Mrinmayi and Malathi

A circular beam zoomed from the eastern skies and created a private sun on the wall. This miniature sun steadily sank in front of her, as the sun at the east rose behind her. Sweet child of mine, rocked heavily from the blaring speakers. Malathi looked at the apparent slow movement of the sinking private sun and her usual ironical lop-sided smile appeared thinking about the underlying paradox.

A few kilometers away, at Mrinmayi's house, the sun sneaked through the opening that she missed to seal last night and it basked her pale foot. She wanted to sleep endlessly night after night like how she found pleasure in swinging from one link to another on the web. She was clambering from the floor to the bed; she didn’t know when she had fallen off.

After Mrinmayi sprawled on to the bed, she started frowning as her mind recollected the closing lines of their last conversation. “Does it not hurt you just because it is your finger nail?” Repugnant assails never seemed to cease. Each one badgered the other with questions and remarks that only created conundrums for which these two would never be able to find a solution. Mrin didn’t quite know what went wrong in the lovely relationship that they had shared when they were in the same college.

Was it distance or was it that they knew each other too well that it had started to hurt? Theirs was a simple relationship and though everything between the two was so lucid, it never ceased to cause envy among their common friends.

Malathi, the plain and sarcastic lady, would pass off for any normal uncomplicated girl. But she was the kind who would appeal to a select few. Though she had often wondered what made a few people like her a lot, she never got an answer for it and each time, at the end of the analysis, she only ended up laying false definitions of herself.

Now, after about a year after college, they worked for the same office. In fact, they really wanted to get into the same organisation after their college. But the stars were not in favor of them, and Malathi took up a job in a small concern and Mrinmayi in a relatively bigger company though she got offers from bigger multi-national companies, she refused them for the sake of higher rate of growth.

Though their offices were poles apart, they always made sure they met each other in the weekend and exchange thoughts on mundane topics, small talk, stocks and shares, happenings in their streets, in the world—basically anything under the sky. It was something really simple that they had shared and they knew each other’s limits, dislikes, hate, sorrows and happiness. More than anything what worked for them was the respect that each had for the other, despite each other's anomalies, differences, and shortcomings.

Well, after a few months there were a few vacancies in Mrin’s concern and Malathi for her unmistakable intelligence, she did crack the hard nuts and landed in the same place as Mrin’s. Things were sailing smooth and looked pretty neat, until the day when Mrin's organization had asked her to travel abroad for a high-valued assignment.