A Discreet Wry

Maybe it was the rain that made that evening more special to us. After a hefty ride through the troughs and the turnings that the city had to offer, we came to a pause at a lovely road-side hotel that had a giant sparkling glow board at display.

"Coffee or Nectar to those fluttering butterflies?" - I asked with a tinge of sarcasm.

"Coffee." - she replied with a smirk.

It was like a daily necessity for me and Shirfa to venture out in our town, Chaibasa. Our faces had become familiar to almost most of the restaurant owners as they knew that we were their daily registered customers. 

With our ordered consumables by our elbows we muttered few conversations before eventually sipping down those Caffeine-blended Casein rich drink. 

There was something off about me that day which made me a bit uncomfortable while expressing out my past to her. My intentions weren't even to woo her if so she had thought but there was something at work that ate my mind throughout from the outside.

As I sat there with my sense paralysed by my frozen dilemmas, a loud shattering noise was enough to distract me from my course of racing thoughts.

"Ki re? Bhaang kheye kaaj korchis?" - the owner of the restaurant yelled at one of his worker who stood there panicking over a mistake that wasn't even done by him. Even before he could explain what had happened the owner cussed him with all ill tones he had learnt over the years in his management.

"Shey dada aamke dhokka dilo. Aapni aamake keno gal dichhen?"- ashok da,the worker of that restaurant, explained in a tone of defeat.

"Beshi bokraami koris na! Tor salary diye kaatbo or tota glass er jormanna!" - the owner yelled in rage as he stood up.

That precise moment triggered me a lot. Noticing my behaviour, Shirfa stood up to pay the bills and signalled me to move towards our scooters.

As I stood there waiting for her arrival from the billing counter she came quietly, sat behind me and asked me to drive away from that point.

Even before I could respond or query anything, she asked me for a favor.

"Please don't overthink regarding that incident at that place!"

I wanted to express my raged up thoughts probably to help me ease my sleep hygiene later that night but I preferred to stay shut.

"Haan theek hai."- I remarked trying to hide my overthinking zone from her.

Only If the owner of that restaurant knew how to react in that situation or most probably how to rectify his vulgar speeches post checking them on the CCTV footage, Ashok da wouldn't have to succumb to such penalty that too for a mistake that wasn't owned by him. Getting a monthly wage of roughly ₹2500 that too in a century of rising price actions along with deductions that barely leave him with a lump sum of ₹800 to attend to his needs, I guess landing a punch on both the owner as well as that arsehole-egoistic customer, might have had won me some justice on social media's only if someone cared enough to film that imaginary sequence.

Maybe it a cruel world that we're a part of because of which commotions like these exist disrupting the balance of human environment. Only if the world started afresh preceding the doom of these ill-minded parasitic entities that prevail amongst us, the need for suffocating with a discreet wry would had been a thing of bygones for Ashok da.