Read Online Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. by Gabbar Singh, Anuj Gosalia, Sakshi Nanda, Rohit Gore - Free Book Online
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my eyes, but went further upwards
and downwards. My eyebrows, my eyelids, my nose, my lips, my forehead,
my unshaved beard, my ears, my hair, everything, I could feel it photo-
copying my face. Somehow, I controlled the urge to hold her face in my
hands, tell her eyes to stop traveling all across my face and kiss her right
there.
Two weeks before Valentine’s Day, she disappeared. Whoosh! No intima-
tion, no information, no news. Ananya was gone.
Some friends said her father had gotten transferred to a new city. Some
said she was avoiding Valentine’s Day on purpose, as if to make a point.
Teachers said she must be preparing for the finals that were due in an-
other two weeks after Valentine’s Day. According to me, these were the
stupidest reasons one could ever give. They didn’t know her. I did. They
weren’t in love with her. I was. They weren’t waiting for the right mo-
ment. I was.
I waited for a couple of days for her to show up. I had thought of every
possible reason for her absence. I could stick to none. When my curiosity
almost killed me, I decided to go all the way to her house. I had prepared
a list of questions in my quiver that I was going to shoot at her. After
school, I rushed towards her house, only to find a big lock hanging at the
entrance, mocking me.
Even to this day, I don’t know where she disappeared. I refuse to cel
-
ebrate Valentine’s Day, even with the girl I am presently in a relationship
with. Call me stupid or a hopeless romantic. Not that they are very differ-
ent from each other. I have honestly tried to get over Ananya, to get over
the relationship that never even started. But whenever I have tried to do
so, I have ended up feeling sadder than the last time. Those who say they
know it all, say there is an age when people fall in love; they say it was
just infatuation, that love cannot happen at such a tender age. But, I don’t
believe them. The fact that we are born out of love means that we, at all
times, have had all the love that two people shared at a certain moment.
We love our family, friends, even gadgets and toys since childhood. Why,
then, do we have to be mature enough to love a person for a lifetime?
It doesn’t matter where she disappeared, neither does it matter if she
felt the same way about me as I did about her. What matters is that she
could have told me that she did, but she didn’t. What matters is that I
could have told her too, and I didn’t. Both of us waited for the right mo-
ment, and that moment passed right through us. Now it is too late to find
her, tell her that she looked like Aishwarya Rai. I wish someone told her,
though . Or she might have discovered the resemblance herself. But that
is unlikely; she was never a slave to reflective surfaces.
I hope she is in love with that someone. And I just pray they haven’t
named their daughter Aaradhya; that would be way too filmy, even for
her.
***
8.
Tainted Red
Aathira Jim
Renuka was trained for marriage from the time she could remember. To
cook. To make idlis soft and fluffy. To make sambhar, a bit on the tangy
side. To roll the dough for rotis just perfect so they don’t stick. To make
them the perfect geometric rounds. The perfect way to fold clothes. To
iron them, so that the creases look crisp and neat. And so when her
parents found Arjun, the perfect groom, soft spoken and handsome,
well-educated and settled in the US, a green card holder no less, she was
confident.
The wedding was a grand affair: she was decked in jewelry and wrapped
in the richest pomegranate-red kanchipuram silk-saree that flattered her
dusky skin; no one noticed the nervousness and uncertainty in her eyes
that she hid so well. Or of how fidgety her slender hands were. The way
they shook when she bid farewell to her old life. Or how, when she cried
after the wedding, her tears were mistaken for homesickness.
How tough can it be to do all those little things she was trained for,
and downwards. My eyebrows, my eyelids, my nose, my lips, my forehead,
my unshaved beard, my ears, my hair, everything, I could feel it photo-
copying my face. Somehow, I controlled the urge to hold her face in my
hands, tell her eyes to stop traveling all across my face and kiss her right
there.
Two weeks before Valentine’s Day, she disappeared. Whoosh! No intima-
tion, no information, no news. Ananya was gone.
Some friends said her father had gotten transferred to a new city. Some
said she was avoiding Valentine’s Day on purpose, as if to make a point.
Teachers said she must be preparing for the finals that were due in an-
other two weeks after Valentine’s Day. According to me, these were the
stupidest reasons one could ever give. They didn’t know her. I did. They
weren’t in love with her. I was. They weren’t waiting for the right mo-
ment. I was.
I waited for a couple of days for her to show up. I had thought of every
possible reason for her absence. I could stick to none. When my curiosity
almost killed me, I decided to go all the way to her house. I had prepared
a list of questions in my quiver that I was going to shoot at her. After
school, I rushed towards her house, only to find a big lock hanging at the
entrance, mocking me.
Even to this day, I don’t know where she disappeared. I refuse to cel
-
ebrate Valentine’s Day, even with the girl I am presently in a relationship
with. Call me stupid or a hopeless romantic. Not that they are very differ-
ent from each other. I have honestly tried to get over Ananya, to get over
the relationship that never even started. But whenever I have tried to do
so, I have ended up feeling sadder than the last time. Those who say they
know it all, say there is an age when people fall in love; they say it was
just infatuation, that love cannot happen at such a tender age. But, I don’t
believe them. The fact that we are born out of love means that we, at all
times, have had all the love that two people shared at a certain moment.
We love our family, friends, even gadgets and toys since childhood. Why,
then, do we have to be mature enough to love a person for a lifetime?
It doesn’t matter where she disappeared, neither does it matter if she
felt the same way about me as I did about her. What matters is that she
could have told me that she did, but she didn’t. What matters is that I
could have told her too, and I didn’t. Both of us waited for the right mo-
ment, and that moment passed right through us. Now it is too late to find
her, tell her that she looked like Aishwarya Rai. I wish someone told her,
though . Or she might have discovered the resemblance herself. But that
is unlikely; she was never a slave to reflective surfaces.
I hope she is in love with that someone. And I just pray they haven’t
named their daughter Aaradhya; that would be way too filmy, even for
her.
***
8.
Tainted Red
Aathira Jim
Renuka was trained for marriage from the time she could remember. To
cook. To make idlis soft and fluffy. To make sambhar, a bit on the tangy
side. To roll the dough for rotis just perfect so they don’t stick. To make
them the perfect geometric rounds. The perfect way to fold clothes. To
iron them, so that the creases look crisp and neat. And so when her
parents found Arjun, the perfect groom, soft spoken and handsome,
well-educated and settled in the US, a green card holder no less, she was
confident.
The wedding was a grand affair: she was decked in jewelry and wrapped
in the richest pomegranate-red kanchipuram silk-saree that flattered her
dusky skin; no one noticed the nervousness and uncertainty in her eyes
that she hid so well. Or of how fidgety her slender hands were. The way
they shook when she bid farewell to her old life. Or how, when she cried
after the wedding, her tears were mistaken for homesickness.
How tough can it be to do all those little things she was trained for,
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