Month: January 2017

Taming of the shrew

Ravi enters into his apartment where the stench of unclean dishes flooding the kitchen basin, sweat from used clothes scattered over the sofa, unsuccessful combination of deodorant sprays, queasy smell of rotting food, humidity and a decomposing relationship, form a thick layer of tainted air. However, being used to this atmosphere, he continues making his way towards his study, the only part left of paradise in his newly discovered hell called home. He sighs at the thought of seeing his wife again. As a desperate attempt to distract himself, he starts humming his favorite song. Unconsciously, he walks into his bedroom out of his dying habit but to his surprise instead of regret, he finds his wife elegantly dressed in a sari he gifted her on their first anniversary. Taking it as a sign that things might change today he compliments her, “Wow! You look beautiful! When was the last time I saw you in this sari?”
Ranjana doesn’t respond. Undeterred and brimming with hope, Ravi continues anyway, “Look, I am sorry. Okay. I know I made a mistake…I know I shouldn’t have done what I did. But you need to forgive me. You need to see how much I love you. You need to know that I miss you. Please, Ranjana, you are killing me. Please come back!” He sits beside her and takes her hand. “We can get out of this together. We can still walk through the distance between us. It’s not that far. We are not that far! Please Ranjana…” He clasps his hands with hers and keeps his head on her shoulder, “I love you so much. I spend all my day daydreaming about how we used to be. How you used to be…” A few tears escape his eyes and he whispers, “I refuse to believe that you don’t love me anymore. I know you do…”
“You should have thought of how much you loved me before you spent all those nights
with her.” she says angrily. Before Ravi could respond, she abruptly gets up and leaves the room. In her mind she is imagining Ravi saying, “I never loved her! I never wanted her! I never thought of leaving you over her!” In her heart, she knows he will never say it and even if he does he won’t mean it.
Tired of hearing the same argument, Ravi goes to his study, hoping to escape into the books and somehow managing to deceive himself from his own miserable life. Groggily, he walks over to the bookshelf and takes out his favorite novel – The Taming of the shrew. The coincidence makes him chuckle.
Meanwhile, Ranjana goes to the kitchen and takes out the broadest butcher knife from the drawer. She wipes it lovingly with her sari and holds it at a distance, gazing at it as if it is the most beautiful and delicate thing in the world. The thought of what she is about to do with it lightens up her face with a sinister smile. She tiptoes to the study. Ravi is sitting on the chair with his back towards her. By the time he realizes that someone is standing behind him, it’s too late. Within a flash, blood spurts out of his slit throat. Ranjana stabs at his heart hissing, “You know you are right. I do love you. I love you too much. But you don’t. You never have! I warned you never to break my heart Ravi. I warned you.” One more at the abdomen! Another one at the chest! Ravi tries to speak but he can’t. He tries to get up and defend himself but he is too weak. He looks at his wife – The sari that he so lovingly (or guiltily?) gifted her is drenched in his own blood. He looks at her beautiful face refusing to believe what just happened. After all the years of marriage, he didn’t have the slightest clue that he was living with a murderer this whole time. Is he her first victim? Of course not, what about Anjali? Was her suicide really a suicide? He wants to shout for help but he can’t he is already dead.
Ranjana goggles at her husband. The hatred in her eyes slowly fades away. “I gave you my heart and you broke it into million pieces. Sorry, I did try to forgive you but I couldn’t.” she says softly, slowly closing his eyelids. She falls asleep in the arms of her dead husband.

***

 Author’s little note: You can find the other two stories of Bitch Trilogy here.
Posted on by saloni 0

The hot guy at the coffee shop

(And how I would never ask him out)

She isn’t known for making confident entrances. She steps in as if she has never visited the place before, which is unintentionally a great display of acting on her part. Her face has this perpetual expression of being lost and confused pasted on it. The only hint that she finally gives about how she does know this place is when she  hesitantly throws her mild smile of acknowledgement at the guy on the counter. He, in return, does the same and asks their mutually consented standard question for her obligatory confirmation – “Latté?”  Affirmative. As usual. Then she goes to her favorite table and starts doing her favorite task of the day – Observing people. Regretting that she isn’t invisible and a bit annoyed at how she ought to be careful about not creeping out the people, she balances this act with reading a book or writing on her laptop. There’s rhythm to this – She enters the café, forcibly greets the guy who takes her order, goes to her table, spends two hours doing something that falls into the potential-topic-for-debate (Procrastination or productivity?) category and then she makes an abrupt exit. And she repeats this every day.

But that day – that day sun rose from the west. As she began to leave the café, she did something she had never done before! The guy, whose voice she had been listening to the entire time since he had entered the coffee  shop, was sitting with two of his other friends. He was doing that thing again – imitating the professor who taught him in the university he was studying in. The accent that he was trying to copy came out pathetically but that didn’t matter! No fake accent could possibly suppress the charm of his sexy voice. Coffee doesn’t get you high but pretending that it does, she went up to him and said, “Umm…I don’t know how to say this without being awkward. So, I am just going to get over with it. No perverseness is intended here, a compliment that’s all. I think your voice is great and you are really cute.” Did the girl with the confused face just say this? Did she just speak to a person she didn’t know? And, and, and that too not because she had to but because she wanted to? Bravo! And there, she turned and strode towards the gate. (Colloquially known as swag) She wanted to see his reaction of course, but if she had turned back that would have ruined the whole moment. Then the thing that she had dearly anticipated and yet not expected to happen happened. He hurriedly caught up to her and asked, “Hey! What’s your name?”

