CHAPTER 20 - An Evening at the Coffee Shop

Arindam Moulick

Love, Loss, Loneliness and Longing, part 4

Una Artoran’s chum Monami ‘Fishsketcher’ Roy was a fine artist whose creative work showed sensitivity and intrepid imagination at fish sketching!

Arinvan Maliek knew that from close quarters, because the first time when Ms. Roy decided to accompany Una to meet him at a local coffee shop she presented him with her fine craftsmanship of a nice black-on-white pencil-adumbrated greeting card caricaturing a shoal of shifty-looking torpedo-shaped fishes swimming and darting about in the pool intricately adorned with tall trees and thrushes; he found himself speechless and was fairly surprised looking at Ms. Roy's sketch. 

His admiration for Una’s friend grew several notches. It was good to know that Una had a nice friend like Monami, unlike her other scraggly college chum Savitha Tandavi, who, lamentably, happens to be his colleague at his workplace Satyam. That enchanting act of Monami’s chic elegance, of what Arinvan has later termed it as 'Fishy Poetic Business,' has impressed him very much and he figured that Ms. Roy is a person with decent mindset, unlike their common friend Savitha, and moral rectitude, and apparently, that’s nothing ‘fishy’ about her!!

Arinvan, that’s me the memoirist, knew that had Savitha been there she would have instantly flared-up and shredded Ms. Roy’s fish sketch (of Fishy Poetic Business) into countless smithereens with her long riotous fingers and thrown into the nearest bin. Of course, Savitha never entered his mind at the coffee shop (but afterward it somehow did) while he shyly talked to her friend – who by now had become his Mysterious Girl, his perfect date Una – and ever-so-vivacious companion Monami at the coffee shop.

One aspect that stood out at his meeting with these couple of fine luminous young women is that aside from the fact that I, Arinvan, was at once entranced by drool-worthy Una’s sharp pretty looks – especially her startled-deer black eyes that had opened the door of my soul for her to step right in – and her dazzling astuteness reached up to my face from across the coffee table between us, I found Ms. Roy’s chemistry with Una and me was instant from the word go, her joie de vivre was sizzling; she was so full of beans! The entire experience of it all was completely unexpected and was unspeakably a pleasurable amaze!

The conversation went on warmly whilst we sipped the freshly served coffee. Sparkling white Irani chai cups (on saucers) placed on the table were catching muted rays of the recessed lighting from above. In fact, it came to light during our animated conversation that Monami is good at sketching fishes in their different forms and colourful getups, mainly using lead pencils. To Arinvan it was a surprising wow! the thing that she could sketch so many different fishes in so many different forms and in so many different ways! Now, only if they were 'live' then I would have managed to catch them with my bare hands and get 'em cooked and eaten 'em! I relish fish, don’t I? I do.

Meeting with Una and Monami that October evening was one of the high-points of Arinvan’s life. Falling hopelessly in love with someone like Una had meant a lot to him.

I wanted to sweep Una off her feet and I did.

END OF PART 4 OF 'LOVE, LOSS, LONELINESS AND LONGING, part 4'

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

- A slightly different version of this article has been published at www.ezinearticles.com. Click on the following web link to read the published article: http://ezinearticles.com/?An-Evening-at-the-Coffee-Shop,-a-Short-Story&id=9003755

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.