A happy memory

This morning mom started feeling weak, perhaps the result of her ongoing battle with Covid. She’s saying it’s the first time in the last 14 days that she has felt this way. Naturally, the emotional state at home is brimming with worry and helplessness.

In a way, we have had it all. We have been dealing with Covid for over 1.5 months now, and it has strained all of us. But do we sit here and keep lamenting? Does not make sense.

So I sat down to focus on a positive memory. The tough part is, I’m having to think a while to come up with something worthwhile.

Here we go:

A long time ago, perhaps when I was in sixth standard, I went to a poetry writing competition. I don’t remember the theme on which we had to write, but I distinctly remember having included the words “because old is gold.” Or maybe I am imagining it. I don’t know. The only thing that I can be very clear on is the fact that I wrote a long poem.

The thing is, I wrote the poem and came back, never bothering to enquire what the results came out to be.

Many days later, one of my schoolteachers who frequented such competitions asked me, “Arpita, did you participate in this event? Because it feels to me like they announced your name as the winner.”

It was surprising to hear him say that. One, because I did not expect this. Second, because I thought if I was indeed a winner, maybe the organizers would find a better way to get in touch with me. I do remember feeling a bit let down, if I had indeed won, at not being able to pick up the prize in front of a cheering crowd.

So I went with a neighbor to this nondescript building where the event had taken place (or maybe, it did have distinct and interesting features, but my memory fails me). Surprising as it was, my teacher was indeed right. They gave me a certificate and a trophy of a respectable size. I had won the first prize!

I remember coming home and feeling so excited about it, at the sheer unexpectedness of things. I don’t remember how my father felt about this, but my mother was definitely happy.

Afterward, this story was repeated many times over, among neighbors, friends and family, until other things pushed it down the stack of memory lane.

If you wish, do write the first happy memory that comes to your mind as you read this. Looking forward to starting a chain of positive memories as we trudge along this pandemic.

Train To Pakistan by Khuswant Singh | A Review

I just finished reading the Train to Pakistan by Khuswant Singh. I have read very little of fiction on India’s partition. Most of my knowledge about it is through the history books that I had read till tenth standard. Of course, I remember the partition being bloody, but the chilling extent of it has never been truly exposed to my mind. Until I picked up this book, that is.

Khuswant Singh’s prose is straightforward, within the expanse of 190 pages, he talks about a lot of things, and that too in exact amount of detail as required. Set in the backdrop of 1947 India-Pakistan partition, this novel sheds light on the religious massacre that happened during the time, where Muslims and Hindus on either sides of the borders killed each other and sent trainloads of corpses across. The writing is graphic. Singh sets his stage in the silent village of Mano Majra, a quaint one whose life is dictated by the comings and goings of the train at the railway station. Muslims and Hindus here live harmoniously, though through the course of the story it will change.

This book is a deep meditation of different kinds of people. It almost feels like the author wrote the book as a contemplative thesis of the human mind, shaped by love, hatred, political and moral education, politics and other elements. There are the religious heads of the Muslims and the Sikhs, who are predominantly peace-loving people and try their best to maintain peace. Then there is a morally-unstable District Magistrate and his counterpart in the police department, a Sub-Inspector, who want to do the right thing but do not really have the guts to do it. The other striking character is that of Iqbal Singh, the foreign-returned political activist who wants to make a name for himself by going to jail, but when the time comes for him to truly do something of value, he drowns his conscience in whisky and tells himself that in moments of chaos, the best course to take is of self-preservation. I do not completely hate the person. Maybe in his shoes, I would have behaved in the same manner. The more learned we become, the more we see the futility of our actions, which in turn drives us to become more apathetic towards life, more like a passive audience in a theater. On the other hand, there is the village badmash, Juggut Singh, a man who often gets in trouble with the police, who seems to tower above everyone else, both literally and figuratively, and do something that no one else is able to do. Somehow it feels like the remainder of Mano Majra, apart from Juggut, are like puppets in a show and cannot really control their destinies.

