9. Pretension
A butterfly must have flapped its wings in Sahara or a thousand angels messed with destiny to make me crash into you.
And then our hearts began a civil war for the life we could have had.
*****
"It's in the way he looks at us - like he
is the only superior species standing in an ocean filled with amoebae and plankton." Khushi's fingers violently dance in the bowl of batter. Payal swallows
a sigh escaping her lungs and motions Khushi to continue.
"He is one of those people on who you start writing a love ballad twelve seconds after laying your eyes on him and half way through the ridiculously long ballad, you find out he is a jerk who deserves nothing but a tragic violent ass-kicking end." Jalebi batter sloshes dangerously near the rim of the mixing bowl.
"Arnav annoyed you?" Payal ventures a
guess. It isn't a guess but an easy deduction judging Khushi's mood. Khushi's
fairly easygoing attitude ruptures and gets splintered the moment she shares a
conversation with Arnav.
"He called me a badly drawn painting with
excessive colors and minimalistic personality." Khushi's voice show traces of
hurt and...betrayal.
Arnav's words are still ringing in her
ears. You are a wall on which colors
splash and words decimate one another, a cage of longing breaths and wishful
thinking.'
"I know you are working at his house as a
glorified teacher because of the financial crisis we are going through. But if you
cannot stand your employer's presence, you should probably just quit." Payal's
perspective has been simple all her life. While she believes in staying away
from an open wound like Arnav, Khushi is drawn to him like a despondent
Shakespearean heroine.
Khushi stills. "I...can't..." It's a choked
whisper, blindly groping at tender words once spoken in angry whispers and
heaving breaths.
Payal nods. She pretends to understand this...this
thing that's going on between her sister and Arnav. She pretends to ignore the crossroad
where the two stand and hover over the line that divides. She waits patiently
for the moment when the lines will get erased and there will be nothing more to
trample upon.
"You have put faith in something unknown and what you have is..." Payal blurts but cannot find words to continue.
"...morphine like agonizing sweet ache," Khushi finishes.
Payal already knows this because she has been eavesdropping on their hearts but pretends to be deaf.
Edited by greenteaholic - 10 years ago