Women

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...... and then.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..... what?!!! really?!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... and it went on like that, a lazy sunday post-siesta afternoon. four women, doubled up with laughter, eyes scrunched, tears rolling down their eyes and just good hearty laughter. It rang out, on that quiet street, somewhere in the summer afternoon, the sun was just cooling its merciless beating down, a crow cawed. A mango tree was ravaged by some hungry squirrel for the best of the harvest. Summer was here, the dust was kicking up, pollution seemed to be at its annual best, as were the sweat stains and the smells.
Somewhere in the midst of such cheer, one girl looks on in observation. There was love here, in this room, she thought. A bond that money could not buy and Disney could not recreate no matter how much they tried. The idealism that everyone wrote books about, that everyone strove to portray on the telly couldn't come close to the real thing. Women everywhere were like this, when there were no men around, no pressure to be anything but nightie clad, disheveled, puffy eyed, slightly paunched laughing women.
There was such honesty in that laughter. It wasn't trilly, it didn't make you cringe and smile uncomfortably at its fakeness. This was laughter that made you clutch your stomach in sheer exasperation because you didn't quite know how else to laugh! This she thought, this frozen Sunday afternoon of laughs and anecdotes is what life is about. This babble, this need to just be, the state of just being was love, was life... It was these moments that made life as stable as it could be. Never mind that they laughed until they cried at the same stories; there was comfort in craning your neck at weird angles, and toggling your vision from the ceiling to your aunt lying next to you so you could listen in on the story. This was life, tomorrow when it was time to work and the perfectly pressed clothes came out and the make up was slathered on. Life became plastic and uglified by routine.