I have not read anything else by Khuswant Singh, but with just this one, I am a fan. His writing is very plain, his English far from superfluous, but it has a deep contemplative tone to it. He builds his characters well, lets us get into their head and understand their actions and see life from their lens. Which is why, you don’t really end up hating anyone in Majo Majra – you just feel sad for the lot of them.

This book opened my eyes to the extent of horror of Partition. Sometimes, given the current political scenario of India, I wonder if we are at any better stage compared to 1947. If we took a lesson from the pages of history, maybe we would stop playing the divisive game of the politics of religion, and begin to truly celebrate the diversity of India. This soils of this country has been reddened by blood time and again. Hopefully, we will leave it a better place for our children.

Have you read Train to Pakistan? How did the book make you feel? Do let me know in the Comments below.

Stories are powerful

As a kid, when anyone came into our house, I used to bug them to tell me stories. I don’t quite remember the stories that my these people told me anymore. Looking back, I don’t even understand why I wanted to listen to those stories. As it was, it was not the age of deep thinking. I guess what I craved for was a a glimpse into a world that was not mine, something different, something wonderful.

I began writing for my school magazine in my third grade. The first few years were poems, and then I graduated to writing fiction. I was never good with storytelling; even today, I am not. I derive heavily from the life that I am part of, which is why, my stories are always, in some form, about me. I know for a fact, I could never spin up a world like Harry Potter’s. I think I do not have the imaginative mind to do it.

I have not written stories in a long time, even though I want to. I have always wanted to write good stories. But somehow, I always struggle with a good ending. Or if I have the right ending, I don’t know the story that led to that ending. Sometimes, I feel I am too young, I have not seen life enough to write anything meaningful.

It impacts how my relationship with this blog has also changed over time. There was a point when I wrote anything and everything here. These days, I don’t feel like writing unless I really feel like I have something to say. Even that is filtered to an extent. A lot of my writing are now personal, diary entries in a folder in my laptop. At this stage of life, that’s what feels right.

When I was younger, stories were independent things, with a life of limited duration. They began in the time that I started reading a book or someone started telling a story and ended when the story ended. The life of the story was within the duration of when it was told. But as I grew, as I watched movies and TV series, as I read more books (currently reading The Kite Runner), I realize that the stories we watch/read become a part of our everyday life. They somehow manage to creep into the fabric of our lives, and come back to us in their own time or affect the way we deal with our lives. As I grow, I realize, we all are also living some form of stories. Why do we want to be friends with different types of people? Because we want to witness a version of life that we are not living. We want to see how different life can be, when the actors are different. We take lessons from other people’s lives, we discover ourselves in the lens of other people’s lives. That’s why we write stories. That’s why we read stories.

Even businesses, at the end of the day, are stories. When you have a bunch of data and want to find some insights from it, what do you do? You try to visualize a story that the data can help you tell. That’s what analytics is all about. That’s why modern corporates stress so much on the art of storytelling. Analysis, done in silos, findings found in disparate chunks of data, do not make any sense unless they tie to the story that depicts the current state of the business, or tells it where it wants to go.

That’s why storytelling is powerful. That’s why art will always be counterpart of science.

Book Review | Mahashweta

Last week, I was going through Kwench library. I happened across a book by Sudha Murty, the name of which I do not remember now. The blurb interested me. However, the book was in circulation at the time and I had to opt for a different book.

I chose Mahashweta by the author, which is the story of Anupama, who contracts vitiligo (a skin condition in which the skin becomes white in color). The book narrates how she is abandoned by her husband because of the condition and how, after a lot of struggle, she finds a place of her own in life.

The book was potent for me. Having had vitiligo for close to ten years now, I know the ordeal. While reading the book, I remembered the horror of the initial days when I contracted it. I would go to sleep every night, scared that when I woke up in the morning, some other portion of my body would be white. As a ninth grader, it was not easy to accept this about myself. I was in my teenage years, when boys and girls start to become conscious of their looks. In just one day, life had changed for me. Concerned elders spoke about how things would get difficult for me during marriage, because who would want to marry a girl with white patches?

Public knowledge about vitiligo is quite vast these days. People (at least the ones I have come across) understand that it is a cosmetic disease. The disease is not contagious, not has it been proved that it is hereditary (no one in my family had it). Many people have more serious diseases and get married off easily because these diseases do not happen to leave external proof.

