It was never about money !!

It was still dark outside. The dawn was yet to begin its short lived journey when she woke up from her sleep. No, it wasn’t the chirping birds nor the wailing children, which made her forgo her slumber. She had planned this for a long time now, but never found the courage to execute it. The anger deep within continued to build up over the 7 long years and it was time, it spilled out. The incidents of last night further fuelled her determination and now she was all up for it.
In a haste she moved across to her 1 year old daughter’s room and clung her to her shoulders, who was still fast asleep. She planted a fond kiss on her daughter’s head as she saw herself in the dressing mirror. She never left this mirror unless she glanced herself in it for a second time, but now the time was running fast. She did not even bother about her unkempt look and the smudged kohl, which certainly made her look awful. Without wasting a second, she tip toed out of the house, and opened the car's rear door. She laid her still asleep daughter on the seat, hopped onto the driver’s seat and ignited the engine. As she moved her car in the 1st gear and was barely 10 meters away from the house, she stopped.
Something was not done, she realized. The trauma she had tryst with for the last long 7 years, she never retaliated to it. She took a long breath, and rolled down the car windows to catch some fresh air. She knew she had to finish off the unfinished business. Without it, she would always repent for the lifetime and would be in spot, when her daughter asked for the reason when she grows old. She opened the door, and ran towards her house.
Without making a noise, she stepped in her husband’s room . He was still asleep and snoring loudly. She knew what she had to do as she moved towards her husband’s wardrobe. She slowly pulled out her husband’s service revolver from his uniform’s holster. She closed the wardrobe with a big thud, with clear intentions to wake him up. She could not kill him without letting him know what it was all about. He woke and stood up in a state of shock from his hangover. “Wh..whaatt the hell are you upto”, he shouted and the smell of whisky spread in the air. She stood mum with the gun pointed at her husband. The anger in her eyes was very much evident and this made him froze in time and space. Realizing the eminent threat, he folded his hands in a gesture to plead for forgiveness. “I was drunk the last night, I will never hit you again”, he said. It was not about the last night, it about the numerous nights, and it was not the physical bruises she bore, she bore the brunt of staying and sleeping with the man, she hated the most for the last 7 years.
“You take all the money you want, you take this house”, he mumbled and cried in unison. The time was up and the day light was about to break. “It was never about the money”, she said for the last time to her husband, as she pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced though the body and hit the wall at the opposite end. The gun-shot did wake the birds who started to chirp all of a sudden. She felt vindicated and exhausted at the sametime. She cleared off her fingerprints from the gun and kept it back in place. She moved out of the house. It was amazing that a city never rises from its sleep, no matter someone is being beaten or killed in their neighbour.
She put a hard foot at the accelerator peddle and sped off the place. As the daylight broke, the first rays of sun fell on her face and she adjusted the rear view mirror to look herself in it. She looked way better and had smile on her face. While still looking in mirror, a small tear rolled out her eyes.

Ek short lived love story - I

A blip on my phone woke me up from my sleep. I sneek-peeked in my smart device from one eye. It was a facebook notification. I was momentarily excited , though wary of the fact that somebody could have dared to send me a Candy crush or Farmville request at this hour. I fumbled around to find my glasses and swiped on the screen to see the notification bar.

“X,X has accepted your friendship request, Write on X’s timeline”. OK, it was a girl who had accepted my friendship request, so that meant I would have sent her the request at some point of time. I tried hard to recollect if I knew her by name and “now visible” profile/cover pictures. No, there was no chance I could have known her. We had no mutual friends either. She did not even belong to my school/college and beyond everything, I did not know someone as pretty and photogenic, as she appeared to be in her profile pictures.

I pressed hard to recall when was the last time, I went on the spree of sending friendship request to any and every random girl I came across on facebook. It was a social thing, trying to connect to as many people as possible, the core idea how the social network came into existence (pun intended !). I nudged my friend to wake him up from his sleep, and asked him if he know anything about the damsel in question. My friend did not disappoint me. His impeccable memory impressed me to an extent that I gave him a hug. It was more than month back, when we were trying to look for my friend’s college crush, that we stumbled across her profile. High on couple of vodka shots, my ego went for a toss, and I sent her the friendship request. One more shot later, I sent it to almost every girl we found thereafter.

“You lucky dog”, my friend said, as we were still glued to her SLR shot photos which had a water mark reading “X,Y’s photography”. “Its bloody photo-shopped”, I re-iterated trying to make a point. “I believe in what I see and I trust God!”, my friend replied, still staring at the pictures and was certainly more fascinated than me. I gave a puzzled look to him and asked him to stop leching at the lady who chose me over probably many others and privileged me by accepting my request. I hopped on to my profile picture and thought “Do I really look like someone who could befriend such a hot chick ?”. I was assertive and perplexed at the same time.

