Marigold - the Golden Memories

By Manali Debroy

Marilyn Monroe once said, “I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes. I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best,” and I couldn’t agree more. Life is like a paradox of love and pain that may never leave each other, but in the end, the coexistence is worth the journey. Striving for the best is human nature, but are you really prepared for the roller-coaster rides or do you give up?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Jun 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543705287

Manali Debroy

MANALI is a banker by profession but a writer at heart. She fell in love with words when her six year- old self started writing letters to her grandfather. She gets motivated mostly by life as it is and the experiences that unfurl. She published her first book on the collection of poems named as ‘Twists and turns of life’ in 2016, which is available in Amazon. She has participated in numerous anthologies, and has herself been an editor of ‘Inkedfables’ anthology, which is available in Amazon. Apart from being a published author, she is also a columnist in a digital newspaper, ‘The Post’ and a travel enthusiast.

Book preview

PROLOGUE/PRELUDE

S hort stories are like a classroom lecture that goes at a stretch and ends at the near term with some moral at the end or just a takeaway, whereas novels are generally like a graduation course that goes on for a fairly longer period, where you discover some unknowns and face some of the knowns. Writing any of it demands a substantial amount of time and dedication from a writer. Needless to say, the very least that is a top priority is reinventing your creativity from the everyday life that you are leading. Writers have to give this all in order to be able to write something that connects with their readers. Being a professional banker, I hardly found time to reinvent my writings and put them together collectively in a book. It has been more than three years since I wrote my first book on poetry. It was about time, some would say, to either give up writing or come up with another book. I always wanted to write short stories—to bring out characters that are closer to me in terms of an everyday life or just by the emotional connect with some, whom I have never met, but I connect with their stories like I know them.

Building characters in a novel is fairly easier since you have a protagonist, and you decide about some other characters based on the one story you have in your head. In contrast, for short stories, you need to draft a protagonist character timeline, a storyline, and most importantly, the flow of each and every story. Some give all their stories a similar theme and feel—love and betrayal, drama, mystery, or horror. I choose to keep it simple yet dramatic because every living person has some drama going on in his or her life. The characters that I build are mostly inspired by the people I have known over the years in some way or another, who may or may not have had a strong influence on me but definitely had left some mark on me. The stories that I write always have a part of me in them. I believe that you cannot write something if you are not connected to the story. Hence, this book is a collection of short stories that I have been writing by recollecting some old memories or just by hearing some of them that have drawn me closer to the characters of the narration or the narrators themselves.

This book of mine tells a lot about my own encounters in life as well, apart from what I have heard or seen. It is not very common when your emotions do find words, and when they do, it is well advised to draft them before the memories are lost in time.

I hope that you enjoy reading this book.

—Manali Debroy

ONE WINE DAY

‘T he wine in the bottle doesn’t quench thirst.’

This saying holds true for all in every scenario—be it a career, personal goals, or even small petty desires—because human desire is never relinquished; we always want more. Not only more but also at an accelerated pace. But life is known to be a series of success, failures, and learnings from those demises. Acceptance has become reluctance, and want has become predominant over other emotions. Even falling in love has changed to forage for a successful venture with the guarantee of a perfect bailout if things go murky or filthy. But we fail to understand that we cannot train our emotions; it just flows naturally. That’s the reason why people get hurt more and we end up making wrong decisions. Experimenting and purely following the passion only comes up with either a secured backdrop, or else, life finally shakes you up and shouts at you to be happy.

Well, speaking of falling in love and success, we all know a lot can happen over a coffee. Really? Coffee has nowadays become more like a regular catch-up, but a lot does happen over wine nowadays, which is a new definition of the status quo for many. Captivated by the social acceptance of this thought, I have been a connoisseur of wine for quite some time. It’s not that bad—wine is one of the classiest drinks to sip on and socialize with with the best-class people. Meeting people and discussing trades and other business in the finance world is my day-to-day job, hence the love for wine. So this is me, Maanvi, and I am a currency trader with a leading bank. I, of course, love trading; hence, I am here. But work is usually exhausting and demanding in a way where I need to drive myself every day to whatever the business needs and demands from me. Hence, I see this as my big funding to bring my dreams into reality, of which one is to be a cartoonist. Yes, that’s right—a girl with a high-paying job dreams of being a cartoonist! Well, a picture says a thousand words, and sometimes words fail. Hence, I am an anonymous cartoonist in the Sunday edition of The Headlines. I was happy and content with my life till I met him. Oh yes, him—a storm and big turbulence in my life which I could neither see forthcoming nor anticipate.

