My Husband | ✓

30. Painful kiss

Ananya's pov

Once the last class of the day has been over, I headed to the staffroom with a painful look and packed my things to reach home soon.

Vivek talked about his day at the office and how he had seen the first-hand bribing experience among his colleagues in his office. I just hummed to his talks all the while, but at a point in time, Vivek comprehended my uninterested participation and asked what was wrong. I shook my head in reply.

"You are silent from the time I came," he pointed out.

"I can't talk," I said wincing.

"Why? What's wrong?" he asked puzzled.

I stretched out my lower lip and pointed him to the erythematous mouth ulcer.

"When did you get this?" he questioned with narrowed eyes.

"Three days. But the discomfort started since morning." I uttered with a lot of pain.

Mouth ulcers are monstrous ulcers as deep as canyons that appear in the mouth and often make you want to stab yourself in the face with a soldering iron when eating and talking.

After coming back from school, I tried ­rinsing my mouth with saltwater and ate yogurt, which I learned from Baba; both are ­supposed to be antibacterial. Neither helped.

It was not this bad until this morning. I couldn't take classes properly today. I was slurring my speech because it hurt to form words in my mouth. It was incredibly embarrassing. And thank god I don't have to teach for the next four days excluding Sunday because they gave us Christmas holidays.

"Eating healthy food wouldn't have bought you to this state. I don't understand you, are you a teacher or a student? Why do you have to eat gol gappa, every other day." he blamed the Pani Puri stall, close to my school for my ulcers. His words had no comforting effect on me instead I was enraged by his scoldings.

At one point I was standing in the kitchen eating potato chips and pissing myself because I was withering so much from the pain. Vivek walked into the kitchen, evaluated the situation, and said, "You know, if you ate a God damn apple once in a while it wouldn't hurt so much!" he again went about my seldom, unhealthy eating habits.

"Eat shit!" I said, a little louder because the pain was especially bad when I said any -SH word.

And then I went on to stuff salty chips in my mouth.

"Sorry... Sorry, I won't scold you now," he pulled away the chips packet from me and took me in a hug, "Stress, poor diet, and certain gastrointestinal diseases are few of the reasons for the mouth ulcers, Anu. I once read it online"

Oh, dear lord! It's as if my body is a sour mouth greenhouse. The thought that I could spend the rest of my life getting these things is enough to stress me out even more.

I think I'm going to go grab some potato chips. But then Vivek held both my hands and threw a stern look my way.

                           ***

Vivek finished his dinner and settled on the sofa with me, I sat down with a glass of chilled apple juice. Eating with a sour mouth can give you a free ride to hell. So I chose an apple juice for dinner, with a straw making it less painful and avoiding a free ride to hell.

"Before you lecture me about a healthy diet, you follow it too." Vivek went on with his vexatious rebuke.

He is a big foodie than me. He is the one who eats unhealthy food among us both. He was always the one on the receiving end of the scolding for unhealthy food habits. I knew he is avenging me for all those times he was called out by me. He keeps his revenge records shrewdly with me.