A SHORT STORY

SCENE 1 

I sit feverishly on the mount of pebbles, spine awkward to legitimize a position that has applause of the milieu; after all it’s an impulsion to get the right click for Instagram. I smile but the photographer urges me to smile more. Now, I smile more but dogged to be a bit more acrobatic; spreading the arms in the mystified glory of being a bird. Did I say ‘bird’? Well! I am just a human. The enthusiast implores, ‘look up at the heavens’. I do and then finally clicked. The patriarch post reveals;

The striking caption on Instagram, ‘I will love you forever’.

SCENE 2

The bliss is temporary. The coarse humor takes over and the fineness of perpetuity becomes shards of glass equipped to vision the ephemeral sentiment of a soloist. The Instagram story is over and the self-opinionated misery of human survival takes over. The Patriarch is quick to rout, “I was thinking our little patriarch needs more time of yours. Why don’t you talk to your boss of if work from home option is possible?”

The rivalry echoes as a dispirited rictus, “I will think about it”, I say. Ask me what I really feel doing right now is to bucket him inside the ice-cream van, click the aberration and post;

“All pleasures of life are like frozen ice-creams ready to melt in the desirability of one’s own conscious.”

I ask where ‘love’ finds place in the impudence. But, we still take a vow to love each other. I look up at the heavens and know it’s time for another click. 

SCENE 3

I am not alone this time. The patriarch gallops behind, in impropriety canvases his arms around my waist. My perfunctory smile is back. I don’t look up at the heavens; the pre-requisite has changed. We both just need to smile like royalties. At the backdrop, the crescent of the moon invokes a sonorous touch of our fingers entangled that otherwise are reluctant to reconcile to the dudgeon acrimoniously bitten by unattended emotions. 

The patriarch is always quick to post; looks like an immaculate pas de deux

“Dancing under the moonlight, I will love you forever.”

SCENE 4

Aren’t trees a finite expression of abundance? The leaves fluttering by the winking of the wind perpetually ink a story of acceptance. Their incendiary pursuits are an awakening to fight the wind; giving in would not be reluctance but an impassioned retrieval of its capability.

After the click, the hands of the patriarch leave my midriff, now indolently placed on his bloated abdomen.

“You need to lose some weight”, he suggests and looks at me piteously.

After the break-through, this should not have been the acceptable quid pro quo.

“Start going to the gym and hire a trainer too”, he urges rather sternly.

I am quiet not because I am surrendering but extrapolating if the prescriptive wind can ever change its direction. I feel like pushing him on the rubble of leaves; how it would strike a pose of a distorted palaver gimmicked by nature?

On Instagram, it would read,

‘I love my freedom. So what if the leaves beneath me falter in their innocence’

SCENE 5

This time we both are not alone; we have the little patriarch jumping to be clicked. It’s tough to make him sit on the lap. He recedes as if my parallel legs were a slimy slope. We pose in front of the lake with droplets purring; the fishes finding their own El Dorado—a wealth of self-esteem & structural identity. They don’t need an Instagram to vouch for their self-love or the camaraderie they share with their life-mates.

‘It is what it is’

I brighten my smile again and the little patriarch implausibly glees a sheath of teeth, indisputably original. The sound of a click, and in a fraction of second, the image is on Instagram;‘My Family, will love you forever’

SCENE 6

‘Love’ I suppose is a deformity arising out of guilt to not be able to fraction life in exactitude. When is it unconditional? It does have boundaries and becomes relevant on persual. I see the little patriarch beaming with joy. He understands ‘love’ through his parents. What about us? We are deprived of it in concurrence to reality. Our impertinence to afford ‘artificial love’ has taken precedence. Don’t we love to exhibit it on social media?

The day has been long. Finally! Finally! We wind up and head for home.

The patriarch is tired & so am I but he now insist on a cup of tea. I diligently make one but to be true, it makes me feel disempowered. What if I threw him in the lake with the fishes gliding over him? The post would read,

‘My imperturbable existence fetches more water than tea’

We all are now ready for bed; to sleep like we have never slept, to dream the desirable, showing our back towards each other. The little patriarch juggles to find space.

Will this not be the perfect photograph for Instagram?

‘It is what it is’