ArHi Drabble Dabbles- Part 17 |Lesson Learnt| p74, 6/1/15 - Page 29

Anytime

Cinnamon

Chocolate and cinnamon - very nice! I would throw in a little pinch of cayenne and you will be all warmed up. Just what I need on this cold snowy day. I love the setting in the kitchen. Sounds like a cozy couple experimenting with food. What better aphrodisiac than chocolate? Love it.

Drabble 1: So Cute😳

Now I need one of that!!

Ah ! You made me in want of a hot chocolate also ... And this time I'll add a cinnamon too... ;)
It was such a feel good drabble , suiting the climate and warming up our hearts also...
Thanks !
<3

aweee... such a cute onee...

Having just read through all of your drabbles I can confidently say that with a few simple words you create spellbinding beauty. Honestly, every piece leaves a beautiful heart warming impact, so simple yet so perfect. You capture mundane moments and make them extraordinary, and that my friend creates perfection, truly

Now I am debating ... 'should I go make myself a mug of hot chocco?'
...
this was an abs. warm, fuzzy and chocolaty drabble ! Truly LOVED it as always.
I could totally imagine Arnie's expressions why Khush was adding cinnamon, lol. I adoringly love how your drabbles are so imaginative and through the detail you put in, one can imagine it all.
...
btw, a random thought- have you tried cinnamon in your hot chocolate? How is it ? Is it as good as it seemed in the drabble, hehe? No really, I want to try it now. Not a fan of cinnamon of like Arnav here, but I would like to taste it.
So lemme know :)

***MAJOR EDIT*** Thank you so much Arjuhisis for pointing it out! I posted the wrong draft- the first one I was working with based on the word "moron", long before palindromes came in and I was inspired. I apparently was not saving as I edited and closed the file, lost the corrected version...so I had to rewrite it again. See what I mean by bad day? Just shoot me dead now, please.

Long and drabbling and utterly stupid- but hey, this thread was created to experiment and play, and that's exactly what I'm going to do to distract myself after a kind of bad day. On with the absurdity!

There's a tiny little something you Game of Thrones fans will get in there- just a small reference because I happen to have the third book of the series staring me in the face and asking why I'm not reading it *sigh*

ArHi Drabbles |Preoccupations|

At first, he would call her "sweetheart" and "love" and "darling" just to see her reaction.

Which, in his opinion, were far more entertaining than Romeo and Juliet's whirlwind romance, shot-gun wedding, and overdramatically ironic double-suicide.

There was nothing more fulfilling than watching the angry red suffuse and blend into the smooth cream of her skin; her grip on her pencil or her book's spine or thin air tightening until the knuckles stood out white and he could even trace with his eyes the faint blue lines of veins visible beneath the translucence of her wrist. She would go rigid in her seat, her eyes flashing dangerously behind a pair of rim-less glasses, and her jaw would tauten with the effort of keeping back any and all rejoinders because they were in class, and she was a good girl, who never spoke out of turn, never did anything to get herself into trouble with the teachers, was never capable of making mistakes or losing her cool or doing anything wrong.

And then came the day that she finally snapped and retorted, and he, for a split second, thought he had finally succeeded in his lifelong mission to break down the unshakeable Khushi Kumari Gupta.

He called her "wifey".

"That's it!" she hissed, eyes spitting fire in his direction as she gained her feet, whirled around, and slammed her hands palms down on his desk with surprising speed and elegance, "One more nickname out of you and I swear I will do something drastic!"

It took Arnav but a moment and a half to recover from the surprise of Khushi actually retaliating (which might never have come to pass had their Literature teacher been on time for class), but surprise did not last long- it was replaced by triumph.

With a slow, mischievous grin winding its way up one corner of his mouth, he drawled in faux coaxes, "But what's wrong with nicknames, honey? In fact, you ought to be using nicknames to show your affection toward me too. In fact, I insist that you do. How about "jaan"? Or "muffin"? Or "moon of my life"?"

Khushi by now appeared to have recovered the control that had blown up like a burnt-out firecracker, and where before she had given off the reckless, tempestuous heat of fire, she was standing ramrod still now, her arms tightly crossed, exuding shiver-inducing iciness merely from the way she coolly regarded him, through her glasses and down her nose, from her higher vantage point.

"Actually," she told him, and her voice was utterly devoid of emotion once more, blank and without any evidence of the reaction he had managed to elicit from her just moments ago, "I was thinking along the lines of palindromes- more rhythmic, you know."

And with that she had spun back round, pulled her seat back and folded herself into it with such perfect sangfroid she appeared never to have left it, her outburst almost fading into a mid-afternoon illusion as their professor trotted into the classroom murmuring apologies, and leaving Arnav blinking at the back of her head with the vague conviction that she had just insulted him, even though he hadn't the foggiest idea what she had just said.

***

For someone who forgot what was preached in one lesson within moments of leaving the classroom, the considerably complex word, packed together with multiple syllables and prefixes and suffixes he had never encountered in his life before, the word "palindrome" stuck to the forefront of his head like labels on a suitcase.

And it bothered him.

Bothered him greatly.

