‘Lemon ice tea with a drop of honey please’ she iterated after going through the menu, her perfectly manicured hands glimmering against the hard brown cover. Her red nails in perfect cohesion with her bright lips.
Dark soft curls falling gently on her flawless, unblemished face, it was uncanny to see someone sitting with so much calm and poise. She took out a tab from her LV and started searching for something. As her tea came, she looked at the waiter with big kohl lined eyes and accepted it with a soft thanks.
‘Must be a model’ one of the ladies sitting on the nearby table said.
‘I think so too, must be shopping online’ another lady giggled.
‘Look at all those brands she’s carrying, must be a high profile model’ , another said with a nudge
‘Or all these are given as gifts’ with a wink the fourth one remarked.
She could hear all the grins and smirks but she continued scrolling on her tab and was lost in her own world, with an occasional lift of her hand to sip her tea, and a tissue to wipe her face, nothing seemed to bother her.
‘These kind of ladies do have a life, do a shoot or two in a day and bam playing in lakhs’
‘I swear, what else do they have to do besides looking good, and honestly due credit must be given to their make up for that’
‘Shhh!!!! She must be inquiring about Botox online, after all one wrinkle and her jobs gone and then, another blonde with dark hair, ready to take her place.’And the whole group burst into laughter.
Hearing all this wasn’t new to her, it was nice to know that she had become an object of ‘affection ‘ amongst her own peers, who weren’t much different than her. She smiled her eyes on the Tolstoy she had been reading. She gazed up imagining Kālidāsa peeping through the clouds or ‘megh’ as he fondly called them, and saying why bother... they are naive and blindfolded by their own prejudices, you can’t save them from cutting their own branches.
Her chain of thoughts was broken with the shrill ringtone of her cell, ‘I will be there in 30’ she said. She asked for the cheque and booked an Uber whilst keeping her belongings in the bag, checking on her makeup. She threw her Lv on her shoulder. It was a big day for her - Her first book was being launched today. She had put in her blood, sweat and tears into her book over the course of the past two years. She looked at her watch and couldn’t wait to pick up her children from the school and be at the venue. While leaving she looked at the ladies and smiled.
Walking towards the door, she felt as free as the skirt which adorned her silhouette and as strong as her stilettos which let her feet firmly on the ground. She didn’t feel the urge to turn back and look, if the eyes were still following, she was contented to be her own. Her cell beeped, the cab was here, a white sedan standing right at the exit.
She opened the door of the cab and suddenly a headline caught her eyes “Don’t let your dreams die under male chauvinism “ with a picture of a lady wearing a crisp cotton saree with a big red bindi, smiling at her. She thought ‘really?’
As she sat in the car, the fleeting landscape gave way to fading memories of faces that had judged her achievements in the clean reflection in the mirrors of her abode and the conformity of her trousseau. As the cab reached the venue of her book launch, the driver said ‘Madam, we have arrived’. Yes I have, she smiled.
