The Cause of Her Return
Genre – Fiction
Sub-genre – Comedy
Length of blog – 1600 words
“What should I put the leave down as?” Rahida said.
“While in Mussoorie, I am not going to bond with Ruskin. With James maybe but not with Ruskin”, Sudha said.
“You need to make a quick decision. Prolonging it hurts more”, Rahida continued into her handphone, “I am putting your reason for leave as ‘Men Problems’.”
Both laughed. The line got cut off. The gist of the call was that Sudha was not reporting to work for another five days. The assumptions of Rahida and Sudha about Sudha’s ‘Men Problems’ would differ like the north and south pole. Rahida assumed Sudha was not able to get a man and was in Mussoorie to get away from it all. While in reality, Sudha was running away from one man into the hands of another. The next Rahida would get to hear about her colleague would be after a week; next working Monday. And what Sudha transpires through is a story that would amuse Rahida as well as the reader. This was the stuff – the office water-cooler gossip – Rahida loved.
Rahida entered the office next Monday morning Sudha was supposed to re-join work. She knew a story was in store for her today. She was in time to see Sudha enter her cabin.
“Where’s Frankie?” Sudha continued, “I need to tell you guys something.”
Frankie was Sudhas’s bum chum, both being from the same chemical engineering college. They were into all the rascal parts together since graduation –at least in parts -if not majority – of their journey of being at one of the upcoming polymer companies.
“Smoking- zone”, Rahida messaged Frankie.
Rahida and Sudha left for the smoking zone. Frankie greeted them in a few minutes. They all ordered a glass of tea from the chai-wallah.
“Sameer held out a board, ‘Sudha’, upside down”, Sudha said.
“Why are you back?” Frankie said, she seemed to know Sudha’s story.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you”, Sudha said.
Rahida felt left out. She was happy to be part of the three musketeer’s clan they had become. But sometimes Frankie and Sudha were Laurel-and-Hardy-esque.
“I wanted to run into his arms over the feeble trellis in between us”, Sudha said.
Rahida awed at the Hyperbole.
“He bade me towards the exit where he received me in his van. I loaded my luggage onto the back seat of the vehicle, and we drove off”. Sudha said.
“How was the weather?” Rahida said to assure them of her presence.
“So you decided that Nitin is the right guy?” Frankie said.
“Yes, do you want to hear me out?” Sudha said a little bit annoyed.
Rahida felt she was on another planet. Firstly, because she was in a topic where bum chums tell their hangover stories, as it were, also Sudha from having no guys in her life to now having two of them.
“Oh yes the view! Chilled breeze blew over me through the open window. He offered me a jacket from the back. His gloved hand on the gear-stick was to die for. He slowed the van onto the side of the road. I tell you the warmth of the jacket couldn’t numb my mind”, Sudha said addressing the remaining two.
“I’m after all supposed to be married to Nitin”, Sudha said addressing Rahida.
Rahida was over the world for the new information, it meant she was accepted and her thoughts of them being the three musketeers was coming true.
“I was frustrated by the routine married life in Delhi. I was happy – but I wanted more. Maybe I was being greedy. But it’s good to be selfish”, Sudha said and nodded her head. Rahida wondered about Sudha’s libido. She was married, yet had recently gone on a tryst with a guy in taxi. Sudha had met the guy on Tinder, and then they had picked up quarts of whisky mixed it in a plastic water bottle and had drunk the concoction riding all night in different taxies.
“But did it end in sex?” Rahida could hear Victoria ask.
Victoria was Rahida’s best mate out of work. Rahida often laid all of the office gossip onto Victoria.
“Only then would it be called cheating”, Victoria had said, “Drinking all night with a male friend is not a sin.”
Victoria and Rahida debated on their respective office gossips.
“Sudha needs to be yearned for, and Nitin is stuck in-between his sick mother and her”, Frankie said to get the story going.
Anyone of them would get a call on their ‘office’ cell phones and this would end abruptly.
