One Cuppa Chai

°8°

"How was your business trip?" I plopped into the seat beside him.

"Yes, it was all okay. You tell me, how is school?"

"Board exams, no? Teachers are drilling us!"  I wiped an imaginary bead of sweat from my forehead.

He patted my head. "Don't stress too much, okay?"

I nodded eagerly because this advice was in my favour.

I ate four fluffy idlis with deliberate slowness, dipping it in creamy groundnut chutney.

My father spent time in my room after breakfast, doing some work on the computer while I sat behind him on my bed with four pillows around me and a Social Science book in my hand.

With a mission to allow a wisp of something in that book to be absorbed into my brain while I tried to focus on the sentences, drilling my eyes into the book.

My concentration.
Something I haven't been able to brag much about nowadays.Except for when I watch a movie or engross myself in some literary fiction.  Gone were the days when my disciplinarian mother made me get straight A's until middle school.

I lay over my stomach and dangled my legs in the air.

My father was now playing Solitaire.

After three hours of mugging, I was allotted a non-indulgent break for 20 minutes inside the room to refresh everything I studied and 'solve some sudokus to stimulate my brain' as quoted by my father.

As it always happened, right when I was cosying up with my history book, piqued by the Renaissance, the timely power cut hit us, right in the peak of the sultry midday. I turned over in bed and watched the blades of the fan rotating slower and slower by the minute. I  sat by the window to admire nature, hopefully, but I could only see a few buildings.

The boys in the hostel, unavoidably under my line of sight were brushing their teeth, late in the afternoon.
Well, in their defence, it was a holiday.

One well-built man looked oddly familiar.
Was that the guy who suggested an intimate night with my sister? Wasthatwasthat?

I could recognize that weirdo two planets away, of course, it was.

As if sensing my gaze, he whirled around with a foamy mouth.

My head disappeared from the window.

During lunch, my mother announced that Mrs Jha invited us for an informal dinner and I momentarily looked up at her face and then at my plate of rasam rice. This plan was in my favour because my studies would wind up by evening and well, there was someone special in their house. I disguised my smile with a cough and plucked a vada off the bowl.

The Jhas were in B block, belonging to the same residence while ours was at the back of the building, behind some tall coconut trees ganging up in our parking area.

I skipped two steps at a time and then realised that I left my nuclear family behind and waited at the top of the stairs. I didn't want to be the one who rang the doorbell with an awkward greeting.

I shielded myself behind my family and roved my eyes over the familiar living room.

Target not found.

Mr.Jha was watching me curiously.
With a manufactured smile, I asked him where my long lost friend, Saloni was.

"They went to a friend's party, I think."

They.

What do you know, Hansel and Gretel have something common after all. I have never seen them even talk to each other in whole sentences nowadays and they apparently partied together.