The fifth meeting

“Mam, are you in there? They are waiting for you outside.” “Yes, I am in here. Just give me a couple of more minutes. Be there in a second!” she replied loudly through the shut doors of restroom at a conference centre.

This was her fifth meeting for the day and she was in the restroom to splash some cold water on her face to ward off the day’s tiredness. She applied a little mineral powder for her face, some mauve blush for her cheek bones, a little kohl for her eyes, and a smoothening lip balm for the suppleness of her lips. She adjusted her dress, gave her hair a touch and she was ready.

She gave herself one last critical look in the full length mirror and walked out of that restroom. Her face glowed as if she had been waiting for this meeting since a forever. Not a trace of tiredness, not a hint of caffeine which sustained her on these long days.

After the day was finally done and she came home after midnight; she took off her shoes, gave her toes a little wriggle, tied up her hair, took a long hot water shower, changed in her pjs, made herself a peanut-butter sandwich and put on the playlist that she played every night. Across from her kitchen table, where she sat cross-legged and ate her peanut-butter sandwich like a kid, hung a tapestry which gave her energy every night and every morning to keep going on. They were the words she believed in all her life –

You deserve better things in life, when you are worth deserving them.

And so she lived every meeting and every day, as if they were worthy of her and she was worthy of them. And a little make-up now and then, always helped her. 

The wooden bench

She felt her fingers rubbing against the rough surface as she tried to hold the wooden bench tightly almost expecting the wooden bench to hold her fingers with the same tightness. In the distance she saw a couple walking hand in hand. The hands, she thought. The interlocked fingers, she saw.  Almost as a reflex, she saw her fingers tightening against the wooden bench again. 

It was this urge to be able to hold “that” someone’s hand, which enabled her to write to “that” someone her first letter. It did not have a name. It did not have a signature. It was not written elegantly or on some nice stationary. It did not have a send-to address. It did not even have a return-to address. It only had her fragrance as she breathed on it while writing it. It only had her touch as her hand brushed against the paper. It only had her imprint as she kissed it sealed. 

It simply read:

To my dearest,

I don’t know your name yet and I don’t know when will we meet. But I do know that somewhere even you are tightening your fingers on a wooden bench, in a hope that we hold each other’s hands soon. 

I miss you more than you may know,

I love you.

An affair in the air

She entered the economy class area of the airplane with a pink bag-pack around her shoulders and a red trolley-bag in her hands. She looked at the air-steward with a deliberate shyness in her eyes and a sophisticatedly overwhelmed look on her face. She looked around the airplane to locate her seat and resting her quivering eyes when she spotted her seat along the 3^rd row. Her eyes then darted towards the over-head bins to place her red trolley-bag. She tried to lift it, but dropped the bag a little with a muffled “uh.”

The air-steward came right then to her, lifted her bag to the over-head bin, while saying to her, “Your bag is quite heavy mam.” She replied with half a small smile and a deliberate softness in her voice, “I know. I am so sorry that you had to lift that.” She then sat with ease on her newly “empty” first class seat as the air-steward made her comfortable with a glass of juice and candies to receive that half a small smile again.

As the plane took off, she finally sat back and smiled in her nonchalant manner to the evening sky through the window. She was a girl, and a feminist. And she knew that.