The overhead lights coming out of the seasoned white ceiling glared into her laptop screen, haloing around the ruthless numbers of the excel sheets, as in stark summers greedy children look at mangoes -- constantly. It is in human nature to not live in the present, and neither did Rumaani. As soon as she looked at herself as a pale silhouette spread over the numbers, she clicked on a social media tab. Vibrant colours of pleasant meaninglessness came alive. She had seven hours left to find it, the deadline was 6 pm.
Years of compliments fell apart as Rumaani failed miserably. Inside her notebook, she doodled ugly doodles with displeasing words like "Depressed", "Can't", "Unable", "Dying", "Lost". Finally, irritated with her ball point pen oozing enormous amounts of gory ink, she tore off the paper and tried to return to her earlier sketches. They seemed particularly composed -- starry skies, wavey rivers, kohld'd eyes and blank spaces. She closed it and turned back to the screen. There were unnecessary lists and uninteresting quizzes taking up all of it and somewhere squeezed in between, a distinctly forgettable looking poetry page reading, "Best Lines of English Poetry of All Time." Having read some of it Rumaani had decided that there wasn't much help in it as the lines were way too well-known. So she came back to the word document where she had typed some lines: "Like the pause in dialogues. For the love of chicken skin. There stood the indomitable monument, old and dusty. Out came a crushed chit from the pencil-holder. Love chimed with wedding bells." None of them seemed to make any impact, worth a celebration like birthdays are in a year.
Rumaani completed her submission on time. Commissioned entries never quite made creative outpourings. A sentence from a status and a opinion from a comment, a dialogue from a story and a line from an essay. She was spent.
Rumaani stole them all and weaved them back into a poisonous necklace of guilt. She knew better how short-lived the glitter of a win was. In contrast, the entry reproached her, and nothing could cleanse her of the sin she now lived with.
Spent, she earned this day of having to tell the commissioned tale.
Years of compliments fell apart as Rumaani failed miserably. Inside her notebook, she doodled ugly doodles with displeasing words like "Depressed", "Can't", "Unable", "Dying", "Lost". Finally, irritated with her ball point pen oozing enormous amounts of gory ink, she tore off the paper and tried to return to her earlier sketches. They seemed particularly composed -- starry skies, wavey rivers, kohld'd eyes and blank spaces. She closed it and turned back to the screen. There were unnecessary lists and uninteresting quizzes taking up all of it and somewhere squeezed in between, a distinctly forgettable looking poetry page reading, "Best Lines of English Poetry of All Time." Having read some of it Rumaani had decided that there wasn't much help in it as the lines were way too well-known. So she came back to the word document where she had typed some lines: "Like the pause in dialogues. For the love of chicken skin. There stood the indomitable monument, old and dusty. Out came a crushed chit from the pencil-holder. Love chimed with wedding bells." None of them seemed to make any impact, worth a celebration like birthdays are in a year.
Rumaani completed her submission on time. Commissioned entries never quite made creative outpourings. A sentence from a status and a opinion from a comment, a dialogue from a story and a line from an essay. She was spent.
Rumaani stole them all and weaved them back into a poisonous necklace of guilt. She knew better how short-lived the glitter of a win was. In contrast, the entry reproached her, and nothing could cleanse her of the sin she now lived with.
Spent, she earned this day of having to tell the commissioned tale.
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