Feraline

The Brilliant Idea

Monday, April 30th, 2007 | mini-story

The brilliant idea struck him, like most of his brilliant ideas, while he sat stoned in the corner of Ahmed’s oh-so-clean bathroom, blinking stupidly at a cockroach that was making a slow painful journey up the wall in its search for food. A hint of a noise and he knew the sneaky little motherfucker would be gone, in the blink of an eye, like lightening. For some stupid reason, it reminded him of Nisha. Yes, she was an annoyingly quick-witted one, she was. But that didn’t really surprise him. He couldn’t take his mind off her; most things reminded him of Nisha these days.

And that’s when a brilliantly formulated plan just walked into his head, half of it was most surely the pot, the other half his utter lack of sense [or maybe that last swig of vodka]. In any case, he got to his feet in a rather unsteady manner and announced sluggishly to his audience, Ahmed and Maaniu that is, that he was going to write Nisha a letter.

“Dude, you’re nuts!” Ahmed told him in an offhanded manner, crunching biscuit after biscuit of some shit called ‘marie’ or something, watching a game on the TV. He didn’t seem particularly concerned about it. Ahmed was the one closest to being sober.

The biscuits reminded him of Nisha too because her first name was Mariyam. Wait, that was some sort of actress of something. Maybe it was Ibrahim? Nah, it was definitely not Ibrahim. It didn’t matter anyway; the important thing was that it reminded him of her again. Bloody bitch had infested his head!

He walked over to Ahmed’s computer and opened a new notepad file and laid his long fingered hands on the keyboard.

“Uh, where do I start?” He asked stupidly.

“Its usually Dear something,” Ahmed told him expertly as though this was something he did everyday.

“Like Dear Nisha?”

“Whatever you wanna call her!” Ahmed waved his hand around, emphasizing the unimportance of proper naming.

He grinned at his friend’s brilliance and wrote down a few words. He loved how tidy his handwriting looked.

“Tell her you like her tits!” Maaniu called helpfully from somewhere inside the heap of blankets that was Ahmed’s bed.

“Sheesh, how stupid can you get?” Ahmed asked loudly. “That’s sure to piss her off!”

“Well, I don’t get it!” Maaniu argued. “We can tell them that they have pretty eyes and they go off their rocker, but we can’t talk about their tits! That’s like taboo. Why the hell man? Its just physical features, both of them!”

Obviously tired after his little speech, he disappeared into whatever hole he had crawled out of. Ahmed went back to munching his biscuits. He sat for a moment, awash in the glow that comes often when you look at people who are so much stupider than you are. He marveled at his utter superiority over the rest of the male species for a few minutes and then went back to the letter.

* * *

The first thing she did when she came into school was show the piece of paper, or love letter for lack of a better word, to Sheila and Mary.

“Look at this!” She said with a grin, shoving the letter into their hands. The two of them began to read it and Mary soon dissolved into giggles.

“Who the hell wrote this?!” She asked between giggles, “I need to give him an award!”

“A couple of brain cells would suit him well,” She answered in a half agitated tone. “It was Fazal”

“Its sort of adorable in a way you know,” Mary said, cocking her head at the words on the paper. “I mean, you can see he really means what he’s saying,”

“Yes, you think he’s hot, we know, thank you” She snatched the letter out of Mary’s hands. “But I’m not about to let him get away with this! I’m going to confront him!”

“Confront him?” Sheila repeated, looking excited at the idea.

“Yes, I’m gonna go upto him and ask him….”

“…what the hell is the meaning of this?” She bellowed angrily. Fazal was sleeping soundly with his head on his desk. He rubbed his eyes sleepily as he looked up. Nisha shoved the paper under his nose. He gave her a vague smile and took it and gave it a lazy look.

* * *

“What the hell is the meaning of this?”

She was standing surrounded by her friends and who-not. He thought for a moment that he was dreaming. But his dreams are never really this good. And he usually messes up her face in his dreams.

She shoved a piece of paper at him. He smiled and took it. Why the fuck would she give him paper? He had books of his own, and most of the pages were blank anyway. But it was a letter. He couldnt bother reading it so he smiled [as politely as he could] at her again.

“Is this for me?” He asked her sweetly.

“No, that’s the ‘love letter’ you sent me” She said and people around began to giggle. “Is there something wrong with you you crackhead? You dont understand simple english?”

An outburst of laughter this time.

“Love letter!” He repeated stupidly. He looked back at the paper, full of mushy words and such. And the idea that had come to him suddenly came back into his head.

“Tsk, tsk!” He said and started chuckling.

“What in the world is so funny?” Nisha demanded. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

“You’re such an attention whore!” He said, shoving the paper back at her. A collective gasp went through the crowd as he said the ‘W’ word. Nisha’s mouth fell open.

“How dare you!?” She said.

“How dare I?” He said and chuckled. “Nisha, baby, next time you decide to write yourself a letter and say it’s from me, at least try to spell my name right!”

And he was right. It read, in clean print, Fazaeel, not Fazal. And now it was Nisha the crowd was giggling at, she was the one they were taunting, her audacity, her embarrassment. And he watched gleefully as she hung her head in shame and fled.

Revenge is sweet, isn’t it?

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