Wednesday, January 20, 2010

14 A, 14 B

India wasnt quite turning out the way she thought it would. It had been an hour since she'd been sitting inside the aircraft that stood stranded on the Delhi runway because of the thick fog that veiled the line of sight. Very little was visible outside the window except for the colourful tails of other aircrafts that stood stranded as well.She sat between this girl in a red pullover who didnt seem too keen on striking a conversation and another suited business man type man who was a bit too keen.The breakfast served in-flight was pretty good. To be honest, she didnt expect an Indian airline to serve such good food.Her eyes fell on this blue coloured book the red pullover girl was reading- The Bell Jar. "Ah, the morbid sort", she thought. And it was then that her grey eyes caught the two bangles that adorned the red pullover girl's wrists-circles of brown with little patterns of white on them. Were they made of bamboo or wood? Whatever they were, they were unlike any other bangle she'd seen before but they stood out like sore thumbs-jarring against the red pullover."People with negative fashion sense shouldn't own such pretty things", she thought, "if only she turned super generous suddenly..."

-------------------

Her first trip to Chennai was being delayed because of the thick blanket of fog over Delhi. Bored,she decided to read this book from her course which she had abandoned after two pages the last time she tried reading it. "Too morbid",she had thought.She didnt really feel like chatting up with this firang who sat next to her."Portuguese", she said to herself after stealing a glance at her magenta passport.The shady North Indian businessman type person on the firang's right was giving her enough company-unsolicited though.Breakfast was over when she saw the blank green (or were they grey?) eyes staring at the bangles on her wrists. Self-conciousness spread through every inch of her body as she tried hiding the embarrassment behind this book she was reading.She knew they didnt match with her outfit in any way whatsoever and wished that the green eyes would only stop looking. Infact, she was even ready to give them off to her, she could keep them as her Indian souvenirs.If only she could tell her that the sari ate up all the space in her suitcase and she had no option but to wear these bangles,that matched with the sari, which refused to fit into the baggage.

10 comments:

Neel said...

awesome...yet another lovely piece. Interestingly written. Very spontaneous....very you!

Vagabond said...

Really unexpected. Two sides of a coin. 14A, 14B. :)
Take more flights, write more stories.

Madhura said...

:)

storyteller said...

tui khub bhalo likhish.

Karthik Purushothaman said...

Not just a passer-by, you'd know in due course, I guess. You might not believe me, but I happened to conceive something extraordinarily similar to this. Or no, I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd make you believe it.

See you soon. :)

Annie said...

i really like this bdc...

sujaan said...

wow this was so good!!! and what a perfect title...
but i so wanna know what happened afterwards...

The Mad Girl said...

wow!I really like the fact je golper sheshe ekta common meeting point ashena.duto line dudike chole jachhe.very nice.

Anonymous said...

Quite an incident...a neat little end in itself.

Casuarina said...

Briilant...both viewpts : the self and the other.