Somerset Maughamly

I laughed to myself awkwardly; the idea that someone thought that I was “average” looking was something too overpowering to be readily assimilated (for me), even when I was thinking about it some millionth time then..

“Do you still look like a famished kid from Somalia? Shucks! You missed ‘even’ the Gold medal..CAT07 and then this! Yea, CAT was bad..who ever thought you’ll not go to IIMA after that brilliant mock CAT season..You are taking CAT again? Girl! You must be having an iron grip on yourself.. Who’d not go bonkers after a disaster like that.. Huh? Pardon?..’bull-terrier's dogged determination’?? Is that what it is called??..Yada yada.. I can’t wait to see you..In two hours then..”

Glad as I am, as a general thing, to see my old friends when they drop in for a chat, I doubted whether I felt equal to that, to hear from this friend of mine. She is a nice girl but a trifle too jumpy for my generally cloistered life. The last time I had met her, she had wound up the evening by embroiling me in a fight with my mother.

“Mummy, if she calls again, tell her..”

At this point, a thunderous ringing of my cell phone interrupted me.

“Where are you? I’m waiting in the coffee bar. I have a surprise for you!”

“Two minutes.” I said.

“Buck up, you lazy thing!”

She was sitting there with a guy and seemed to be in her customary jovial spirits, now as she dashed toward me.

“You look the same.” She shouted springing at me and hitting me on the back.

“This is bad. By Jove, this is bad; you must put on some weight. ”

“Doesn’t she look like a sixth grader?” She said introducing me to that guy.

She had a painful habit of introducing me to all and sundry like that.

“You haven’t changed.” I said. “Even my introduction!”

She frowned. The guy laughed at my joke. She frowned again.

“This is him. The pride of my life. Companion of joys and sorrows.”

This guy was looking at me.

“Surprised to find me committed? What? Take my word. Go and jump the dock yourself. Give up this “single” business. I look on you ‘single’ girls as excrescences on the social system. You are a menace. All you do is upset really happy couples.”

“The needle, do what it will, must obey the law of magnetism and turn to the North.” She said, poking her guy not to ogle me.

“You are a menace.”

“You still look like a sixth grader, but!” She continued and her cell phone buzzed.

She was out of the café and on her way upstairs. I was left to entertain the guy. So far his share in the conversation had been confined to a rather dazed smile which was apparently his chief form of expression. I was conscious of feeling a benevolent pity for him. (If I had been the guy, I would have preferred to get committed to a volcano.)

“You were the topper in your school?” said the object of my commiseration, breaking the silence.

“Yes.”

He leaned forward with shining eyes.

“I’m yet to see a girl more beautiful than you. I know this is bad manners and I must not be saying this. But there is something about you that makes every other girl in this café faded and insignificant.”

I saw a change in his expression, before I could react. It was as crudely abrupt as if he had thrown a switch.

He said to her (she had just come), his voice jarringly offensive by being completely casual.

“Your friend is really beautiful.”

She looked taken aback.

I was reminded of a line from Somerset Maugham’s “The Luncheon”.

But I have had my revenge at last. I do not believe that I am a vindictive (wo)man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the result with complacency.

A ceaseless flow of conversation poured in a droning monotone, rest of the meeting and I kept laughing to myself, awkwardly, feeling very Somerset Maughamly.