captures the essence of growing up, growing old, and the quiet, significant moments in between. This narrative invites readers to pause and appreciate the present, offering a profound reminder of the beauty found in everyday life.

In a Hurry

Original Submission by Tenuli Perera

In a Hurry

By Tenuli Perera

The boy had decided, quite firmly, that being eight was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

His mother still packed his schoolbag, still reminded him to brush his teeth, still insisted on holding his hand whenever they crossed the road, even though he had told her a hundred times that he was perfectly capable of crossing a road by himself. His bedtime was fixed, his pocket money was never enough, and there were entire shelves in the supermarket filled with things he wasn't allowed to buy.

It was terribly unfair.

He wanted to be big. Big enough to stay up late, big enough to go wherever he pleased, big enough to buy a chocolate bar without having to ask whether he had brushed his teeth properly that morning. He wanted a house of his own, a car, and enough money to eat ice cream for breakfast if he felt like it.

Most importantly, he wanted people to stop calling him a little boy.

One afternoon, while his mother buttoned his shirt for a family gathering, he pushed her hands away and did it himself. The buttons went into the wrong holes, leaving the hem crooked, but he stood proudly in front of the mirror.

“There,” he announced. “I can do it myself.”

His mother smiled and reached for the buttons.

“Don't,” he said, stepping away. “I'm going to be a grown-up soon. I’m going to go to school and learn a lot!”

She laughed, and he sulked all the way to the car.

He just couldn't wait.

The girl sitting at the back of the classroom had three different university brochures hidden inside her literature textbook.

She took them out whenever the teacher turned to write on the board, smoothing their glossy pages beneath the desk. The photographs showed young people sitting on lawns, carrying books across enormous campuses, laughing in cafés with cups of coffee in their hands. They all looked terribly happy, as though university were a place where nobody had ever failed an examination or cried over their teacher’s unfair claims.

She wanted that life.

She was tired of uniforms and bells and having to ask permission for everything. Tired of adults reminding her that these were the best years of her life when she could barely get through a Monday without counting the days until Friday. She wanted to study something she loved, meet people who didn't already know her as someone's daughter, and have the freedom to make mistakes without the whole family finding out by dinner.

At home, her mother asked whether she had finished studying.

“Almost.”

“You said that an hour ago.”

“I know, Amma.”

“Then why are you sitting there staring into space?”

Because I am trying to imagine a life that belongs to me, she wanted to say.

Instead, she opened her textbook.

She would get into university. She would leave home, find her people, and finally have something to look forward to beyond the next examination. Years from now, she would laugh about all this. She would tell her friends how dramatic she had been, how she had once thought a school examination could ruin her entire life.

She would have so much to laugh about.

For now, she had to finish the chapter.

The first thing she bought with her salary was a handbag.

It wasn't particularly expensive, and the colour was slightly impractical, but she had wanted it for months. She remembered standing in the shop the previous week, turning the price tag over and over in her fingers before putting it back on the shelf. There were bills to pay, groceries to buy, and a phone that had begun to switch itself off whenever it pleased.

But today, the money was hers.

She carried the bag home on the bus, placing it carefully on her lap so that it wouldn't get crushed between the other passengers. Every now and then, she slipped her hand inside to touch the soft lining, smiling to herself like an idiot.

She had graduated only a few months ago. Since then, she had discovered that being an adult involved a surprising amount of waiting. Waiting for replies to job applications, waiting for payday, waiting for the weekend, waiting for a promotion that might make the long hours feel worthwhile.

Her feet hurt by the time she got home. There was washing in the machine, a pile of dishes in the sink, and an email from work asking her to complete something before Monday morning.

She dropped her bag onto the sofa and lay beside it, still wearing her shoes.

University had been difficult, but at least she had known what she was working towards. Now she worked all day and came home too tired to do anything she had once imagined doing with her freedom.

She wanted a place of her own. A little apartment, perhaps, where she could leave her books on the dining table and eat cereal for dinner without anyone commenting on it. She wanted to travel, to see the places she had saved on her phone, to wake up in unfamiliar cities and have nowhere particular to be.

And, if she was being honest, she wanted someone.

Someone who would call when she was having a bad day. Someone who would notice when she was quiet. Someone who would sit beside her on the sofa while she complained about work, then make her laugh halfway through the complaint.

