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Flushing Out All The Bad Jokes

Chapter-17

"So you slept with him?"

Himani's brows raised at Varsha's thoughtlessly, cheerfully loud question, or rather comment, just as the middle-aged man in the car beside them shot a repulsive glance their way, tutting judgmentally at the two young women on the bike.

It was one of those blistering but muggy afternoons on a Monday, when the sun smoldered down with a demonic plan of wearing off sunscreens within an hour of applying. Being stopped at the red lights for one whole minute felt way more harrowing than standing under the heat of torrid, lousy burners in her kitchen through a six hours shift.

Himani had ditched her bike at home, and had asked Varsha to pick her up in the morning on her way to work. Both of them had decided they were going to take a half-day off, slogging a Nine to Two shift. Himani, because the kids would be home soon after two in the noon, and Raghav was working today. Varsha, because she had a date tonight and had been feeling all kinds of thrills, that standing and working in the kitchen needed painful retention of her focus—that seemed practically insurmountable today.

Himani threw a death glare at the side mirror, at Varsha's helmet encased, inquisitive face staring back at her, wide-eyed, and wiggling her eyebrows playfully at her friend. Himani figured giving her a clout on her head wouldn't work since she'd her helmet on. So, she pinched her arm, just above her right elbow.  

Varsha jumped in her seat, with a squeaky yelp. "Aah." Her fingers unclutched from around the brakes and the accelerator, they flew over to instinctively rub on the spot Himani had pinched.

"Endhoru vedanayanu, kuttipisache!" A groggy, under-the-breath murmur later, instead of looking at the mirror, she twisted around in her seat with a scowl.

Himani, still shooting daggers at her, gestured at her—with a light sway of her face—towards the man in the car next to them.

With that provoking a grimace on her already scrunched-up-due-to-the-flaring-sunlight face, Varsha steered herself to the other side, cambered down at the car's window to come face to face with the man's contorted, french bearded, angular face. "Hello, judgmentally looking uncle!" She waved at him, her voice laced with honey—sneeringly sweet.

The man in the car cringed back into his seat—probably, humiliated by the fact that they got to know that he'd eavesdropped on them. 

A low laugh bobbed up her throat that Himani arrested in her mouth by pressing her lips together, and then sealing them with her fingers—just in case—as Varsha continued, "My friend here is trying to have a good time in her budding relationship." Her sickly sweet tone turned into a no-nonsense one, and her face, ghastly as she completed, "can you not jinx it or judge it and just stick to seeing your own goddamn job?"

The gangly looking uncle with a balding head, gulped remorsefully, shrunk on his seat further as if he was wishing for the seat to plunge open and take him in from Varsha's taunting counter and her cutting glare.

Himani leaned in to whisper in Varsha's ears, with a giggle gushing in her throat—that she didn't know if it was because of her friend's sermon on his eavesdropping, or her having a good time in her budding relationship—not that she wasn't. "Varsha, enough."

Varsha twisted to her, again, this time with daggers shooting from her eyes. "Onnu mindathe irikku, Himani! (Shut up, Himani!)"

Pulling an earnest look on her face was hard for Himani. But she did—she had to. Because when Varsha switched to Malayalam abruptly like that, she'd kicked that playful demeanor of hers to curb, and up next was that of a spitfire's—a terribly furious one.