Chronic pains don't beget poems

My fingernails threatened to grow longer the closer my hands grew to hers on the table. They lurked under bent knuckles, impudent as an eavesdropper’s foot at the door. I had sat next to her instead of across, convinced that a sideways view could buy me back composure. But it wasn’t to be. She, sensing my discomfort never held back those polite queries that falsely reassure the questioner that all is well with the recipient.

“Are your parents moving to Hyderabad?” she began, stumbling I suppose upon the only remnant of our previous conversation residing in her memory. “Err. Yeah, my mother is.” I replied after a desperate dash at swallowing the final remnant on my tongue.

And then, overcome by a garrulous impulse, I plunged on, heedless of how each word would make me pay by way of replays that made me flinch. “It isn’t a pleasant prospect.” I confessed. “I have to watch my old routine get broken down and new ones thrust in their place.” I pushed my plate away, my hunger had scampered away shamefacedly at the ineptness of my fingers. I couldn’t lift the spoon to my mouth for fear of spilling it mid-way or bringing it back to the tray with a clang. I couldn’t stand the taste of a full mouth, it had turned into an ugly chomping mob that neither permitted me to say the one thing that might stall further conversation nor to eat with indifferent panache.

She smiled and then started out on an anecdote, something seeking to put maternal paranoia in its proper perspective. “And then when I returned at eight, a search party was already out…”

By then, I’d discovered that her father too, was a bank employee and that she has shifted too many schools to belong anywhere. ‘I was always the new girl.’ She mused. “And by the time I made friends, we would have to move again.”

My left hand was banished to my lap, safely out of sight while the latest honour killing played musical chairs with the usual roundabout marriage v. career argument and the virtues of marrying househusbands in their conversation.

When she was around, my heart played ventriquolist with the whole of my body, it was an effort to hold my elbows still on the table (ill-manneredly, I added to myself later) so loudly could I feel my heart thud there.
We walked companionably out of the canteen, the three of us, one waiting for another through mid-queue conversations and washroom crowds. Lunch table fealty is a precious feeling, however brief the encounter. We went up just in time to watch the first raindrop getting mopped off the floor. “I wish this weather doesn’t last too long.” I said glumly, all too aware that I had spoiled it for her, the silent homage that the first rains of the day pay the sun-shunning ones.

Later I made my way into the library with that moment secreted away in a pocket like a stolen flower, its petals could be unfurled like a torn scroll, there was fragrance yet that could be salvaged from its puckered stalk.

I could float back now to the scene without getting drowned in the remembrances of follies that had long despaired of my forgiveness. I looked at my nails again, its corners still flecked yellow with the dal we had both licked clean, and tore them out one by one.