“It was difficult to be alone with him – Nitin being the sole earning member of the family”, Sudha continued, “No time for me.”
Rahida nodded.
“I made my decision after mulling on it for over a month. Only Frankie knew. And then I called you to inform I was not coming to work last Monday”, Sudha continued, “And you gave some valuable advice to make a quick decision”
Rahida pondered on her advice but recollected that she had given it to her thinking that Sudha was lonely and not having two hotties and married to one. Rahida had started imagining Nitin and Sameer; Nitin with a slender model look, while Sameer on the bulky yet fairer like the snow clad Mussoorie mountains.
Sudha hugged Rahida for the advice.
“On the day I left. I decided that I would go to Mussoorie and make a decision fast”, Sudha said.
Rahida wondered whether this was what Sudha meant about the James and Ruskin metaphor.
“Two weeks is fast enough”, Frankie said. “Did you tell Sameer you had left all of Nitin in Delhi.”
“No, before I could, his lips were on mine. In the chilled weather I couldn’t feel much through my numb lips, or maybe I was distracted”, Sudha continued , “He lived out
of a let-out on a slope facing the east. During sunset the sky would be aglow with the orange reflection of the ocean cast on the snow clad peaks. His place felt bare – a woman’s touch was required to liven up the space. I spent the days tidying up the room and noticed Sameer roam about in a singlet in the chill temperature. He was used to it.”
“Lady fast-forward”, Frankie said.
“At night, Sameer kissed me and when things became a little heated, I told him I was on my periods. Five nights later, Sameer had asked me to bed early. I knew tonight was the night and I was not in the mood. The decision in my head not yet being made”, Sudha continued, “I wanted to know him better and begin a courtship rather than to have a Ruskin Bond book in my face. I wanted a James Bond who would be in my face”
“I had come to this hill station to sort my thoughts out”, Sudha continued, “I got the time to think. And I understood that I was looking to bear fruit”
And then when we were doing it, I sat on his penis in an awkward position and it broke!” Sudha said.
“Ahhhh”, Frankie said.
“I broke it”, Sudha said.
“What crap”, Rahida said.
Rahida’s novel which lay at the base of her handbag did not have such drama.
“Little did I know that this would alter my decision and help me make my mind up. The altercation was simple”, Sudha said.
“And what did happen of poor Sameer?” Rahida asked.
“His flaccid penis oozing blood out the one-eye that it has. We applied ice all night until the bleeding stopped. Sameer did not get sleep. We visited the doctor the next day. I had to drive the poor fellow to the hospital but did not enter the premises. I stayed in the car”
“The doctor told him that there was a rupture in the urethra. It would heal in its own time. So, I entered the train back to Delhi after a week of handling Sameer’s daily
affairs”, Sudha said
As soon as she could be alone in her air-conditioned cabin – Rahida was on the phone with Victoria sharing the dick-breaking story.
“So the third musketeers has lived to tell another tale”, Victoria continued, “And Sudha decided that a life without sex was what she did not want.”
“Whether Sameer would be fit as a fiddle for her to twiddle it around her middle was not the answer to her predicament”, Rahida continued, “But the fact that, she was not paying attention during sex and sat on Sameer’s penis in that awkward manner had made her realize that, her heart was back in Delhi”
“So Nitin has accepted her back?” Victoria said.
“He did not know she had left him. Her father-in-law came to pick her up after her ‘vacation’”, Rahida said.
“Oh yeah so that’s cool from Sudha’s point of view. Why do such episodes not happen to us?”. Victoria continued, “Wow, what a story, it even has a sex scene, and the scene cannot be deleted as the action sequence on a penis needs to be present in the story.”
“There are a lot of sex-scenes between our Laurel and Hardy pair”, Rahida continued.
“Yeah I remember the one where Frankie and her first boyfriend used to do it in a room in front of his fish tank and later found the water murky. They surmised the fish were getting excited and ejaculating too”, Victoria continued, “When are we going to lose our virginity?”
Rahida laughed. They cut the call.
— THE END —