However, understanding the mechanics of the disease is something and to emotionally accept it is another. In reality, like Anand in the book, we all look for perfection. We want our wives and our husbands to look beautiful. Lot of us want to show off our spouses as symbol of perfection – it just strokes our ego.

Every time a relationship that could have worked out for me but did not, I have wondered if somewhere, the white patches on the skin contributed in any manner to the decision taken. Throughout my teenage years, and even today, I am still conscious of them. I still prefer wearing dresses with high collar.

However, unlike my teenage years, now it is easy to accept this fact about myself. Now, I can go about my day doing multiple other things, without even thinking once that I have vitiligo. But I am at a juncture of life when marriage does not look too distant. I do wonder, from time to time, how my skin condition affects my marital prospects in 21st century. I guess I will find out!

Mahashweta, at mere 150 pages, is a wonderful story. It realistically narrates the sentiments of myriad sections of people: a mother-in-law who is willing to overlook lapses in moral conduct of her own daughter, but treats her daughter-in-law like a piece of shit because she has white patches on her skin. A doctor, who in spite of knowing the medical implications of vitiligo, ignores the social implications of the same for his wife and chooses to abandon her when she needs him the most. But the best part about the book was the epilogue by the author where she describes how her book made a man change his decision to not marry the bride who had just contracted vitiligo. It moved me to tears.

 

 

‘Us’ does not exist

I have seen them in the traffic jam, in the lines of waiting crowd, when she sat back on his bike and caressed the dog peering outside the window of the car next to them.

I have seen them in front of the museum; him holding the kid in his arms, her trying to find something desperately from the cheap green faux leather bag. Perhaps, she was fishing for the blue handkerchief to rub the snot below the baby’s nostrils, or the bubble gum to keep it silent.

I have seen them in shopping malls, sitting together with big cups of coffees on small white table, flanked by matching white chairs. She had a brown leather sling bag and long leather boots. He looked chic in a pair of blue jeans and white shirt.

I have seen them in buses, in the metro, in the pool cab that I take to save money that needs to be paid towards the bills.

I have seen the love, the care that flows between a man and a woman. The care that one finds in little day-to-day things. The way the girl on the bike holds onto her boyfriend in black leather jacket in one hand and in the way she caresses the dog with the other. I have seen the attraction in the eyes which reflects the coffee table. New love is always fire.

The married couple in the front of the museum can be just about anyone, with a kid early in their marriage because he did not believe in planning and she had no choice.

Perhaps, they had fought on the way to the museum. Her bickering about the nagging kid, him tired of her tantrums. Perhaps, the boy on the bike is going to drop the girl off for good and ride his own separate direction. Maybe, the couple on the coffee date will no longer meet for the next one, because she speaks a little too much and he turns out to be a snob.

But, in the moment that I see them, in the moment my heart skips a beat at the sight of people doing ‘couple’ things, I miss you.

I miss you on my way to work, when a random stranger walks by wearing the same perfume that you wear. I miss you when I re-record songs in a broken voice and send to all the people who do not matter, but stop before sending to you, because I no longer can.

I miss you in them. I miss us in them.

Us does not exist.

You and I do.

In separate cities, in separate worlds evolving around us.

(c) 2017 Arpita Pramanick

Day 18 of Writing 101: The Package

The Package

Arpita Pramanick

It says it is in Bhiwandi, Maharashtra, India. I do not know if Bhiwandi is a city or a town. I wonder, though, what it looks like.

I am zooming in. The satellite picture shows green and brown, but nothing is clear. So much for technology!

A notification beeps in my cellphone. The package has moved. Now, the painful wait begins.

Three days later, criss-crossing the country, changing hands, it rings as the doorbell.

The man is dark. He is wearing dark blue coveralls and a blue-and-red cap.

“Two hundred and seventy nine rupees, ma’am,” he says.

I hand him the money, counted to the exact rupee. I know these people well. They never return the one-rupee change.

The man hands me the package. I caress it like a long lost kin.

“Thank you for shopping with us, ma’am.” The man bares his malformed teeth. Ugh!

