Swing in The Park

By Poorwa Kholker

Geethika had reached the lowest point in her life. She's just been fired from her job, broken off her engagement, and has failed in everything. And everyone in her world knows it!

But just as she thinks her life is over, it begins again. For only when you have nothing to lose, can you start to give.

Ashwin is

• Language: English
• Publisher: 24by7 Publishing
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9789390417209

Book preview

Chapter One

It is for the lures of the heart that we travel far and wide,

For the sake of our dreams that we cast all else aside…

But when the heart is left behind, what is the point of all the travel?

For then, even the sunniest of dreams start to unravel…

On stranger tides we row, in search of the yearns of our soul,

And it is unfortunate that we come to our sense only when the bell knolls…

‘The wedding is off.’

For someone like me – a writer aspiring to be a published author – the words were very blunt. But I had done it. I had typed them into the phone. But as my finger hovered over the send button however, my courage seeped away. I stared at the screen for a few moments, until it blacked out and the phone locked itself.

I could not do it.

Keeping the phone aside, I let my eyes slide over my tiny apartment. The pale yellow walls of the hall, the curtained window at one end, a glass dining table at the other. There was a heavy wooden sofa too, pushed up against one whole wall. But all in all, it made a pretty setting. My landlord had furnished it well.

Once again, I picked up my phone, and swiped at the screen. The words stared back at me, and I considered typing in a bit more, adding on to make it a little prosy. But the more I thought on it, the more I lost my nerve, and I dropped the phone back down to push off the sofa and into my room, though that offered no solace, either.

My work clothes were still strewn on the bed. A perfectly made bed, with the corners of the duvet tucked in, and the pillows arranged perfectly at an angle against the headboard. My roommate was a stickler for neatness. It was a pity she would find a sty when she returned from her visit to her parents next week.

I picked up my office ID from the floor where I had dropped it earlier, and turned it between my fingers. A sudden rage fired, and I flung it at the wall hard. It hit with a ‘thump’, and fell back to the floor. I stared at it, breathing hard, and I wondered for a moment, if I should change the text to ‘I’m fired’.

It was funny, how random thoughts were making their way into my mind. I slid to the floor, still staring at the ID card. It was a yellow coloured card, with black flowers around it, and though I had always complained that the combination of those colours gave me acidity, I just couldn’t look away now.

It was hypnotic in its acidity inducing colours.

Once again, the thought that I really should send that text popped up, but I stayed where I was. Sending that text would mean a phone call from Mum in less than a minute. I would have to explain why the wedding was off. I would have to talk about it. About him. About losing my job. About getting fired from my job.

It would be one failure after another.

It was amazing how I had swallowed all the rubbish Siddharth had given me the last few weeks, but now an actual sensible argument had pushed me over the edge. Just last week, he had accused me of having a boyfriend on the side because I had gone on an outing with a group of male friends. He had accused me of not being interested and committed to him because I didn’t have the time to Skype with him one evening, the week before that. And the week before that, he had ridiculed my work, because I worked ‘offshore’, because his ‘onsite’ work was more ‘important’.

And the creepiness… Oh dear God! I hadn’t even met him yet, and he had shouted at me over the phone more times than I could count, for the pettiest of reasons. And worst of them all, the tilted head stare.

He’d sit there at his end of Skype, wrapped in blankets because it was cold in the US, and tilt his head and stare at me. Just stare. No smile, no words. Just that plain, creepy stare. For someone I’d known less than two months, and met only a few minutes on Skype every evening, he’d crossed my creepy boundaries very fast.

And yet, I had taken it all, without a word of complaint to either Mum or my sister. But last night had been the limit.

When I’d called him, crying, that I’d been fired, he’d been unconcerned. Smug, even. And to be fair, his arguing that I would have had to give up my job after the wedding had been completely right. But the way he’d said it, that it didn’t matter, that my job had been no big deal for him anyway, that he couldn’t understand why I had to disturb him with such silly things, that had stung me.

