A Fishy Evening

For this month’s writing theme, Resolution Story, the first entry we publish is by Meera, who has an interesting story on the quest for a ‘hero type’ man.

Meera, in her own words: I write short stories, some of which have been published in magazines. I mainly write about things I have seen, heard, experienced; things from real life, based on which I weave my own stories. I lived in the US and now have moved to India where I feel the writing is much more enriched because of all the things we see happening around us.

2010 had been an ‘annus horribilis’ for me; an utterly disastrous and flop year of meeting only timid, zero confident, non-courageous and boring men!

So there I was, scoping and hunting for the most valiant of the male species and after an eternity, I eventually chanced upon one!

When he spoke, his voice had a deep timbre and was strong just like Amitabh Bacchan’s, igniting spine-tingling shivers all the way from my cranium down my lumbar vertebrae to my femurs ending at my phalanges!

He was an Indian-Italian (born and brought up in Italy; how exotic), oozing maturity, self-confidence, arrogance and the fatal charm of all Italians. When he asked me to meet him at the Taj West End, I was decidedly elated!

I went to the location straight from work. He was everything that I thought he would be; tall, dark, handsome and charming. I was delighted!

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I settled down on the bar stool ardently listening to the brave happenings of his life that he narrated to me, each one braver than the other!

I sat enraptured of his eloquent monologues on how he grew up with the children of the mafia families in Italy, how he knew all their inner secrets and skeletons, how he can take on anyone because of the support he had from the ‘family’.

I sighed, very pleased; here was a brave man indeed.

As the evening progressed, I took out a small plastic bag filled with water from my voluminous handbag and placed it on the table. In it swam a solitary black fish.

My date did a double take.

“What’s this,” he asked perplexed.

“It’s a black fish,” I explained serenely, “I stole it from my office.”

His eyes bulged. “Why on Earth would you do that?”

“This poor fish is lonely,” I declared heatedly, “he has been kept in solitary confinement in my office for many years! He needs to dwell with other fish and tonight I had the right opportunity to steal him and leave him at the pond here to happily have fun and frolic with the others, and maybe even find a girl friend.”

My date gawked at me like I had gone bonkers. “Are you planning to do this tonight, now???”

When I nodded in agreement, the date looked acutely apprehensive. “Are you sure the security guard won’t catch hold of you and yell at you?”

“Yell at me for what; for leaving a tiny, hapless fish in their pond? No he won’t and I don’t care even if he does! Now am heading to the pond, do you want to come?” I challenged my mafia-connected spunky man.

“No, no, you go along, I don’t want to get into any trouble, will wait for you here,” the heroic gentleman declined hastily.

I bestowed one last lingering look on my Indian-Italian deceptive daredevil, clasped my fish, ambled to the pond and let him slip free to his freedom.
I answered the guard truthfully when he asked me what I was up to, and then walked away from my date and the evening, with my New Year resolutions imploding around me in a zillion disillusioned fragments.

Pic credit: Mac Filko (Used under a Creative Commons Licence)

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