She was tired of coming home to an empty house.

There would be time for all of that, she told herself.

First, she needed to get through the probation period.

They had been married for eleven years when she found the photograph.

It was buried in a drawer beneath old receipts and instruction manuals, the two of them standing beside a lake somewhere neither could remember. They looked impossibly young. He had one arm around her shoulders, and she was laughing at something outside the frame, her hair blowing across her face.

“Look at us,” she said, carrying it into the living room.

He peered at the photograph over his glasses.

“Look at your hair.”

She hit his shoulder with the photograph, and he laughed until he had to put his tea down.

They had been happy then. They were happy now, too, but happiness had acquired a different shape over the years. It looked like school fees paid on time, dinner prepared before somebody had to leave for tuition, a roof repaired before the monsoon, and the occasional Sunday when nobody had anywhere to be.

Their children were older now. The house was quieter, although the laundry never seemed to diminish and somebody was always asking for money. They had spent years telling each other that they would travel once the children grew up, once the mortgage was manageable, once work became less demanding.

They had even made a list.

There was a country she wanted to see because she had read about it as a child. There was a little coastal town he had once visited for work and promised to take her to someday. There were restaurants they had driven past for years, saying they would go when they had something to celebrate.

They were going to do all of it.

“Next year,” he said, looking at the photograph.

She smiled.

“Next year.”

She went to the kitchen to prepare dinner. He followed her a few minutes later, carrying the photograph with him, and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a strawberry.

They ate at the table with the children that evening, listening to stories about school and laughing at something that had happened to one of them that afternoon. She watched her husband from across the table. He looked tired. There were grey hairs around his temples now, and he had begun to complain about his knees when he climbed the stairs.

They were getting older.

There was still time, though.

There had to be.

The morning after he retired, he woke before the alarm.

For forty years, he had been getting up at the same hour, dressing in the half-dark, drinking tea while reading the newspaper, and leaving the house before the traffic became unbearable. His body had learned the routine so well that it seemed determined to continue it, even now that there was nowhere, he needed to be.

He lay in bed for a while, listening to the ceiling fan.

His wife was awake beside him.

“Are you going to get up?” she asked.

“I don't have to.”

“Then go back to sleep.”

He closed his eyes.

A few minutes later, he opened them again.

She burst out laughing.

They had plans. Proper plans this time. No more postponing holidays because of meetings, no more answering work calls during dinner, no more promising to visit somewhere and then discovering that the calendar was full. They would travel while they could, eat out more often, visit their children without having to squeeze everything into a weekend, and spend mornings in the garden.

He wanted to sit beside her when they were old, with the sun on their faces and cups of tea growing cold between them.

He had worked hard for this.

He had earned it.

That afternoon, they sat at the kitchen table with a map spread between them, arguing about where to go first. She wanted mountains. He wanted the sea. They settled on neither and spent the next hour looking at photographs of places they could afford.

He had never been happier to have nowhere to be.

For the first time in decades, tomorrow belonged entirely to him.

The old man could no longer remember what day it was.

His daughter had written the date on a little calendar beside his bed, circling appointments in red and leaving notes in the margins. He looked at it every morning, but the numbers slipped away from him almost as soon as he read them.

Today, she had taken him out for some fresh air.

He sat on the bench at the bus stop while she went to the nearby pharmacy, telling him not to move until she returned. He had nodded, although he couldn't quite remember what she had gone to buy. His legs were weak, and the effort of standing had left him breathless. Beneath his trousers, the diaper felt uncomfortable against his skin. He had once been embarrassed by such things. Now he was mostly tired of needing them.

The afternoon was warm. Traffic crawled along the road, horns sounding whenever somebody tried to squeeze into a gap that wasn't there. A shopkeeper swept dust from the pavement, and a dog slept beneath the shade of a parked van.

The old man watched it all.

He had spent so much of his life rushing.

He had rushed to school, rushed through university, rushed to find a job, rushed to build a home and raise a family. He had worked late, woken early, counted his money, made plans, postponed them, and promised himself that things would be easier once he reached the next part of his life.

And they had been easier, sometimes.

There had been laughter. There had been holidays and birthday cakes, new houses and new beginnings. There had been nights when he and his wife had laughed so hard that neither could remember what had started it. There had been the sound of his children's feet running down the corridor, the smell of food cooking in the kitchen, the comfort of knowing that somebody would be waiting when he came home.