Yes, I’d have resigned from my job a few days before the wedding. But that would have been my decision! That would have been me leaving a company, which still needed me. Not being asked to leave, because of some mistake in my work! There was a world of difference in leaving a job, and being asked to leave. And getting fired was just…

I looked at the card now, and lunged for it again. But as I readied to fling it back at the wall, a loud slam of the door jerked me upright.

There was a ‘swoosh’, as a body sat on the lumpy cushion on the sofa, and a louder puff, as a heavy something was dropped to the ground.

My roommate.

I dropped the card to the floor, scrubbed at my face to rid it of the tear marks, and walked out to the hall.

She was sitting on the sofa, dressed in a long slinky skirt and black kurti top, her face buried in her hands. Her long curls tumbled about her head, and a muffled sob escaped. For a moment, I didn’t know how to react.

For as long as I had known her, Swati had been a tough as nails kind of a person. Someone who never showed any emotion. Someone who gave you sarcastic comments when you looked for sympathy. Someone who was always there, despite all the lack of drama.

She was a fighter, a stoic who couldn’t care less if the worst abuses were hurled at her. She’d pick them up and hurl them right back. Nothing ever seemed to ever shake her.

And yet, here she was. Sobbing.

‘Swati?’ I called. She jolted up at my voice, surprise written large on her face. The surprise changed quickly to horror, and then to embarrassment, and she looked away to dig for a tissue in her bag.

I stayed mum, letting her horror of my having seen her be human pass, and slowly sank next to her on the couch. My crisis could wait for a while.

When she looked back at me, a characteristic look of disdain was on her face. But for the smudged mascara around her eyes, I’d never have known she was crying. She leaned back against the sofa and pulled her knees up against her chest.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she asked, her voice hoarse. Back from her to me.

I stood up and walked out of the hall to the tiny kitchen just off it. As I fiddled with the kettle, Swati trailed in after me.

‘How about a deal?’ I said, my back to her still. ‘I don’t ask you any questions, you don’t ask me.’

She hrumphed. ‘Did you fight with that bastard again?’ she asked. I dropped teabags into two mugs, and exhaled loudly.

‘I called off the wedding.’

‘No kidding!’ Swati squealed. I turned to look at her, and saw her mouth had fallen open. A smile squeezed its way out of me. ‘Wow! I’ve been telling you to dump him for ages now!’ she said, coming in further, and taking the whistling kettle off the stove. ‘Nobody is worth getting your head turned over like you were, especially when it was not even a love match!’

I sighed as I bobbed my teabag in the hot water Swati poured into my mug. Siddharth had been introduced to me by my parents. He was a friend’s friend’s son. Swati had been against the match from the start, because she said I hadn’t even met him before agreeing to the match. But I had been enamoured by the US, and fancy ideas of moving and living abroad.

‘So what got you to finally kick him out?’ she asked. ‘Did he drunk text you again?’

I shuddered at the memory. It had been barely two weeks since our wedding had been arranged, that I had woken up one morning to find lewd messages in my phone. Not just one, but a whole bunch of them, each more disgusting than the next. I had had my first big fight that night, and would have called the wedding off right then, but for him apologising, and finding a rose bouquet at my door the next morning.

It had become a pattern later. A rose bouquet for every fight we had. I had started just chucking them in the bin on my way to work, by the third week.

‘I got fired.’ My face started burning with shame as I said the words, and tears started pricking my eyes again. Was it weird that getting fired made me feel worse than having just broken my engagement? I took a scalding gulp of tea, but it didn’t help. When I peeked a glance, Swati was sitting at the table, one leg pulled up, the other swinging gently in circles. I admired her lean figure. If I had tried to pull up my leg against my stomach like that, I would have had a wheezing attack. My short frame just didn’t allow it.

She took a careful sip of the hot tea. ‘The address goof-up?’ she asked. I looked away in answer.