It was a big financial event, an annual large-cap symposium event. We were there to gain major insights about some of the large caps and, of course, the delicious food and the lovely wine. Who can miss that? I was sipping on my moscato, and at a distance, there was an obnoxiously handsome man clad in a navy-blue suit, with an unusual fluorescent-green tie. His perfect chiselled face was not getting unnoticed by any woman there, but his unusual dressing behaviour caught my attention. I kept staring at that with a disgusted look, and suddenly, I could feel a hand catching me by my elbow. Feeling a sudden chill down my spine, I turned to look at him, and there he was—a man so gorgeous, with the an absolute charismatic persona and a flirty smile on his face. I froze there. The smell of him was so alluring that I almost forgot that I was at a big conference, representing my company.

He closed the distance between us to whisper in my ears, ‘You know, none of the women have ever looked at me with such a displeased gesture. And that’s what is intriguing about you.’ Suddenly holding my hand, he said, ‘I am Abhimanyu Shaw, the head financial editor of The Headlines. And you, are Miss….?’ I couldn’t speak, and he winked at me, saying, ‘This effect is what I like, when you get totally dazzled by me.’

I composed myself, saying hello, and told him, ‘It’s your tie that makes me bewildered. That combination is totally wrong.’

He burst into laughter and said, ‘I intend to party after this, and trust me, a theme-based neon party is fun. Do you want to join me? I assure to have all your time invested for good. Trust me, I am a good investment.’

That really took me by surprise, and I turned away from him, simply saying, ‘I consider people more as humans than an investment, and social gathering thrills me. To know more people not because I am investing my time in them but increasing my social circle is always good. And trust me, you are a junk-rated investment, and I propose not to waste a single precious moment of my time on a total loss.’

He again caught me by my elbow and whispered in my ears, ‘Good wine praises itself. You know that I will find you, and until then, no one is stopping you to think about me.’ Like thin air, he disappeared into the crowd after giving me a flirty wink.

It took me a couple of minutes to return to myself. Though I managed to pull a very dignified answer, I couldn’t deny that I was totally taken aback by him.

Life returned to the normal routine, and already it has been a month since the symposium. I was in office and working on a very important client’s portfolio when suddenly I got a call.

‘Well … hello there! This is your obnoxious, insane, disgusting friend. How are you doing?’

Of course, I recognized this voice, but I managed to pull myself off very sophisticatedly. ‘Hello, this is XYZ Bank, and how can I help you?’

His voice, in that typical smooth, slithery tone, said to me, ‘I want you to help me in many ways you can’t even imagine, but for now, giving me company for a dinner with wine will do.’

Oh my god! Flushing with embarrassment and blushing like a teenager, I said, ‘We are bound by our policies, sir, and hence we cannot go out for dates, even with our potential clients. So if you want to do business with us—’

He cut me off, saying, ‘I never said it’s a date, but I like how you are thinking about us.’

Us! Did he just say us? What even makes his dream that I am thinking about us! Or am I? Am I smitten by him? No, no, no, this can’t be happening. I am not attracted to him, and I definitely am in no mood for his date. I finally cleared the ‘smitten by his charm’ clouds over me and was prepared to answer a no.

But before I could say a no, he just told me, ‘I would take the silence as a yes! Six p.m. at the Ritz. Please do not disappoint me.’

I was so shocked at his confidence, and I cut him there, saying, ‘We can only meet if it is about the business. As I said, we do not date our clients.’ Oh my god! Did I just confirm to him that I would come to meet him? What did I do? Is it what I want? I am such a disaster.

While these thoughts were running inside my head, I heard Mr. Shaw’s voice from the other end, his pleasuristic, satiric smile evident in his tone, ‘Of course! It is about business. So then, shall we meet at six p.m.?’

Instead of denying him straight up, I said, ‘I will see what I can do to fit in the time. But no promises.’

And when I thought he would hang up, the words came out from him, ‘I will be waiting for you!’ and the phone was dead. But the words kept repeating in my head like a tape recorder. Damn it! I thought. Sometimes, you do not have control over your heart, or maybe the sensible lobe of your brain just forgets to make sense and keeps running that one thought in a loop—in my case it was him.

Before I could gain any composure and make a decision, I saw myself in a red Armani wrap dress with Jimmy Choo heels in the Ritz reception, asking for Mr Shaw’s table. I saw him sitting at a corner table with a deep, intense longing look in his eyes. As I stepped closer, he came swiftly, holding my hand and pressing a kiss on my cheek, and he whispered, ‘You just came in like a breath of fresh air.’

And our evening began with his opening statement, ‘You have so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one.’ I again froze, and then he squeezed my hand, saying it was a quote from Clifton Fadiman, who, I am sure, loved the best of the wines. From his laugh, his talk, and the way he saw me, I suddenly realized I was falling head over heels for him.

Quickly gathering