Fashionably Yours. Swati Sharma

2

      On Sunday I woke up with a throbbing headache despite sleeping the entire day and night after Anu stormed out. My mind was still reeling from our conversation. Was she right? About the fact that in twenty-five years I had never had a relationship. But was it actually my fault? Suddenly my life started to feel like one big black hole. Hopping out of the bed, I made my way towards the kitchenette. This flat was more littered than ever. Maybe I should give it a thorough cleaning because I didn’t have anything better to do today.

      Oh fuck! Is it actually mine? I wondered while examining whatever was left of the red-ish looking pants which might have served as breakfast, lunch or dinner to a bunch of rats at some point of time. I had absolutely no memory of possessing any kind of red-ish pants. Chucking it away in a black garbage bag, I made my way through the rest of my closet while praying in my heart that nothing too creepy jumped out of it.

      After spending half of the day cleaning the closet, I realized that I didn’t have a single item of clean clothing hanging in there. How could I let things get so out of hand? I questioned myself in vain. Gathering all the dirty laundry from the bedroom floor, kitchen top and from under the sofa, I headed towards the bathroom and dumped all of it in the washing machine and emptied at least half a packet of washing powder in it. It needed a good wash. Once done with the laundry, I hoisted all the empty take away boxes from the floor and shoved them into the garbage bag. The next two hours were spent in changing the bed linen, stacking my magazines in one neat pile next to the sofa, arranging my movie DVDs, dusting the furniture, cleaning the kitchen top, washing the dishes, ridding my refrigerator of the weight of thousands of post-it notes, mopping the floor, cleaning the toilet, washing the tiles, scrubbing the washbasin and finally cleaning the shower area. By the time I was done with all the chores, my flat was looking like a home rather than the house of a garbage hoarder. Dragging three fully loaded black bin bags out of my apartment into the corridor for the garbage man to collect in the morning, I was dreaming about a very very long bath and then eating take away in front of the TV when the lift pinged opened in the corridor and in her super cute mini dress with pointy straight hair, Anu emerged from it. Fabulous, now I felt like shit!

      “What are you doing here?” I didn’t mean to sound so rude and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them.

      “Have you ran a marathon or got someone in your bed? Why are you so sweaty?” she eyed me suspiciously.

      “Shut up. I was just cleaning the flat,” I retorted.

      “Cleaning? Oh fuck. Did I hurt you that bad?” she looked guilty.

      “Yes. You called my movie DVDs crap. What do you expect?” I barked haughtily.

      “DVDs? That’s it? Out of the entire conversation, all you heard about was DVDs?” Blatant shock was evident on her face.

      “I didn’t mean to hurt you and I absolutely didn’t plan to say any of it, it just somehow came out,” she explained while glancing around my flat. Her eyes dilated. Yes, it looked that good.

      “I know,” I said.

      “You did all this on your own?” she was in a trance.

      “Yes. I did.”

      “Come on, Maya. Don’t talk to me in monosyllables now.”

      “Anu, what you want me to say? Yesterday you made it clear that you think I am some unrealistic, irrational, dysfunctional woman and now you expect me to hug and kiss you? I mean I am not slapping you, isn’t that enough?” I stated the truth.

      Her face hung open very unattractively. That was so un-Anu like.

      “I didn’t at all say that you were some unrealistic, irrational and dysfunctional woman. All I said that you need to stop living in a dream. You can’t wait for Mr. Right to come along for your entire life. What if he doesn’t? What if you remain single, forever?” she said in the hushed tone.

       Oh my, that did sound logical. What if she was right? Crap.

      “I don’t want to talk about it at all,” I said and it was true. Talking about it was scaring the shit out of me.

      “OK,” she nodded in agreement. “Let’s forget about what I said yesterday, I am so very sorry for that and I hope you know it,” she threw her hands around my shoulders and gave me a tight hug. I knew she was sorry. “Anyways, to thank you for showing that son of bitch his place, I want to take you out shopping,” she beamed.

      ***

      “Ta-da!” She threw her arms in the air. Her face was the picture of pride.

      “What are we doing here?” I asked while soaking in the sight of beautifully arranged clothes and shoes in Zara. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Well, I felt like it every time I entered a showroom full of glittering jewelery, beautiful bags, high towering magical shoes and awe-inspiring clothes. Whenever I found myself in middle of all these sparkly goodies, I felt like as if they were looking at me with innocent eyes and are absolutely dying to have a conversation with me. Don’t get me wrong, but I could talk to clothes for hours and whenever I felt like crying I preferred to shed tears clutching a shoe to my chest rather than sobbing on Anu’s shoulder. Though there was nothing wrong with her shoulder, it certainly wasn’t as sparkly and shiny as a pair of shoes and that faint aroma of leather could calm me more than her assuring arm. Though I was grateful of having a friend like her, I was absolutely thrilled to have whatever significantly-small-but-still-beautiful collection of shoes and clothes I owned. Considering my salary I was lucky that I could at least afford high street brands, which was certainly better than collecting bohemian shoes and clothes from the flea market.

      “Shopping!” she clapped her hands and started jumping like a very excited puppy.

      “Are you bloody kidding me?” I threw my head back in the air and shirked.

      “Why would you think I am kidding?” she eyed me suspiciously as if I was going to jump on her from my spot and bite her ear off.

      “Well just to refresh your memory, last time when we went shopping, we learned the heart-ripping reality about me, I am fat now. Hence no clothes are going to fit me here.” I fought the urge to cry.

      “You are not fat. God, are you still stuck there? Why don’t you buy just a bigger size and get over it?” she asked nonchalantly. There, that word was once again there, bigger. I didn’t know if I could ever forgive her for using that word for the third time in last two days.

      “Anu, I don’t want to have this conversation once again,” I said firmly.

      “OK,” she got the hint. “Then why don’t you just buy a new bag or shoes? I am sure you are still the same size in those departments,” she winked playfully.

      Though I was tempted to buy a new bag, which God knows I did need more than anything else, letting Anu pay for it didn’t sound right and I for sure couldn’t afford it in my current situation unless I put the bill on my emergency credit card which was safely tucked away under my matress for strictly emergency situations and this, today, didn’t feel like an emergency situation.

      “You know what? I don’t want to do any shopping. Let’s go home,” I said in a subdued tone.

      “What’s up with you?” she asked with genuine concern.

      “I just don’t feel like shopping. Can we go somewhere else?”

      Anu looked at me with disbelief but agreed to put off shopping without much ado.

      ***

      “What do you want to have? I am starving!” Anu patted her barely-there stomach while reading through the menu in Treats café and bakery in Bandra.

      “Ummmm … I’ll have the skinny salad and the vegetable loaf,” I beamed without even looking at the menu.

      I remembered their menu, everything from Banoffee Pie to Rainbow Jar, Red Velvet Tart