Forty Ounce of Kisses

It was the Hershey's party bag of classic Kisses. At her new job, she placed it orderly inside the old drawer. At her home, just where she kept the keys she had a round glass jar full of Kisses and the slogan running right across it, "Everyday deserves a kiss". Ice-cream was her poison since childhood. And subservience. Having studied medicine for a good five years, Jahnabi finally gave it up to build the ice-cream factory that she had wanted, since her dreams. To give up subservience, since life.

In a distant and forgetful tea garden of Assam, her parents were still trying to figure out how a meritorious student as her did not persevere the coveted course and set up a flashy chamber to make sacks of money. With the money she inherited from her grandparents when she came of age, Jahnabi, uprooted from her self with one swift flash, the decorum to seek permission and informed one morning over what to have at lunch, about her move to Pune. She could never understand why apparently artistic neighbours would touch her amply, that would remain indelible. Uncomfortable, even the thought.

All these years she projected a mild persona of the rich man's dainty daughter, incapable of ambitions, whilst planning and buying the requisites to a future made brick by brick. It was when she had thought of the word brick that she decided on the ice-cream part. She called it Loaded. 

For all that Jahnavi shed, and wore anew, she could not become the person she was not. She was hurt when cheated, angry when ran in a loss. She was a model of spontaneity. Four years and she could no longer focus on Varun. This place had eventually given her everything but love. Each time she missed being kissed, she popped in a Kisses. A forty ounce packet got over in less than a month. 

To the extent that she called hers a dead marriage in her head, regularly visited a morgue in the memory and staged gloriously the dance of the wild in her increasing body size by the weight machine. Forty ounce of kisses killed her daily. She died of none.