“Yeah, okay, okay!” I shut the door on his face. I can’t wait one more second to tear the cover and hold the treasure in my own hands.

No longer I care what they say about my craft. If no one else buys my book, I will!

I know what I should do. I’ll just order another hundred copies!

Copyright © 2015 Arpita Pramanick

Not Today (Part 3)

← Previously on Scribbles@Arpita (Not Today: Part One & Part Two)

(A Short Story spanning a day)

6.20 PM

The hedge was towering over her. The walls were rigid. She had no clue that what was beyond. She walked, slowly at first, in control. She was sure she would find a way. How difficult can a hedge maze be?

She walked on and on and found passages after passages which led on to more passages. But there was no exit. Her breathing grew faster. Her throat felt dry and she gulped her own saliva every so often. There was no exit. She was locked. Locked in a labyrinth with no one to her aid.

The colour of the day was fading fast. Somewhere, far away, the sun was creeping past the horizon.

There was no one. No one to her aid.

Then the birds started to appear. They were small, white birds. She was sure she had seen them before, but she could not place them anywhere. The little birds flew and flew in circles above her head at first. Their screeches grew louder, so she had to close her ears with her hands. And then, the birds broke the symmetry. They started spreading out like a tangent to the circle, and then flew in straight lines along the tops of the hedges. Instinctively, she followed them.

“Ma’am, your bill.” The voice was loud and hammering into her ears.

Adrija started like she had risen from underwater, breathless. It took awhile to focus on the waiter. Her ice cream had melted.

Quickly, she took out the hundred-rupee note from her purse and gave it to the waiter.

“Keep the change.”

She slid the strap of her handbag across her shoulder and got up of the chair. Before she left, she cast one long glance at the large poster on the opposite wall of the ice cream parlour: A hedge maze with a woman lost inside. The woman looked so tiny in the picture that you would miss her if you were not looking carefully.

9.00 PM

Adrija ate a hasty dinner in her hostel room. The food was no different than other days, but Adrija had brought it into her room, unlike the other days. Usually, she preferred to eat with her hostel-mates, sitting on the table in the dining room, watching television and shouting on top of their voices in order to be heard over the noise. Not today.

After she was done with her dinner, she stood before the mirror and looked at herself. She touched her cheeks and lips with her finger and outlined her brow. She ran her finger lightly over her eyes. She looked just the same as yesterday. Only, she felt she had aged by years.

She wondered why the maze generated such images in her mind, because she had been to that ice cream parlour many times, without ever having such an episode. She still had goosebumps imagining the vividness of the incident. She could still feel herself locked inside the green jail of hedges.

The birds! She remembered now where she had seen them. The guy at the mall with the Peace tattoo! He had exact same birds on his wrist.

Adrija was more confused than ever. What did the boy have to do with anything? Nothing made sense. Then again, did anything make any sense the entire day today? First, no notifications on her social media. Then, her friends’ and juniors’ weird avoidance. She checked her phone again. But the gadget had never been more silent.

10.00 PM

Adrija lay in her bed, toying with her phone. For some time, she played Angry Birds. When she was bored, she fidgeted with Talking Tom. It was good to hear someone speak, even if it was her own words twisted in a strange mechanical, cat accent. Couldn’t they make an app into which you could speak your mind and the app would listen and answer you like a human being, a friend?

The maze was a cage. The phone was a cage. The people around her were cages. Once she was inside, she had no way of getting out. No way not to feel bad about the lack of attention. About the lack of noise around her. About the stronghold of silence.

Yet, for the few hours when she was sitting on the stairs in the mall, watching people, as an observer, not getting involved, not interacting, she had felt a sense of peace.

Peace, written in black ink in a fancy font that you see in ancient books. Peace, with little birds circling around it. Peace, with finding a way out of the maze.

3.00 AM

It is late and Adrija is asleep. She is dreaming but she will remember it no more when she wakes up in the morning. In her dream, she is seated in an open air restaurant. There are scores of tables around her. Each table is surrounded by four wicker chairs. A vase of freshly plucked long-stemmed flowers sits on each table. The flowers are white.

