Fiction

As I watched her in the dimly-lit room, I felt awe mixed with envy rise in my heart. While I spend my quotidian life as a mediocre nondescript one in the midst of people I don’t care about, doing things that I don’t find remotely soul-stirring, here was a woman in front of me who did the best things in the world, every weekend and not for a living! I was in a club- or in a room that had a faint ambience or appearance of a club-and a few yards away from me, there stood a woman singing. She had a mellifluous voice, entrancing. She was presently crooning ‘Golden Brown’; nay, she did not have the British accent but still she sang well and played the guitar with as much feeling as flair. Dressed in a flowing maroon skirt and a black blouse with a brown bandana tied around her sleek, short hair, she looked how I would want to look myself. She smiled faintly to herself as she, in her sonorous voice, began to sing ‘O Pardesi’ from the movie Dev D. I ruefully recalled how I have to smile everyday too, at people I do not wish even scowl at. Perfunctory smiles, fake laughter, polite small talks-these have become such a major part of life when I wanted to be like the guitar-strumming, bandana-wearing stranger in front me who could smile to herself! She now began to play ‘Sweet Dream’ as she gazed at I believe no one in particular, dreamily. Could it be possible that she has been bewitched by her own voice? Nay, it was the phantasm-like ambience that had moved her as it enchanted me. She was singing the penultimate line ‘For announcing the end of my sweet-dream…’and swaying rhythmically when suddenly a loud, screeching, harsh noise intruded us.
It was the calling bell! Shucks! I quickly took off the goggles and the bandana. I put aside the guitar and hastily took off the ridiculously long skirt to put on the first pair of pajamas I could lay my hands on in the cupboard and ran to open the door. Gosh! Who could come at 9 on a Sunday evening? I opened the door to find a uniformed guard standing. “There will be no water supply tomorrow after 12 noon. The water tanks will be cleaned”, he said tersely and rang the bell of the neighbouring flat while I said a vague ‘thank you for informing’ and shut the door. I went back to my room;the stuff-sun glasses, the bandana, the skirt-that I had hurriedly abandoned, were scattered on the bed and the guitar was on the stool next to the mirror. I looked at them once and decided to cook for tomorrow, tonight itself as there would be no water to boil vegetables in the next day, or to wash dishes!