And not because he had no clue what the hell a "palindrome" was- he had no shame in admitting that he'd only picked Literature for his A levels because he had had been under the mistaken impression that it would an easy pass.

But because she had somehow linked him to these "palindromes", and because he did not understand what they meant, he also did not understand what she was connecting him to, in her mind.

It revealed to him that he did not exactly know what she thought of him, and this aggravated him as insistently as he tried to tell himself that he didn't care.

However, the mystery word was persistent- it danced into his head whenever the traffic of his thoughts lapsed for even a moment, and a peculiar anxiety had begun to sink into the pit of his stomach.

So he turned for assistance to the one who knows all, just to put his mind at rest, just to know exactly what she was calling him and be done with it.

Google.

Who in turn pointed him to Merriam-Webster, who primly said as follows:

palindrome

noun \pa-ln-drm\

: a word, phrase, or number that reads the same backward or forward

He read, frowned, read again, scrolled up and down the page, frowned some more, and closed the tab even more frustrated and confused than before.

***

"A palindrome?" his sister chewed on her toast, took a sip of tea, and daintily wiped at her mouth as she glanced at her watch- all, Arnav felt impelled to mention, taking an unnecessarily long amount of time, "Yes, what about them?"

"I know what they are," Arnav repeated yet again. His sister was an English teacher- she, of all people, might be able to shed some light on this business and put him out of his misery. The word had become his personal ghost now. It infected his thoughts and cast a shadow over him as he ran through his mind all the examples he'd come across in the vast expanse of the Internet- "civic", "level", "radar" and even "Malayalam", and yet none which seemed to fit the context of the bizarre, and undoubtedly nerdy comeback she had burdened him with and then gone on her merry way.

It was alright to call people names, but he ought to at least understand what he was being called!

"And?"

"And..." Arnav began forcefully, but then lost the thread of the conversation. He was not sure how to ask what he wanted to ask- or even if he knew what he wanted to ask in the first place, "Well, are there any palindromes for people?"

Anjali appeared puzzled by the question; she abandoned her tea cup in favour of staring at him quizzically, "What do you mean?"

I don't know, Arnav groused internally, That's why I'm asking you!

Aloud, he said, "Well, any words for...titles or labels or...or...nicknames for people..."

And his older sister, as though struck by inspiration, managed to blurt out one word under the sudden force of her enlightenment.

"Dad!"

Arnav groaned.

***

She couldn't have meant "Dad", right?

"Dad" is not a nickname.

Or even an insult.

Is it?

Or did she say that because her dad calls her the same stuff I do?

But I called her "wifey" too...

Somehow I can't imagine her dad saying things like that either...

Or does she think I'm too old?!

I'm only nine months older than her for Christ's sake!

What kind of pathetic comeback is that, anyway?

Wait.

Did she even call me "Dad" in the first place?

Dammit!

***

Arnav discovered, two full weeks later, that she had not, in fact, called him her dad.

And he found out through her own lips.

"Well?" he sat there, waiting, impatient...anxious.

His ears were burning, his face was burning, he was probably sweating bullets, but this had reached a point where he did not even care.

He needed to know just what she was calling him inside her head, and he needed to know it before the mystery of it drove him mad. To hell with the humiliation- at least he would still be sane.

Maybe heartbroken...but sane.

Khushi, turned about in her seat to look at him, as always sitting directly behind her, wore a look that was sewn together with confusion, surprise, and something a little dazed.

Seeing that he was not about to budge from this issue anytime soon, she bit her lip, blinked a few times, glanced down and then she muttered, sheepishly, blushing red- but not the furious red he was used to, a nicer red, something a bit lighter and a lot more charming- "Kook."

Pause.

"What?"

Tables had turned- she was embarrassed now, and he confused. He kept on staring in befuddlement at her, while she fidgeted in her awkward position, half twisted round in her seat and not meeting his eye, obviously fighting the urge to just turn away again.

"Kook," she repeated herself, and her words were jerky and shy and definitely embarrassed, and Arnav was suddenly entranced by a side of Khushi he had never seen before, "As in...um...insane person."

A few more moments of silence followed, and Khushi, her motions with the sleeve of her blouse growing more frenzied, added as though in self-defence, "It was in The Flintstones!"

It was then that Arnav established a few facts.

For one, it was kind of smart of her to come with that on the spot- on even spot a palindrome in a cartoon he had watched through his whole childhood and then use it to baffle him for two whole weeks. Nerdy, but smart. He had to give her credit for the fact that she'd come up with an insult he had not been able to find through his entire Internet-hunt.

For another, when flustered and deprived of her usual armour of anger, Khushi was quite...cute. It was one explanation for the way his heart was doing some highly improbable gymnastics in his chest.

And lastly, he concluded, as class commenced and he watched the back of Khushi's head, and occupied himself with differentiating the colours he could see there and how soft it looked and wondering how it would feel to the touch and how nicely it contrasted with her milk-white skin, that he could deal with being called a kook.

At least she hadn't called him dad.

Weird, right? I did warn you...

Anyway, please leave your thoughts! Thank you so much for your constant support and love! :)