Forecast

The bed was hot from the unforgiving roof on top, seeping in the sun rays from the sky. It was utterly unromantic, this heat. People wrongly adjudged April to be the cruelest month. In Calcutta, it is May. There is a kind of lull in the air spreading on to the collective psyche, as if ennui were a disease. The windows begged to remain unopened, and the curtains forgot their playfulness. If Nirja could have it her way, she would read out the weather report like this. Instead, she unwittingly read out about the monsoons being hardly anywhere in sight of the coastline, while the pollution adding to more mercury. At the back of her mind, she was wondering if the stars felt hot in the sky. 

She did not know how she landed up with the job she was in. Wanting an escape from her plaguing household she had applied everywhere. She felt trapped within herself and ran away from others, this was her pattern. She finished her shot. After some more time at the office, she left for home. She would return to a lovely house done up in beautiful taste. There was an eccentric poetry about her movements. Perhaps it was her mind. 

Hastily, she turned and stopped from the signal at a corner plot, which always held her attention. A man sat there, prescribing what a future would be. On other days, Nirja's skepticism would make her wonder how this man ran his family with this unstable, unreliable, unsteady source of income, but today was not that day. With the air of a professional, the man said she would outlive her miseries, and sufferings. Success would follow suit, even if the heart would not. And life would be comfortable.

Nirja was restless and craved for some calm. The bed was hot from the unforgiving roof on top, seeping in the sun rays from the sky. It was utterly unromantic, this heat. She was disgusted with herself on the road, allowing an anybody to see what her future would unfold. As if he could. Right. Could he? She had to be the winner, she decided as she picked up a leaf of sleeping pills. She rejected that option because the movies always showed them to fail. 

The neighbours reported to the police next day that there was, indeed, an unwarranted amount of noise from Nirja's flat last night. Loud music; perhaps she was dancing. She died of ecstasy, some said. Others thought she died accidentally.

She would have liked them to believe she won over forecasts.