The jaunty yellow of the yolk spilled all over the pan as I flipped the omelet. I heard the phone ring just as I pushed the heat to a medium high flame.
“Hello? Any news?”
“….”
A cry of despair rent the room. “He’s dead,” my mother said, wringing her hands.
“What? How come? Wasn’t he getting better?” The shock of it jolted tears into my eyes.
My questions stayed unanswered as she dialled another number with trembling hands. A strange torpor crept in from my fingers, arranging itself somewhere close to my heart. All of a sudden, there was smoke. “How strange,” I thought. I figured I’d look for the source of the smoke through the smoky lens of the torpor. Alas! My omelet had burnt. I slowly turned off the gas as quickly as I could. I had lost two things that evening.
A good friend of my father’s drove us to the hospital. The city was black and numb through the windows. As we rushed to the room, I distantly saw my father in tears. My mother ran to him and embraced him. (I couldn’t hear their conversation on account of the Disbelief that had spread to my ears.) The rest of the family had gathered as well, some were sobbing and wringing their hands, others blew their delicate noses on their sweetly patterned handkerchiefs. The body lay prostrate on the bed, the eyes yellowed with the jaundice that had colonised it. As the disbelief tiptoed into my eyes, I could think of only one thing. “I haven’t had dinner. I’m hungry. My omelet burnt.” I stood there, surrounded by people rushing here and there, people sobbing, and a dead body at the center of it all. I quietly stepped out of the room and the hospital and found a nearby stall selling Maggi.
The spicy aroma thawed some of the confusion in my heart. I was handed a plate of the soupy noodles. They were a deeper yellow than my poor pre-burnt omelet yolk, but they’d do.
Cars passed in a daze.
Hello! it has been 2 years since I’ve posted here, it feels surreal to read my old blog and see the things I published back then. This is a defamiliarisation assignment that I had to do for my “Survey of Literature” class. Do you think Shklovsky would approve?
thefeministwriterwhogoesmeh 