Of course, this is not an entirely true account of events that took place that day. When she went up to him and told him he was cute, he looked at her for a moment almost in disbelief and then burst out laughing. Her default expression of confusion took over her face again as his friends started laughing too. When the realization of what had just happened finally hit her, she turned and ran away as soon as she could. Her auditory senses received the stimulus of his voice, his disgustingly sexy voice, which was most probably addressed to her. Whether it was an apology or an extension to her insult she never got to know. She had voluntarily blocked her brain from deciphering the message. It took fourteen showers to wash away the embarrassment but yet the faint scent of it still lingered to annoy the fuck out of her at otherwise peaceful moments.

Of course, this is also not what really happened. She made a U turn before she could even think of a decent way to frame a compliment. She threw a short glance at the guy. The guy shot the glance back. And there it was! The moment! Their moment! She was looking at him and he was looking at her. Was that a sign? Could he be the one? Wait. What? Her eyes disconnected the contact immediately. She got out of the coffee shop and never saw him again.

Of course, this is also not what really happened. She looked at the guy. He was busy conversing with his friends. “He might be called cute.” She thought, trying to sound arrogant despite knowing there wasn’t anyone present in the vicinity who was capable of listening to her thoughts and praise her ‘ego-complimenting-desperate’ arrogance. Instead of turning to this hot guy she had been wanting to talk to this whole time, she turned to the guy at the counter and asked for the bill.  A few weeks later she found herself contemplating about various alternative endings for this trivial incident that ideally she should have forgotten about long ago.

Or maybe, this is also not what really happened. There was no such guy at the café.

~Musings from the coffee shop

P.S. You can find more posts on the musings from the coffee shop here .

Posted on by saloni 2

The hot girl at the coffee shop

(And how I will never be as hot as she is – An unintentional rant on insecurity)

I sit here in awe as I watch you taking the seat next to my table. I am staring, ain’t I? But I can’t stop myself from doing this. For starters, I won’t deny that I am a bit irked by your hair and how the strands don’t strive to take weird spaces in the air, how they seem perfectly managed and cohered like they show in those advertisements. Then there is the length of your hair. Funny I seem to love long hair again because when my hair used to be that long, I used to look like a broomstick and I eventually grew to hate it. Well, not anymore I guess. Every curl of your hair, they seem to be a deliberate effort, not a mere accident but a perfect plan well executed. Ugh! How beautiful! And how very convenient. You get to be out on your good hair day. And there’s me – always trying to hide the hideousness of my hair in a bun!  Are my bad hair days ever getting over? And then there is your eyeliner. Boy, look at that symmetry! The smokey eye shadow surrounding it, did you notice that my burning heart? How glamorous is that! So, that is how you put it! I am talking to you my dear hand, that is how we are supposed to put it! And by the way, which shade is your lipstick colour? Which brand is it? I need to buy that immediately.

Stop it. What are you doing? What am I doing? Describing her, grandma brain! Don’t act so innocent! My eyes are glued on her because of your orders, not mine. So, don’t pretend to be shocked. You can expect me describing everything about her – Her grey crop top. Grey, notice that colour ; The colour of class. A wardrobe must have and yet we don’t have it. That’s because we are not meant to carry these beautiful things on our body. We are meant to make notes about others carrying it.  Her black shrug, her black jeans, her black sneakers and then there’s the stylish amazing contrast to everything – Her cream sling bag. Just look at that walking Zara showroom, man! How come everything that she is doing right now seem so perfect! This is weird!  I think that was the 100th selfie that she just snapped. Wow. Usually you would have found me rolling my eyes at her and her front camera but today this incessant act of capturing different positions of lips and eyebrows and hands miraculously makes perfect sense to me. Where is all my anti-selfieism spirit gone?

God, she is beautiful. Beautiful? Well, that’s a presumptuous word, isn’t it? I think we should settle for this other adjective – hot. So, she is hot! And also an unintentional salt on my wound. She is making me realize how I don’t know these things; taking care of my own self, putting efforts on myself and not just leaving things on fate and the hormones in my body. She makes me acutely aware of my carelessness, of my cracked lips, of my un-kept nails, of my uncombed hair, of my dark circles, of my acne. But that’s okay. I am not going to be jealous. We are not that kind! We are the kind who stand back and admire. You can imagine me leaning against a wall, taking a puff from my joint and just watching the people around.

Did you notice the guy at the other counter, by the way? Did you notice how he is engaged doing the same thing that we are doing? Yes. That’s why you need to get back. Go back to your book. You have a task to complete, turquoise ink! Don’t you remember? She is a pretty woman. We get it. But we need to get back to our work. And you are not even gay. (are you?) Shut up. Did you see that? How she looked at me again? I like the way we have exchanged glances during this whole time. The guy at the counter didn’t get the same treatment, FYI. But you know what, I do not wish to know her. I do not wish to talk to her and even know her name. As long as she does not object my series of not-so-stolen glances, I am happy just by looking at her. That’ s it. Thank you for letting me watch you, lady! Thank you for not minding my attention and even admiring it, if I may.

Ho gaya? Aur kuch? No. Nothing. You should be happy, you know. I think we just got a new bakri for our blog.

Yeah. The great cure for writer’s block. I think a glance at an attractive girl might be a possible solution for all our problems.  

~Musings from the coffee shop

P.S. You can find more posts on the musings from the coffee shop here .

Posted on by saloni 4