A blog by Anjana Sen
I love this room, she thinks out loud,
it is the nicest in this house.
The floors are swept, the dusting done,
she pauses to adjust her blouse.
Curtains she had washed earlier,
dried soon in the African sun.
Hung back now with help from the boy
and that was one job done.
Fluttering about in mid-day breeze,
the windows framed in lace.
She adjusts the mirror on the wall
and smiles happily at her face.
Everyone was laughing,
I could see.
Everyone, that is, except me.
I was on a roll, out to troll
the good folk of Glasgow.
With a poker face
and practiced lack of grace
I let insults race
at a furious pace.
Aimed at the centre of the second row.
She takes a last look at the mirror now
and tucks some stray greys into place.
‘There’s nothing much I can do,’ she thinks
about all these lines across my face.
‘Goodluck,’ he calls as she leaves the house
clutching her new leather writing case.
Looking back on her life so far
As the train moves forward, gathering pace.
She saw the horror on their faces even before she heard the snap. All at once the loud, pulsating thud of the music in the hall seemed to hush, and it was the only sound that thundered in her ears, the sound of the snap of her bodice strap giving way.
She had been striding the ramp with all the elan of someone who knew she was the best. The world’s best cat-walk model and the showstopper for a leading designer at the Paris Fashion Week. The dress she was show casing could possibly pay the down payment for the flat she now rented. Her hair had taken the stylist over three hours to get just right, and she had been asked for more selfies than the designer himself.
Back-stage ten minutes ago, she knew she had arrived. She had indeed reached the top rung of the ladder she had climbed so arduously for over three years.
The buzz in the dressing room had been all about the Hollywood producer who was here in the audience looking for a new heroine for his next block buster. Annie knew she was in the reckoning and was going for the kill tonight. Her career as a model had peaked and Hollywood was the obvious next step.
‘You and your conspiracy theories,’ I chided gently, knowing well how anxious he already was. A doctor himself, he had lost both parents to the virus in the last few weeks. And his wife had now tested positive. My cousin needed to rant, so I let him.
‘You have no idea what the neighbours are up to,’ he said. ‘They have publicly announced on their national news, they are now the world leaders of Space Technology and Biological Warfare. Did you not see those disgusting images posted by the Chinese Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission?’
‘Yes, I have,’ I muttered, changing the subject to something more palatable.
Those images, continued to do the rounds on social media. Originally posted by an employee of the above mentioned CCPLAC, it had two pictures adjacent to each other. The first was a space rocket taking off, and the second, a raging cremation pyre. The caption read, ‘How we light a fire in China, and how they light a fire in India.’