A DREAM SHATTERED

You wake up and make tea for yourself and your wife. It is a simple, exceptionally ordinary summer morning. You have a little sweat rolling down your right cheek, which is usual, given you prefer that the AC doesn't remain switched on all night. Also, a kick of heat is necessary for you to present disgust towards your bed, the most favorite thing of your room. As you pick two mugs for yourself and your wife and pour tea in it, it spills a little. A click from your tongue indicates you don't like it when tea spills, but then you take the cloth below which its marked "kitchen platform cloth" and clean it away before she notices. As you bring the mugs to the room, you pick up the newspaper kept over the refrigerator with your teeth, and keep breathing through your mouth so that the saliva doesn't slither out of your mouth into the newspaper, because that would make it shabby and then you'd read that page at the very last or, probably after it's dried. As you enter your bedroom, because you've always kept it a routine to provide tea to your wife while she's still in bed, you softly wake her up, put down the tea in the little stool on the bedside, slide her specs through your fingers towards her so she grabs it easily, and admire the dream-catcher that's hanging right above the bed. It's completely white, as both of you agreed upon while you were buying it in a family trip to Amritsar years ago. But you're exceptionally happy today. You've been wearing a smile or a half smile ever since you're up.

Today is going to be the day your debut book will finally be launched. Today is the day a small crate of beautiful hardcovers arrive at your doorstep. And in the evening, you're going to be interviewed for the same. You're excited, and your face doesn't hold back in reflecting that. Your wife does know about the book launch, but not the book arrival and the interview. You've kept it as a surprise for her. The last thing that could've cancelled the surprises is bad weather, and that, fortunately, isn't happening.

After both of you get dressed for your respective work, you turn the TV on and find something which really unbalances you. In the local news, it shows in a small headline that your book is rated bad. Since you're not a big believer of the news, you leave the controller and switch to your Instagram. You go to all the bookstagram accounts who had pre-ordered a copy of your book and reviewed it, and you find something really mind boggling. You find out that each and everyone of them has considered your book to be a major flop. A waste of money. Some of them have even made YouTube videos describing in detail how bad the book is. In a video you got to hear, "the book is so bad that even if I read it here and spoil all of it, you'd not be sad. You'd actually be happier."

Absolute shock runs inside your head. Goosebumps begin rushing through your body. Your wife is just getting her minimal touch-up on before leaving for work and just before she arrives at the drawing room where you're sitting on the couch, you turn off the TV, and look down towards the cream-colored carpet floor, so that she doesn't get to know about any of that. At least not now. You bid her goodbye in the happiest voice you can conjure, and even though she notices something off about you, she waves it off because she has so much work to do, which she told you about, last night.

Shattered, you look down, thinking what could possibly go wrong. It's taken years to write that book, more than half a decade. Years of traveling, knowing about people, places, their stories, their lifestyle. From the time they woke up to the time they slept, you researched every bit of the people who lived in the places you visited. You discussed with them elaborately whether they'd like their stories told, and they gladly agreed. So you began composing this book. It came out of your heart, this one. And now it's labelled bad. Worse than any other books launched in the last whole quarter.

Tears roll down your eyes. Suddenly you receive a phone call which disrupts your sobbing, and you're told what you've anticipated just moments ago. Your interview has been cancelled. You don't even respond to them, and keep the phone. It's all over, you think. What went wrong? You have no idea.

You spend all your time making yourself go through all of this again and again. Some time later, the book crate arrives, and in it, is present only one book. And its a small sized paperback, smaller than your hand. The crate has a note, which read, "The deal is off!". You're distraught.

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"RIDDIKULUS!"