Red T-shirt; Just For A Change

My friend, who was waiting outside my room for me came in shouting with impatience, ‘Now, what is it that you are doing? Come fast!’

‘Abe, why are you standing naked? Showing your muscles to frighten others?’

‘I haven’t got any t-shirts to wear,’ said I, still deciding what to wear, puzzled.

‘You don’t need one. Come like this,’ he snapped. I knew he was very hungry; of course, he always gets hungry as it gets time for dinner. The mess is on the ground floor of the hostel for the employee’s, who are single, and since it’s an employee’s hostel there is no separate hostel for girls, or in a more decent words of gentlemen, for young beautiful ladies.

‘Ah! They all will run away if I go like this.’

‘Come on! Let them see what you have got.’

‘You don’t understand. I haven’t got anything to wear. One t-shirt is dirty; one is the torn one; one I don’t like; one I washed sometime ago and is wet; one I wore to the gym and is smelling of sweat.’

‘That’s why I say, come like this,’ he waited for a split second and continued, 'Or, why don’t you wear the red one, the one you wore yesterday for the movie,' he said that with a sarcastic smile and his face glew with happiness -- the happiness of the triumphed warrior returning from the battlefield.

Just two days ago I had bought this red t-shirt with other two; one green and other blue. We were out shopping in a mall that day when my friend had asked me why I am suddenly buying t-shirts with all colors under the shades of rainbow when I never wear them. Really, I never wore them before; never would I have if this thought would not have occurred to me: ‘this is the only time, imagine after five years, maybe I will be married, perhaps have children’s. Would it be possible for me to wear such bright colors then? And imagine when am grown old, and when I look at youngsters and their modern clothes, and realize that I never wore such colors in my whole life, would I not feel sad then? Maybe I will not, but why leave this only chance that I have got, that we all get only once. Let me wear bright colors. Let me live with the colors, for you don’t know from which moment your life will become bland and colorless.’ It was this thought that has brought a sudden change in me; to wear colorful clothes; eat all varieties of dishes, and every time you go out to eat, eat in a new place; learn about all types of instruments and trees and cultures and languages and people; experience new things, because life is all about change. So, it makes me feel that when I will be old and tired, and will sit down to summarize my whole life, in those late hot afternoons, dozing, before falling asleep, I would be able to go for my last sleep with a happy light heart.

‘Hmm.’ I looked at him, and couldn’t stop myself from smiling too. I took out the red t-shirt from cupboard. Wore it. Made my hair. And walked out with him to the dinner hall.

As we entered the dinner hall, I greeted all my friends with a smile, an occasional smile that we give when we cross a person we know, as they smiled back at me with wagging heads. But there was something different about their smiles, each one of them, something peculiar, it was not the regular ones that I have come to associate them with by now. It was broader, more warmer, that goes deep into the bottom of your heart.

I was taking salad, and keeping them on one side of my plate when another friend of mine came from back and remarked, ‘Red t-shirt, you look too confident today,’ and I could only give a sincere polite smile before he walked away.

When I took a chair, and greeted my friend sitting on that very dining table, he frowned,’ Red t-shirt! You have got a lot of confidence in you today.’

‘Oh, really! I do ? Why? I look confident everyday, every time. Doesn’t I?’ asked I with a bit of anger and a little bit of action to compliment it, hiding my smile that only an experienced actor can do.

‘Haan, you do. But today you look very confident.’ To divert the topic of discussion I asked him with a bit of curiousness where he was in the evening as I went looking for him to his room, and we talked about everything else, leaving red t-shirt aside.

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Whenever you ask someone about them and show an excessive interest (though, it maybe a false interest sometimes) to know what and how it happened to them, and make them feel like an important person, they will always tell you about it, leaving 'other' conversations aside.

'141' words sentence

This is the longest sentence that i have come across; the longest that exists has more that 1,000 words.

"The school sat among maples on a hillside that sloped down to the wide Taganac River, which narrowed and picked up speed and crashed over Bryce Falls a mile downstream near Morse's small rental house, his embarrassingly small rental house, actually, which nevertheless was the best he could do and for which he knew he should be grateful although at times he wasn't a bit grateful and wondered where he'd gone wrong, although at other times he was quite pleased with the crooked little blue shack covered with peeling lead paint and felt great pity for the poor stiffs renting hazardous shitholes even smaller than his hazardous shithole, which was how he felt now as he came down into the bright sunlight and continued his pleasant walk home along the green river lined with expensive mansions whose owners he deeply resented."

Its a single paragraph, from "The Falls" by George Saunders.

Love is a delicious dream

"Love is a delicious dream; why should I bring about my own awakening?"

This is what Ambrose Bierce wrote in 'Beyond the Wall', after the protagonist lost the girl he liked.

One more ...

One more year. One more day. One more Valentines day.

Only when my friend told me what he is planning to gift his girlfriend, did I realise, twenty-two Valentines Day had went past me and now look straight into my face. Twenty-two. Twenty-two is also important because I was born on that day.

Exactly a week is left. Exactly seven days. Seven. What a coincidence! Thats the month I was born in - July. Most of these Twenty-two years went without my knowing the significane of the date, 14 February. It doesnt matter, anyway, because the rest of them slipped through my fingers like sand. I was unable to hold it. The more I tried, the faster it flowed. And was gone.

Futile attempts that I make, though, I know its going to be the same. As it had been, always. Alone.

I dont know why? Everyyear, everytime, as this date arrived I distanced myself from everyone and everything. No more TVs, no more newspapers, no more markets, no more talks. I keep away from everything that reminds me that Valentines day is arriving. I fear to look at it face-to-face, as it smiles straight at me. Maybe I fear someone else being in my life, replacing my first love. I do it to keep myself away from getting closer to someone else. I spend a whole week with the image of my beloved, though she is no more.

And the week has started. From tomorrow there wont be a TV program for me, no newspapers, no going out to the market, no talks. And the last two days I wont even be getting out of my room. No more communication with this world, this letter might be the last.

I know the god will give me enough courage to do what i could not in the past, and I will be with her. In the dawn the sunrays would make her face glow bright, while she would look at the vanishing ship, far in the ocean; and after a long time I would be able to sleep beside her with my closed eyes, while she would caress my hairs with her soft hands. And I will hold the sand in my hand, and this time I wont let it slip through my fingers.