Arabian Noir by Lynes Michael & Shaw Alex & Kantaria Annabel

Author:Lynes, Michael & Shaw, Alex & Kantaria, Annabel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quadrant Books
Published: 2024-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Gal Podjarny is a student of the human psyche and condition. With a background in psychology and academic writing, her fiction explores the intricacies of identity and the roles we assume in the tapestry of relationships. Her first short stories collection, Human Fragments, is now out in digital stores, and you can catch her musings on her blog at www.galpod.com.

Round peg in a square hole

by Padmini Sankar

◆◆◆◆

Pramila’s reflection stared back at her from the ornate mirror beside the front door. She examined herself with one eye half-closed. Hair in place, check; lipstick not bleeding, check; cheeks highlighted, check. The high-street skirt was a tad too tight, her legs too spindly, but she’d pass. That exercise regimen couldn’t alter genes.

“I’m going,” she yelled, and without waiting for a reply slipped out of the door, letting it bang shut. Mohan could get his own breakfast. He didn’t have a pressure-cooker of a job like hers, selling and renting real estate.

She entered the office, to the usual chatter and laughs. Mandy was holding sway, the girls clustered around her. There were peals of laughter.

Pramila switched on the kettle to make herself a cup of tea. What a faux-pas she’d made that first time – was it just a year ago? Filling the kettle with tap water. One of the girls had screamed, “Eek! We’ll all die of germs if you use that water.” She never forgot that ‘eek.’

She’d obediently emptied the kettle and filled it with the ‘good’ water from the dispenser. She wanted to argue, say it was boiled and any bacteria would die, sizzled to nothingness at 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But she held back her words. No, she wanted to be part of this group so badly. This job was so precious for her, not just because of the big commissions, but also because it was a multinational real estate company with branches in many countries. Her colleagues, an all-female team, looked as if they’d stepped out of the pages of Vogue or Vanity Fair. Although the youngest was thirty-five and the oldest fifty-five, they were collectively called “the girls.”

Pramila had undergone a metamorphosis of sorts after joining the company. Her hair was regularly cut by a Lebanese man in a saloon with a French-sounding name she could never quite pronounce. She exercised daily, running, weights, the works, and swam ten laps every weekend at the club pool of which she ‘d become a member. It all cost money, of course, but she’d convinced her husband to take out a loan. “It’ll pay off, I’m telling you, “She’d said.

She was no longer Pramila Parmanand but Pramila Anand or just Prams. Short, crisp, easy to say.

But Paradise was quite different from what she’d expected. She realized very soon that she could never be part of this group no matter how hard she tried. Was it a cultural divide? East is East and West is West and all that blah? Probably. But a prickly ball of red anger rose in her when she felt completely and utterly invisible.

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