Fashionably Yours. Swati Sharma

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       2

       May 29

      Last night I worked my arse off and I think it was around three in the morning when I typed the last word. More than once I felt a strong, sleepy wind wash over me but I wasn’t prepared for any more trouble. So I kept my eyes wide open, took a back-up of the article on a flash drive, just in case, put it safely in my handbag (oh my! I so needed a new one) and only then tumbled off the sofa, found my way through the ever-so-dirty apartment towards the bed and fell asleep. It was just past seven a.m. when I curled onto my side under the warm duvet blissfully unaware of the fact that how boiling hot it was outside my air-conditioned apartment. Since it was only yesterday that I had to listen to the long work ethic lecture from Natasha, I was not ready to give her the opportunity today. So resisting the temptation to stay in bed for just a few more minutes, I decided to get ready and reach office on time, just for a change.

      Thirty minutes and a quick shower later I was dressed in an emerald green jumpsuit and Blue Parrot bellies with my hair tied in a chic ponytail and the right amount of makeup to give the perfect illusionary effect of high cheekbones. Just the way I like it. Being ready this early left me with plenty of time to cook an actual breakfast for the first time in weeks. The idea of crispy, hot toast with a dollop of Nutella was just irresistible.

      Beaming with pride at my achievement, I walked towards the refrigerator and in just forty seconds managed to find the handle of the door under zillions of post-it notes. Not bad, Kapoor. As I pulled opened the door, I nearly fainted at the odor wafting from it. It smelled like a gutter and as I looked closely (I warn you the sight was not for the fainthearted) I saw green bread which when I bought was a healthy brown. There was also a take away box of half-eaten noodles which I had ordered a couple of weeks ago from a new Chinese food van, but hadn’t liked. With trembling hands I pulled open the vegetable basket at the bottom of the refrigerator and nearly died at the sight of rotten tomatoes with some crawling creatures running around them. Before I could puke inside my one and only refrigerator, I hastily closed the door.

       Goodness! What was that?

      You see this wasn’t my fault. Not entirely at least. After driving myself insane at work, I hardly had the time to think about cooking something, let alone peering inside the refrigerator or keeping track of the stock in there. Home, kitchen, refrigerator were not my forte. When I was back home in Shimla, Mom had tried to dupe me into learning some cooking and sometimes dragged me to the kitchen to show me how to make mattar paneer but she never understood that it was just not the place for me. But when I landed a job in Mumbai she gave me the recipe of the most basic breakfast item — omelete — which of course I had never attempted to try because I neither had the time nor the energy to do any actual cooking. Sometimes I truly wished that I could hire someone to do all this cooking-cleaning-washing stuff for me, but was such a shame that my salary didn’t even allow me to buy a new vacuum cleaner, let alone hire a helping hand.

      Pulling out a pen from my purse, I added, ‘buy freshly baked bread, healthy looking tomatoes or maybe even a box of eggs’ on the list which was pinned on the refrigerator door with a gorgeous pink tiara-shaped magnet. I winched at the length of the list which was overflowing with so many other things like, ‘clean the apartment at least once a week’, ‘vacuum the sofa at least once a month’, ‘put dirty laundry in the machine before it starts resembling the leaning tower of Pisa’, ‘lose ten pounds’, ‘increase alcohol tolerance level’. The list was just too long to read and sadly it seemed I never got around to accomplishing many of the targets on it. But I was sure that one day I would have enough time, stamina and hopefully motivation to accomplish at least some of them.

      ***

      As I strode past Veena with a steaming vanilla latte, she covered the phone receiver with her hand and said in her singsong voice, “Good Morning, Maya.”

      “Morning, darling,” I said without bothering to stop.

      I was in no mood to waste my precious time with this walking-talking-bitching woman. This girl might be just a receptionist at Style but she had more gossip than the top gossip mags.

      “There’s a letter for you. It’s on your desk,” she smirked.

      I never liked this girl and trust me it wasn’t because of her piercing voice.

      Once, when everyone was pretending to be fully involved in a brainstorming session for the theme of the upcoming issue under the watchful eyes of Natasha, I excused myself to the bathroom where I overheard Vicious Veena saying to some skinny bitch that I was probably the biggest loser she had ever seen in her life because, a) I was the kind who could tempt anyone to humiliate me any time, anywhere; b) she had no idea how any girl could live with such a bulging tummy; and c) she strongly felt that I would end up being an unlucky spinster who was capable of jinxing any happy couple by merely casting the glance at them.

       As if I was some witch.

      I swear for a moment I considered dragging her to the toilet seat by her hair and shoving her head into the urinated water. Bloody tramp! I never felt more humiliated by anyone in my entire life, except maybe Natasha. It was beyond me why she called me fat when I was just size a 8? Fine, size 12. But this was a perfectly healthy size. And last but definitely not the least, I was not an unlucky spinster. I refused to fall into the arms of any man. Finding true love was not that easy. I had decided to wait for that someone СКАЧАТЬ