The Day After

He thought for a while before answering, ‘Don’t know about the first time but there was this teacher. Never felt so small. I wanted to smack his smug face and tell him, ‘Man, I too can ask questions to make you look the fool you are.’ He made me feel so angry, hardly slept that night. But then, the next day, I knew what I had to do. Study more, what else? He was right. But, he didn’t have to rub it in, right?’

He answered couple of questions about his early years. ‘I remember the first story I shared, gave it to a friend, a good friend. How will you feel when someone mocks your baby? Sure it might be ugly but it’s still your baby. Even I knew that it was a pathetic story, well, not just then, a little later. I am not sure what I said to her. Well, if it was real friendship, it would have lasted.’

He talked about the rejection letters, one after the other, how that never touched him, and then the big break, how that too didn’t affect him personally. ‘I got a prize and some money, well, not much, not even enough to take my family out for a meal. But nothing really changed. My father talked to his friends about his two kids, the doctor and the engineer, never about the writer. Nothing new, all my life I waited for the day after to forget what he did to me, if not forget, ignore. You can’t take it out on the old man, can you?’

‘Well, I had my fair share of success. I got her, didn’t I? What a lovely wife! Did I really deserve her? I guess that went to my head. I went overboard with my gift and the party for her, well, you know the hype that goes with V-days. I must have looked a real fool. I know that now, in fact I knew that even before the police charged me for murder. God, why did she have to laugh at me?’