Dabara Tumbler

Being A Hand-Model

16. Being A Hand-Model

Himani stretched her arms at the sides of her tucked knees. Clutching her right wrist with a gentle hold of her left hand, she squished herself in an appreciative hug, leaning in to slouch her warm-ish cheek over her knees. 

The slump over her knees blessed her with the scene of balmy flush suffusing across the skies over the horizon, distantly, and birds along with their companions flailing their wings against the wariness of the sky, marking their trail, their own chirping hopeful and promising to not let the weight in their wings bring them down.

Beside her was a very aged, rickety tumbler, with a thin layer of froth from the remains of the first fix of the coffee she'd had a few minutes ago in order to sober herself up.

At the slight creak that rippled over to her from the hallway, Himani twisted around in her spot towards the living room, to the couch that was clearly inapt for a six feet, one inch frame for a brief perusal. She had to bite the smile on her lips a bit at the reckoning that he was soundly trying to toss to one side, squeezing himself into the cramped space, and still, somehow, getting his much needed sleep. But mostly, at the last part.

Her phone, curled around by her fingers, vibrated in her hand, signalling her the beginning of the slot for the online workshop she'd organised for the day. The participants of the workshop were from Singapore. Considering the time difference of two hours and a half, after deliberating it with the three participants, she'd chosen an early time. So that when the workshop was over in three hours or so, she could spend the day to her own convenience. 

The workshop did go well. Inadvertently, all the while during the workshop hours that took place sometime between six-thirty in the morning till half-past nine, the troubled, teary face she'd hugged to her chest a while ago—one of her hands cradling his head, the other smoothening his back—kept flickering in her mind, in its stark clarity. 

And whenever it did, Himani took the liberty of excusing herself from her students, to peep out of the kitchen to check on his uncomfortably crammed but still deep in slumber frame. When she thought the sky was glowing a little too much to sleep in, she stepped out to grab the curtain cloth by its free end, tugging it across to blind the light.

Madras's Nine O'clock skies were on their customary pursuance of garish brightness, with clouds unattached and buoyant—greyish in the middle, goldenish everywhere else—moving around fluffily, striving for their dignified surveillance of the world. 

In another ten minutes, with severe discomfort gripping his nape and shoulder muscles, Raghav found himself on the couch in the living room, with a leg flung over the backrest of the sofa with a muscle cramp behind his knee cap, the other one dangling over the handrest, his mother's saree laying sprawled over him.

He sat up, rubbing his strained neck, releasing a mighty yawn and started pulling the neverending, fully freed saree spilling down the sofa. Gathering it on the whole as a pile on his lap, Raghav sat still willing the sleepy irritation in his eyes eased.

"Yes, that's right." Himani's voice drifted over to the living room in a conscious low pitch, careful in not disturbing a sleeping Raghav. "I am just going to keep stirring it."

Raghav scooped the saree from his lap. Massaging his neck, he toddled off across the hallway—towards the direction where he heard the clink of a nice bowl.

Inside the overly bright kitchen, Himani's phone was clipped to a tripod stand shooting her process, connected to a laptop with a wire, displaying the faces of two women and a man. The rest of the cabinets engaged with a medley of bowls and plates—a few filled, a few empty.