Anatomical model, Pettah

Ebert Silva was meditating, trying to connect. His leg had long since fallen asleep as his mind slowly wakened. He could feel the worries of the day slipping from his bloodstream – ignored, uncultivated, fallen off the vine. As he ended the second stage, with an acute awareness of space and time, he felt close to bliss, but still far from the dispassionate awareness the followed. He was only sitting for a few hours and remained at the second level, doing nothing much. He just looked around. When he opened his eyes Sujata was waiting, with a plate of rice.

Ebert ate his rice and veggies contentedly. He couldn’t help but notice that Su was a bit more distracted than usual, moving stuff around unnecessarily. The kitchen was spotless, but she seemed to be spotting things.

While Ebert was quite happy with a life of relative poverty, it was another thing to share such a life. Woman is wise, he thought, but not so wise. There’s a certain wisdom in being thought a fool.

Su’s perspective was a little different.

“I’ve got a husband who sits around all day,” she joked to Rehana affectionately, over a rather expensive high tea at the hotel. Her old school friends would gather occasionally, display whatever wealth and weight they’d accumulated, update each other on the kids, compare the rates of decay on their marriages. Sunethra’s husband was still hitting her and doing God knows what on those trips to Malaysia. No one was especially happy, but they had expensive sunglasses to cover their eyes and Prados to cover their thighs when they travelled. Su arrived in a Sari and a tuk. When the ladies pooled for the bill at the end, Su felt it, and she didn’t want to feel that way.

As this always proceeds, someone told her something, gave her something. She brought it home.

The vial was incredibly, indelibly red. As Su idly glanced around the kitchen she could see its color in the late morning sun. She dabbed at the sunbeams, where she could see the red, trying to think of something to say.

“You have something to say?” said Ebert, smiling. He could be quite sweet when he smiled, she thought. He was sweet. Too sweet, she thought, steeling herself. Man must provide dessert and dinner.

“I spoke to Neesha,” she said. “Her husband can find you a job. You have built up this mind, no? Now use it.”

Ebert smiled, but inwardly he winced. It was not how she said it, or even what she said. It was that she had said it before. A woman will repeat herself only so many times. Then she hardens, then she goes. For most men this break is imperceptible. Even for Ebert, with his heightened sensitivity, this was beyond his ken. A small compromise, he thought.

“There is no such thing” his subconscious whispered.

Posted on Friday, February 17th, 2012 in fiction, Future.