When she finished her set and sat up, it was the latter. He had moved onto crunches on the rough floor.
————————————————————
Her self-humiliating, mortifying verbal vomit with Samar at the gym could have become a thing of the past. But then, she went to work that morning and realised he had an interview coming up with a local news channel. And she, obviously, had gone ahead and slotted an hour of sit-down with him to go over the questions, groom his answers and… maybe even him.
Amaal was sitting on her desk in the makeshift cabins of the headquarters when she heard his unmistakable voice outside. There were no doors here, just waist-high old-school dividers and glass partitions. Khatriji was old school. His interior choices were just as ancient as him.
“…I will take care of it this afternoon.” He was speaking on his mobile as he reached the edge of her space and stopped. His eyes met hers, but his mouth kept running. “Hmm… hmm. Ok. No.”
With that curt word, no goodbye, no see you, he cut his call. She wasn’t surprised. That was Samar Dixit.
“Hi,” she popped, feeling like a schoolgirl caught sitting on the teacher’s desk when this washercabin,herdesk andher… everything.
“Can we speed this up? I need to be elsewhere.”
Amaal jumped down from her desk. Then repeated his final word before he had cut his call.
“No.”
If she had excepted that would bring him out to yell, it didn’t. He stepped into her cabin, and it shrank in space. Amaal went behind the desk and sat down in her seat, straightening her white cotton shirt. Her jeans were skinny, dark-wash. She did not want to slot herself into the black-and-white employee today. As much as her boss was a black-on-black kind, looking like the mafia.
“Don’t you have another colour?”
“Sorry?” He looked up, settling himself in the lone visitor’s chair.
“Colour. Clothes. It’s always white or black. And either black jeans or cargo pants.”
“I don’t wear kurta-pyjama.”
“You wore them in Srinagar.”
“They weren’t mine.”
Whosewerethey?
“A shame. They looked good.”
“You requested one hour. Was it for this?”
“Among other things. I am styling so many of our candidates, too. Look at Varun, don’t you see a difference in his attire?”
“No.”
“Are you serious?” She sat up.
“Yes.”
“Yes you are serious or yes you noted a difference?”
“The former.”
Amaal hissed in a deep breath. “Ok, here’s what I have been doing with our JMC frontrunners lately. I am not changing their choice of clothing. Most of them are anyway into the kurta and jeans fashion. Which is perfect for the field. All I am doing is getting them to alter the fits, get their hemlines tailored well, pick better colours that A. Are summer-appropriate and B. Complement the KDP blue scarf that they inevitably wear when they go campaigning.”
Samar sat there silently, staring at her.
“Say something.”
“What do you want me to say? Good job.”
