She pulls out the big guns. Madhubala Rishabh Kundra is ready to battle. All she needed was a pink sports bra and the ruffled tango skirt to match. The sparkling cider fizzing on the kitchen counter, two neatly plated over easy eggs with toasted sour dough await her senses. I am out to please her taste buds as much as she is out to test his patience.
The outfit gives it away. A loosely worn cardigan covers the essentials but I could see hints of the ringlet of her waist. She gallops from side to side, picking and dropping things, ignorant of my constant gaze.
There is no point looking my way. Her eyes would only meet a lusting pair looking back. She probably couldn't have any of it, not today. Today is too important to worry about my all engulfing deception. She calls up her long time dance partner Eliza, for a flamingo session. The man was a bisexual who had had his fair share of hots for Madhu. After the bride, he was the only one who cried river when I proposed. They weren't tears of happiness. Oh no, they were cries of a lover slipping away. Dance was his only hope for intimacy but after that expressive hip shaker I happened to see in the early days, he saw less and less of Madhu. One day, she disappeared. A girl who was dreaming of opening academies nationwide, sold her only passion and left for a man.
"He is just a man", Eliza told her.
"He is mine", she proudly replied. The ironic part is, her pride had a treacherous fall. One she is still trying to recover from.
I saw a familiar number flash on the screen but, keep quiet. I know it is no longer my place to question Madhu. Even so, some words stuck in my throat are pressing to come out.
"Did...you take your medicine?"
I extend one hand with half a dozen folic acid supplements in assorted colors.
She eyes the counter top until I give up and place the pills there.
I am so impure, she refuses to touch me.
She does not ask for the source of the pills, a slight indication that she trusts me with her life if not anything else.
I smile at the way she drinks her water. I notice some of the droplets make their way down her neck and on to the collarbone.
Eliza knocks on the kitchen door, dressed in a zipper upper tracksuit, in the most ugliest purple a man can wear.
"Madhubala, been a long time". He kisses her hand and she goes red as a button.
"Eliza, charmed". She gives me an insignificant glance. "I am going out"
She posts an elaborate hourly schedule on the fridge wall before walking out, arm in arm, with Eliza.
Edited by iiDona - 12 years ago