I was an IT consultant by profession, one of those occupations with a fancy name for a mundane job. Mainly, my job would be to refer clients to the correct technical teams, draw up the paperwork, test the output and make sure the requirements had been met. Sometimes, I’d mail the outputs to the client.

Last week, I had mailed two different outputs for two different clients, addressed wrongly. Financial outputs, with profit and loss statements, and other confidential data. My company had gone ballistic, trying to calm them down and retain their business.

And after the hubbub had died down, I’d been given the pink slip.

Yes, I’d been wrong. I had made one BIG mistake. I should have been more careful. But the outputs and addresses were to be checked by my manager, the associate director, and the director before they were to be mailed. Any one of them would have caught the mistake, if they had simply bothered to look at what was being sent out.

And after being in this role for almost 4 years, and giving exemplary work with outstanding results to them every year, I had been fired. Without a reference. With a pink slip, to boot!

I had thought they’d give me a warning, even demote me, maybe. But not fire me. Not even Swati had thought it’d go so bad. She’d given a shrug and told me to expect an earful, and to expect maybe a couple of demotions while they were at it. I had pondered handing in my resignation during the hubbub instead of waiting another week, but had thought to hold it because, ethics. So that had been my plan - an earful, a demotion, and then a resignation.

Not the pink slip.

Swati pushed back her curls as she took another sip of her tea. I had gulped mine all down, and pushed my empty mug away.

‘What’d your mum say?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t told her yet.’

‘Yep, that’s the way to do it. Let that bastard tell her for you.’ That was Swati for you. No sympathy, straightforward sarcasm. I scowled at her as I walked back to the couch to pick up my phone. But when I swiped the screen to see the words staring at me, I faltered again.

‘She’s going to ask me why.’

‘Yeah, isn’t it horrid of her to want to know what went wrong.’ I scowled harder, but pushed the send button. We looked at each other in the silence. And then Swati held up her hand and began counting down from five. She still had two fingers up when the phone shrilled.

Chapter Two

For the tides of sorrow are not brought by grief, the tides of sorrow are not brought by loss,

The tides of sorrow are sometimes all alone, drifting in your mind…

When naught can heal, but a good cry, let your heart weep, set it free,

Let not the sands of time hold you down, and you will find that the tides do change when the world is kind…

The airport was chilly. I pulled my jacket closer to myself, but it was made of crocheted lace, and not much protection against the cold. Swati sucked at her coffee cup, comfortable in her sleeveless knit top and jeans. But then, Swati was hardly ever cold. She was my polar opposite.

‘It’s winter, why didn’t you wear something thicker?’ she said when I shivered again. Telling her that we were in a climate-controlled building, and so it should have been warmer inside than out, would have been a waste of breath and energy, so I warmed my hands on my mug instead. The aroma of hot chocolate wafting from it soothed me after the tensed past few days I’d had.

‘Which gate are we?’ I asked. Swati flicked a glance at the boarding pass in her jean pocket.

‘32,’ she said. ‘And we still have fifty minutes till boarding time,’ she added, before I could ask. I gnawed at my lower lip and looked past her to the sleepy passengers around us. It was just a few minutes past five in the morning, but that had been the only flight available. Mum had insisted I come home in our call a couple days past.

‘To heal,’ she had said. Our call had gone much better than I had expected. She had been comforting, understanding. Her shock and outrage had been all at Siddharth. For me, there had only been warmth and love.

‘I cannot get married to him, Mum, I don’t want to get married to him!’ I had cried. ‘He is a horrible, horrible person, and he has no respect for anything I do. Do you know he thinks that his work is more important than mine because he works in the US, and I work here?’

‘Oh Geetti,’ Mum had crooned over the phone.

‘And he shouted at me all last night because I told him my job was just as important for me. If it is so important, why were you ready to leave it after we got married then? he asked me.’ I had gulped down a glass of water Swati had helpfully