Adrija is sipping hot chocolate from a large mug. The guy with the Peace tattoo is walking on the other side of the cobbled street. Adrija does not see him. As she dreams, Adrija thinks that she has never visited this place. It is true.

But she will visit this place, in some years, of course. Because tomorrow, when she will wake up, she will shed her old skin. In six months, she will throw a few clothes in her back-pack and go for a mountain trek where the electromagnetic signals become feeble and feeble as your scale the altitude. There will be no more notifications on the phone.

The End

Copyright © 2015 Arpita Pramanick

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This is the end of the 3-part story that started as an assignment for the Writing 101 blogging course. The goal was to write a story spanning about a day. I am thankful to everyone who followed the firsst two parts of the story and offered their feedback. I had not published a serialized story on the blog before, so when I found interest in the story rising among the readers, I also felt excited to write the next part. I must do more of these in future! What do you think?

Day 15 of Writing 101: Not Today (Part 2)

←Previously on Scribbles@Arpita: Not Today (Part One)

Not Today (Part 2)

(A Short Story spanning a day)

1:10 PM

It was lunch time. Adrija was sitting in the cafeteria. The two classes after Professor Ghosh’s were as boring as his and she didn’t get any time to speak to Sourav or any of the others about what was going on either. As soon as it was lunch time, Sourav rushed out of the classroom. “I have a meeting at the sports club. Catch you later, Bunny.”

“Don’t you Bunny me,” she wanted to say, but he was already out of earshot.

Just like Sourav, the rest of her classmates quickly crawled out of the classroom before she could confront them. Smita, the fashion queen of the class and a keen observer of what others wore, did not seem to notice that Adrija was wearing a different dress today, which was the oddest thing. Smita was quite known for her tart tongue.

Something was seriously wrong. Adrija could feel it in her bones.

At the cafeteria, Adrija ordered a chicken sandwich and a coke and munched on in a relatively solitary corner of the filled cafeteria. Her confidence was shaken. She dared not approach anyone anymore.

Her mind worked furiously as she chewed. She hadn’t said anything bad about someone and had been recorded saying that, had she? Not that she could remember. Adrija wasn’t the kind of person who spoke behind people’s back. Okay, a little, maybe, but generally she went along with people and they went along with her.

A smile returned to her face. “Do these people think it’s my birthday and want to surprise me later?” But her smile was short-lived. Her birthday was in February and it was only October. Also, all her friends knew when her birthday was. She checked her phone again. Not a single person had liked her good morning status! Not a single comment. No reply in her Whatsapp group. It was as if a she was placed within a microwave shield, the one she learnt about in the electromagnetic theory class. She sent out signals to the world, but they were not received because of the shield. She, Adrja Ray, was being treated like a nobody. She was sure she was going to cry. Something was definitely wrong with the Universe!

Adrija called her mother. She picked up after three rings.

“Hi Adrija! Wassup?”

“Nothing’s up, mum.”

“You never call at this time.”

“Well, I just did,” she shrugged, irritated.

“Okay, okay. Where are you? There’s much noise.”

“College. What are you doing?”

“Now, Adrija, tell me, seriously, what is wrong? You don’t call your mother at lunch and ask her what she’s doing. Not on usual days, you don’t.”

“I don’t?” For the first time Adrija realized that it was nearly two months she had last visited home. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a real conversation with her mother. The tears threatened again, but she was determined not to cry on the phone. “Well, nothing is usual about today!” she sighed.

“No? What’s unusual about today?”

Suddenly, she realized how stupid it would sound if she told her mother that no one was liking her Facebook status or replying to her messages.

“It’s nothing, mum! I gotta go, talk to you later. Love ya!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, Ma. Lunch is over. I got classes! Bye!”

2.00 PM

Adrija was back in her hostel room. She couldn’t deal with any more classes. She needed some alone time to make sense of what was going on in her life.

What if people continued to treat her like she was invisible for the rest of her life? She felt a lump form in her throat. She wasn’t used to oblivion; she wasn’t used to being alone. She felt a strong impulse to throw her phone at the wall. It took every ounce of her will-power to resist herself.