There had been difficult years, too. Money had been tight. Work had been exhausting. The children had needed more than he could always give, and there had been nights when he lay awake worrying about bills and school fees and all the things that could go wrong.

He had thought those years would never end.

Now he would give anything to have one of those ordinary evenings back.

His wife had been gone for three years. Sometimes he still forgot. He would wake in the morning and turn towards her side of the bed, ready to ask what she wanted for breakfast. Then he would see the empty pillow, the neatly folded blanket, and remember.

The house had become too quiet.

His children visited, but they had lives of their own. He knew that. He had wanted them to grow up, to become independent, to have families and homes of their own. He had spent years preparing them for a world in which they wouldn't need him.

He hadn't thought about what that would feel like.

He looked at his hands, resting on the walking stick between his knees. The fingers were bent now, the skin thin and spotted. He could no longer button his shirts properly. He sometimes needed help eating, and there were mornings when he couldn't remember the name of the street he had lived on for thirty years.

He wondered how it had happened so quickly.

Not the big things. He remembered the wedding, the births of his children, the day he retired. He remembered his wife's face when they first saw the sea together, and the sound of her voice when she called him from the next room.

It was the days in between that had disappeared.

The mornings he had spent getting ready for work. The evenings he had been too tired to talk. The holidays he had postponed. The meals he had eaten while thinking about something else. All those ordinary days he had believed he would have more of.

He had been so busy waiting for life to slow down that he hadn't noticed how quickly it was moving.

A small boy appeared beside the bench, dragging a schoolbag behind him. His mother was hurrying after him, trying to straighten his collar while he wriggled away.

“I can do it myself!” he protested.

“Then stand still for two seconds.”

“I don't need you to help me with everything. I'm going to be big soon.”

His mother sighed, but the old man caught the smile she tried to hide.

The boy climbed onto the bench a little distance away and swung his legs. He was impatient to go home, impatient to finish school, impatient for the day when he would be old enough to make his own decisions. He told his mother about the house he would buy, the car he would drive, and all the places he would visit when he grew up.

The old man listened.

He wanted to tell the boy that there would be time for all of it. He wanted to tell him that he would grow up so gradually that he might not notice until one day he looked in the mirror and wondered where the years had gone. He wanted to tell him to stay a little longer in the mornings, to listen when his mother called him for dinner, to stop wishing away the days that seemed so ordinary now.

But the boy was already looking at the road.

His mother took his hand when the bus arrived. He complained that she was holding it too tightly, and she loosened her grip without letting go.

The old man watched them climb aboard.

Through the window, the boy turned to look at the passing shops, his face bright with the anticipation of somewhere else, something else, a life that hadn't begun yet.

The bus disappeared around the corner.

His daughter returned a few minutes later, carrying a small paper bag from the pharmacy. She helped him to his feet, and he leaned on her arm as they began the slow walk home.

“Are you tired, Thaththa?” she asked.

He nodded.

She slipped her hand beneath his elbow and adjusted her pace to match his.

He looked at her, trying to remember when she had grown so tall. He remembered carrying her on his shoulders when she was little, her hands tangled in his hair, her laughter ringing in his ears. He remembered her first day of school, when she had clung to his shirt and cried because she didn't want him to leave.

He had told her she would be all right.

She had been.

They reached the corner, and he stopped to catch his breath. His daughter waited beside him, holding the paper bag in one hand and his arm in the other.

For a moment, he thought of his wife. He thought of the trips they had taken and the ones they hadn't, the years they had spent working, the house they had built, the children they had raised. He thought of the life that had seemed so long when he was young and had passed so quickly now that he was old.

He had wanted to grow up.

Then he had wanted to get somewhere.

Then he had wanted more time.

His daughter asked if he was ready to continue.

He nodded, and they walked on.

Behind them, somewhere along the road, another child was hurrying home, already dreaming of the day he would be old enough to leave.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform that celebrates diverse voices in poetry and creative writing. It provides writers from around the world with an opportunity to share their unique stories and perspectives, fostering a global community of literary talent and creativity.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Tenuli Perera for sharing "In a Hurry" with us as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your thoughtful exploration of life's journey resonates deeply, reminding us all of the importance of cherishing each moment. Thank you for your contribution to this inspiring literary event.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.