I press-locked my touch phone trying to catch some sleep, which I had completely lost by this time. It really didn’t make sense. Why would a lady of this “genre” even look at my profile, something was asmiss, or worse the profile could be a fake one. Perturbed I got up, switched on my laptop to look at the larger picture, and de-mystify the issue.

The Sherlock Holmes within me came out in full force and we figured the link in a matter of 10 minutes. She happened to be my colleague’s friend’s friend’s friend. “Wow, you drilled down so many levels to find her and send her a friendship request. You would have been drunk like a pig, but hard work pays off you see”, my friend quoted trying to be profound and sarcastic at the same time. I gave him a smirk, pulled over my blanket and crashed off to sleep with a smile on my face.

(To be continued...)

Ek short lived love story - II

I overslept after this incident and woke up alarmingly late for my office the next day. A late start to a day means, you get delayed for everything which happens that day. The mid-day crisis made me forgot the incident till late in the afternoon. Aanother facebook notification stole my attention. “Do I know you?”, said a message from the lady I befriended officially few hours back. “Wow, this is what education and evolution does to you”, I thought. “You accept a friendship request from a random stranger and ask if he knows you, offcourse not”, I mumbled . However, I replied her the opposite. “ Yes I think I do know you. You pose a striking resemblance to someone I met in Rashi’s marriage”, Rashi being one of the newly married friend of hers, which I checked out on her facebook page the other night.

“Oh, did we. Wow, I thought the same. I have a poor memory. How do you know her ?” she probed further. “Shit!”, I thought and quickly opened facebook on my browser to figure out more about Rashi. I hurried up when she tried to do a post mortal analysis by asking “You there ?”.

“I used to work with Tejas(her friend’s fiancée) when he was working with TCS in Bangalore”. This was the best lie I could come up with on such a short notice . “Niceeee!!”, she said. “And now you have moved to Hyderabad and working for XYZ” she continued further. She was smart and certainly looked to have done her homework. I could only muster a “yeah, I like Hyderabad and mostly the people who live here ”. The later part of my last reply was derived from the fact that she was born and brought up in Hyderabad (again the information was courtesy “About me” on facebook). My work took a back seat and my deliverable took a toll as I continued this for the next 2 hours. It was probably the only day I left my desk in evening with smiling face and content heart. “I had a really nice day at office”, I announced as I stepped in my room. My room mates looked amused and shell-shocked. One of them went on to the extent to ask “Did you go to a pub? Are you drunk?”. I ignored him completely.

Yes, love was certainly in the air. The technology for me took a giant leap, and I evolved from facebook to watsapp and continued with hours on cellphone. For the 1st time in 5 years of post paid experience, I took another look at my mobile bill, which had risen exponentially from the previous month’s. Getting a girlfriend is like buying a first car, you are excited at the mere pretext of getting one, then happy for the fact that you are one of the privileged few who owns one, but repent later owing to increased inflation, rising expenses and less savings. And added to it, its monthly servicing (read shopping) and maintenance becomes a vicious cycle in your life. Like a teenage girl facing puberty issues, I encountered a plethora of emotions, all at the sametime. The sense of mystery always prevailed, and I was ever unsure of what was to come next, obviously from my lady. 3 weeks into our relationship, I started to see a different phase of her. Actually I wasn’t sure, if it was her or me changing and evolving. I strongly doubted myself going by my past rendezvous with women.

My relationship with XYZ was like laws of thermodynamics, though it was indispensable, but it grew complex with every passing day. For me it was a disarrayed deviation of the love life from how its showcased in books and movies. “Where are we heading to”, “I am not sure if this will go on long” questions like this, became FAQs of my life. However, my innate habit of encountering any question posed to me with extreme ambiguity, often intended to confuse the other person always saved my day. If at all I had to answer her question, I never knew from Day 1 where I was heading to. I never had anything in my mind except for the fact that I felt happier when she was around, which went missing 2 weeks into our relationship. However, 4 weeks and 3 days when it all started, and when I was still not sure of why it all started, she decided to call it quits. She changed her number, refused meeting me and also unfriended me on facebook. I was severely distraught with a reduction in count of my friendlist.

There’s something strange with internet, though it doesn’t give you back what you have lost, but always brings up an alternative. After, trying to reach her again, I had a sudden urge of using my eloquence in speech, to abuse her via messages on facebook, and that was when I saw a friend liking her friend’s latest selfie. “Whoooa, she’s hot!!”, I exclaimed. A minute later, I had gone through the entire photo album and realized perhaps, she is the one I have been looking/waiting for. I paused and thought for a second if it was too early to get over someone and hitch with that someone’s friend. The next moment I sent the friendship request to new lady and kept refreshing my page anticipating an acknowledgement of acceptance. 6 hours after I broke up, I was completely over my “short loved love story”.