5.00 PM

Adrija was at the salon, getting a facial. A mud pack was on her face and two slices of cucumber covered her eyes. The beautician was working at her nails, giving it a fresh coat of paint. She could feel the cool of the chemical on the nails as the brush lingered on them. It was hypnotic, she was almost falling asleep.

6.00 PM

Adrija was sitting on the stairs outside the shopping complex, admiring her nail-art. Her nails now had little flowery patterns done in thin black lines above the pink base. Beautiful! Simply beautiful! She took a picture of the nails and shared it on Facebook via Instagram. Had she quite forgotten what a failure she was on Facebook lately? Good for her!

Lots of people were scattered on the stairs: some couples, a group of boys and girls no older than her. There were even middle-aged people who seemed to have come directly from office: they were in their formals; some even wore ties, albeit loosely wound around the neck.

To her surprise, Adrija liked sitting there, alone, watching the people. She was glad no one was asking her from where she had got her nails done or why she couldn’t get over pink. Not talking, not being loud wasn’t so bad, at least not half as bad as it was in the cafeteria.

Adrija didn’t hear him until the guy was already in front of her, asking, “Mind if I sit beside you?” He was wearing a white v-neck shirt and faded jeans. There was a small tattoo on the inner side of his wrist. It said Peace and had little birds around the word. She did not know him.

“Yes, though I don’t believe I am saying this, but I do mind. Please excuse me.” Wow. This was a first! Where was all this coming from?

Adrija found herself walking towards the ice cream parlour.

“I’ll have the chocolate,” she said, when the waiter looked at her.

…to be continued

Copyright ©  2015 Arpita Pramanick

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Here’s the result of the poll conducted on Day 6 of Writing 101.

Even though my short stories rank third in the poll, I decided to give it  shot today because of the following reasons:

1. Bettering myself at writing fiction is one of the fundamental reasons that motivated me to take W101
2. After I wrote the first part of Not Today, I wanted to know more on what was going to happen with Adrija and I wanted to know it fast!

So, dear Reader, are you enjoying reading Not Today? If yes, then why? If not, why, as well? Does the narrative keep you interested, or do you feel like clicking away? Please let me know in the comments. I am looking forward to your feedback on this story.

Day 14 of Writing 101: Not Today (Part 1)

Not Today

(A Short Story spanning a day)

7.00 AM

Adrija smiled as she woke up from the dream. She saw herself sipping her favourite cup of hot chocolate in an open-air restaurant she had never been before. The flooring underneath was cobbled. Four wicker chairs surrounded each table with white tablecloth and a vase of freshly plucked long-stemmed flowers.

Today is going to be a great day, thought Adrija as she walked to the wash-basin.

7.15 AM

Ardija flipped open the cover of her smart-phone and checked for notifications of good morning messages on Whatsapp and Facebook. Unlike most popular girls at college, Adrija was admired by both boys and girls because of her easy manners and approachable demeanour. She was slightly plump and dark and had a long, flowing mane. She was forever buzzing with activity and filled with oodles of confidence.

No notifications? Adrija’s face fell.

“Not an issue,” she smiled and typed it into her group of college friends on Whatsapp: Good morning, beautiful people! She added in a few cute-looking smileys and hit Send. She sent a similar one to her group of school friends.

7.30 AM

Adrija collected her bucket and walked to the bathroom. Six girls shared this bathroom and almost everyone left the house at the same time, so the mornings were pretty busy. There was already a queue in front of the bathroom, made by buckets. The blue one in front of the row belong to Sayani, the pink one to Aditi, the bigger, iron one to Rita. Adrija placed hers at the end of the line and returned. She met Sayani at the end of the corridor.

“Hi, Sayani.”

“Hi, you!” Sayani smiled briefly and walked past Adrija.

“What happened to her?” Adrija muttered to herself. Usually, Sayani was a chatterbox and Adrija would take great steps to avoid her if she was in a hurry.

Once in her room, Adrija checked her phone again. There was still no notification on Whatsapp. What happened to everyone?

She quickly opened Facebook and wrote a status: Good morning people, wakey wakey!! and tagged her bunch of college buddies.

Everyday her friends would be online at this time, furiously commenting and liking her status. They’d send her jokes and funny quotes on Whatsapp. Not today.

