PAST TENSE

GEISHA GIRLS OF BLACK PAGODA

SURREAL LEAVES

MAKEOVER

In order to escape the dungeon like existence of my one roomed life of loneliness and to look suave on the block, I decided to hire a upper class accommodation in a newly set up locality of the town that is still struggling to a become famous along with its haughty residents, who prefer to flaunt the easily purchasable electronic gadgets and extra shinning clothes on them.
The landlord was very much amused in hearing my plea to lend me a spacious house and was certainly somehow surprised to learn about my pious intention of regular payment of the house rent on time as decided by him. Perhaps like me, he was also perplexed with the turn of the events and agreed to accept me as a valid tenant having enough solvency and perhaps thought that I unlike him was fit enough for the luxury. However, he, for reasons best known to him asked me to provide a photo identity card issued by the local government to be sure of the authenticity of my earthly claim.
On a sultry morning I moved in with my scanty luggage, heightened facelift and enough courage to face the new neighbors who were busy in their toilets or inside the in-house temples to appease the domesticated and somehow subdued Gods and Goddesses of their choice. But later I decided to remain elusive to all of them and enjoy my new pride undetected under the imposing roofs of my second floor house. Soon, I felt that the quirky looking and exasperated residents of the locality started to accept me as one amongst them reluctantly by ignoring me as far as possible and allowing me my freedom, largely bought at the expense of my basic survival essentials. The residents waited in baited silence to let me express myself for days and months while I regularly kept on paying the house rent on the appointed time to gain respectability and legitimacy. It certainly was a time of meticulous calculation and I thought I was winning but in vain.
Very soon I in my solitary confinement discovered that I have become an instant celebrity of sort with the scores of maid servants who scuttle twice a day to attend to the dirty bowls and linens and therefore turned an eyesore instantly for the rest of the residents. The tall house adequately ensured for me enough of free flowing love and respect of some type of undefined order from the rickety and floppy women that came from afar to cleanse the system called household of their temporary masters and mistresses with their crafty hands and reluctant smiles. The test of employability was a tough one for me and a nemesis in the making. The maidservants fiercely threw in their gauntlets to win my sympathy by throwing in an occasional smile or allurement of questionable description. I was much challenged to reveal myself by the dusk for which I was either unprepared or incompetent. Or perhaps I made a mistake to move into a locality to bare my own palpability and vulnerability.

KNOTTY AFFAIRS

The soon-to-be-wives attire clad moist young and old women alike of various descriptions and fate crowded from afar the soon-to-be husband for relational relationships, exasperated yet expectant for a future of apparent uncertainty. They whined, growled, moaned and conversed in adjustable husked tones largely fabricated for the special occasion, hoping to make it big, by the auspicious time. The astrologers were befriended to appease the not-so-shinning stars having a special interest to delay the honeymoon of the over religious yet very fast ageing damsels and to exert their influence on a hesitant yet over enthusiastic groom that may be by hook or crook interested in the proposals, oft repeated on several soon-to-be-grooms, earlier and still earlier but to no avail for no apparent reasons. In the conversations over the quick connecting outdated mobile phones, some of the prospective brides preferred to go amorous while others acted frigid to break the slumber of the almost reluctant soon-to-be honey. Some others pinned their reusable hopes on a beautiful fate about to unveil, by hiding in the necessities of a life of togetherness as a last resort to impress, first to themselves and then the decrypted groom in a most mysterious manner.
Additionally, simultaneously, the match makers sensing business; with their stinking mouth, announced briskly about their pious intention to meddle in the knotty affairs and jumped into the fry to attract the hiding groom with promises of only the best wives that can be had with minimal fees and minimum efforts. They were in a way apprehensive of the fallout, however—of the uncompromising and questionable brides and grooms having prospective futures since many many years.
Sipping red tea in the dingy hide out, the to be out maneuvered groom that stealthily updated himself very recently to look brand new, waited in baited breath and muted hopes for clinching the deal knowing fully well that he always preferred to be a invented model husband to a prized wife or wives; though he did not exactly know as to when and how that would be materializing. This time around the erstwhile throbs of the rejected brides of the distant past thought to be lucky. Till the proposals crowded his deflated persona he dressed up quickly, often grudgingly, in the best of the hot ironed dresses splashed with rare aftershave lotions that he hurriedly collected from the thieves market by paying exorbitant prices in order to immediately boost his sagging egos and near extinct androgen to rehearsal to lord over the first depleting not so exotic female pheromone of the waiting and wanting brides, ready for a preying retched life but anything else for a chanced upon change.
The interviews went on by the scorching sun of the day and a fearful moonless night of forced despair aided and abetted by a questionnaire couched in sugary languages and perhaps a lullaby to smooth the malfunctioning nerves in cold blooded awe and inseminated anticipations amidst hiccups.
While one of the smart prospective bride sensing rejections tried to convince her coffer less suitor with attractive insurance policies to prove her acumen without much success, the other one talked the ghosts in her life. Yet, another self confessed ugly women feigned ignorance about truths about herself saying that she never liked the fellows who can not prove their innocence of yesterdays. In the interludes separated by see-through emotions it was a perfect matchmaking and a taste of the ensuing life for both the parties on a busy marriage season of sorrow. But, frankly, nobody actually knows, thereafter who had the last laugh, the groom or the brides?