The Accent

Today, I was talking to a woman at work. For a protracted amount of time, I nodded in agreement, spilling a few “hmmms and ahh’s, but I wasn’t truly listening, but watching her lips move; when I could see them, that is. Her hand covered her mouth as she spoke, a shield I guess. Anxious and awkward. I understand this. But she had that kind of accent—you know the type—that I just had to keep her talking. Her voice was caramel and magnetic. Of course, it was all platonic—flirting a foreign language we would learn—though in my version of events, my vivid imagination was rampant: we’d agreed to marry after the first date, and had two children, (twins—Riya and Roman), conceived on the first night of the honeymoon in Tibet. Such is the mind of a dreamer. Anyway...

Today was also the first time that I experienced the glare of an Indian father: the girl with that accent groaned as he approached. I’d only seen angst and a moustache like the one reading me in Bollywood or Tollywood films. It was overpowering, manly and wreaked of machismo; his ‘tache, I mean, his glare, well, that could split the moon. Eye-to-eye, man-to-man, he knew what I was thinking. If he continued to look so intently I’m sure his gaze had the power to make me a eunuch. In Mexico, I have a cage swam with sharks. In St Fermin, I’ve pounded the streets with maddened bulls...and still, I felt less fear then, than I did in front of this man, today.