9.00 AM

Adrija had bathed and was brushing her hair in front of the mirror. She wore a new dress today, a salwar-kameez that she had not worn to college before.

The phone-thing was biting her at the back of her mind. What the hell happened to all the people? Why was nobody replying to her texts and status? Had everyone suddenly gone off the phone and internet? Impossible!

Adrija decided to call her classmate, Sourav. The phone rang for a long time. No one picked up. “Must be getting ready for college! I should get the breakfast, too.”

10.00 AM

With still no notification on her phone, Adrija slowly walked the college corridor. People were rushing past her, busy talking among themselves. No one looked at her. She saw a group of juniors in front of the physics lab, poring over their lab files. Almost all of them knew her from the Music club or Nature club or Science club.

She walked towards them and tapped a bespectacled girl by the name of Leni on the shoulder, “Writing lab reports, are we?”

Leni turned and smiled. “Yes, Adrija Di. Kinda busy. Catch you laters?”

“Yes, yes. Sure thing!” Adrija walked on, curious how none of the others turned to speak to her. Usually, they’d crowd around her and ask her something about the lab report. She had taken the same subject in a previous semester.

10.30 AM

The professor drew a series of sine curves on the blackboard, to explain the effect of Frequency Modulation. Adrija was sitting beside Sourav. She poked him in the arm with her pen and whispered, “Why didn’t you pick up?”

Sourav gave her the ‘don’t disturb me now’ look and scribbled on, matching pace with the professor. Adrija placed her right hand on his copy and eyed him. He glared at her and muttered in a dark voice, between clenched teeth, “What?”

“Why didn’t you pick up the phone? I called. And sent a bunch of text on Whataspp and Facebook, too. I thought you had died.”

“I was busy.” He removed her hand from the copy and attempted to continue his drawing. Adrija quickly placed her hand on the copy again and muttered, “Busy? That’s it?”

The professor turned then. “Adrija, dear, what exactly are you two discussing? Care to share with us?”

“It’s nothing, sir, really!” Adrija gulped. Professor Ghosh was a stern man. He took no crap.

“Nothing, sir. Nothing, I promise.” She frothed in anger and wanted to burn Sourav at the stake, but managed to keep an apologetic smile on her face.

“Are you sure?” Professor Ghosh asked again. His eyes were non-blinking, like a fish.

“Yes, sir! I am sorry.”

“Good,” said the grave professor, “If anyone else has anything to discuss, please feel free to carry on outside the class. Now, moving on the what we were discussing…”

Adrija glared at Sourav as soon as the professor removed his eyes from her. But Sourav wasn’t looking at her. He was busy listening to Professor Ghosh. Adrija had never seen him so sincere.

…to be continued

Copyright © 2015 Arpita Pramanick

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Note to the Reader: What do you think is different for Adrija today? Why are the people around her suddenly behaving strangely? Let me know in the comments below.

Note to the ‘Writer’ cum Reader: How is Not Today shaping up? Are you interested in what is happening in Adrija’s life? What’s the best thing about this story and what’s the weakest? Please share your advice with me!

Day 12 of Writing 101: 150 – No more, no less.

Motherhood

She sat in the bus, solemn. Her face was damp, coated with a layer of oil and dust. Her throat was dry.

She ran from her defeat. As fast as the bus could take her. The tears swelled in her eyes, chocking her voice at the base of her throat.

Then, the baby peeked from the mother’s lap, on the seat in front of her. He smiled easily, his cheeks dimpling in the process. The black wisps of hair were ruffled. He sucked on his minuscule thumb, saliva glossing his lips.

Oh well, she thought. I’ll just adopt – motherhood will still feel the same.

A smile crept on her lips, for the first time in the day. It felt liberating to her muscles. She raised her hand and waved it in front of the baby. He split in giggles and waved her back.

Yes, I can still be a mother.

W.C: 150

Copyright © 2015 Arpita Pramanick

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P.S: I was away for most of the day yesterday, hence the delay in posting this. Anyway, I am usually long in my rants, but have been trying my at hand at shorter works since W101 started. Hope you enjoyed this one!