For the 2018 #AtoZChallenge, my theme is the A-Z of Descriptive Emotions beginning Sunday, April 1, 2018.

A IS FOR ADORABLE

YOUR ADORABLE HUSBAND

By Neel Anil Panicker

“I am so lucky I have found you. I had always wanted someone who I could look up to.”

Rajesh looked at Anjali and half choked on his food: a fish lodging itself on his upper ridge.

“Are you Ok? Can I get you something? Just keep silent for a while

and you will be all right, ok?

Even before Rajesh could react she had raced across the dinner table and force fed him a full glass of water even as she patted his back with the inner palms of her hands.

Embarassed to the core, Rajesh responded sheepishly, “I am fine now. Thanks dear, i just need to remain silent for a while”.

Anjali responded by seating herself beside him and nibbling away at her last morsel of food on her plate __a Special Vegetable Biryani, that too Hyderabadi style, prepared for “hubby dearest”.

Barely lifting his head which now lay buried in his plate full of the ‘speciality’, Rajesh contemplated

on the topsy turn turns his life had taken so far.

As his mind walked down memory lane, his mind filled itself with visions of an impoverished childhood, the struggle to survive and the fight for basic necessities like food and potable drinking water, the agony all the more compounded as even these minimal ‘perks’ were to shared among seven siblings including three junior to him.

Come the teenage years, he had resolved to hack his way out of such crippling poverty and manna came in the form of studies.

Blessed with a natural intelligence and aided by empathetic teachers and a philanpthropic minded Principal, he had winged his way through school and later got into college. Post college, and on the advice of his various benefactors, he had sat for what was “arguably the most strenuous entrance examination in all of India”, IAS, the acronym that stands for the Indian Administrative Services.

The result was there for all to see: Today, at the young age of 24, he had become an IAS officer, commanding a fat salary and undreamt of perks.

The last of those was his marriage to Anjali, the only child of the Muthuswamys, the wealthy industrialist family, one whose name featured in almost every single list of the super wealthy.

Rajesh lifted his eyes and looked slyly towards his week-old bride. She adored him to death.

He had to be careful; very very careful if he were to plan her death.

#neelanilpanicker #fiction #A-Zchallenge2018