Tears of Insecurity

Chapter Eight

Previously -

Puttu quickly snapped a picture of them laughing carefree and showed it to them. Once recovered from their little happy spree, Susheela got down and then happily the four of them returned back their homes. That night Garima and Puttu had made sure to tease Susheela as much as possible. Susheela too, had blushed and shushed them up, showing fake irritation.

In the middle of the night, she carefully took Puttu's phone and sent Parmod and her's picture on her phone. Then proceeded on deleting the chat from her brother's phone, leaving no evidence behind. Days later when her and Parmod's bond grew more and more, and as he became even more special to her, she made a frame of that picture and kept it on her desk.

Flashback ends-*
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Susheela smiled as she kept staring at the picture. She noticed how radiant both of them looked in that picture. Their smiles holding all the mischief and happiness out there possible. Things were so wrong in her life, yet his smile held an assurance that made her calm.

Karishma (a fashion designer) who was given the work to complete and bring the file by her boss within the limited time of 20 minutes was panicking and going crazy. It had been almost thirty minutes now when she was finally done completing the file in her hand. She was stressed that her boss is going to throw her out of her job.

She took the file in her hands and ran straight out of her cabin. She ran hastily, bumping into her co-workers and not even stopping to apologise. The people around her gave her a weird look but she didn't care, right now her mind was thinking about all the possible excuses that she was about to puke in front of her boss.

She stood in front of her boss's cabin that was on the 10th floor, huffing, puffing and slightly out of breath. The girl had forgotten that they had an office elevator in their building, taking two steps at a time she climbed up 10 floors!

She knocked on her boss's cabin and waited for her to be called in. She waited for a minute but there was no response. Confused, she knocked again. Usually when somebody knocked on her boss's cabin, her boss would tell them to come in almost immediately. But today she didn't, growing nervous and tensed, Karishma decided to check herself if her boss was okay or not.

Slowly she pushed open the cabin door and got in to see her female Hitler boss sitting on her chair. Now, any other day that would have been the most normal sight to her, but today it wasn't. Because today her boss was smiling, a slight pink tint on her cheeks. She had a photo frame in her hand and couldn't stop smiling looking at it.

Karishma had never seen her boss smile or blush like that. Gulping her saliva, she decided to call her. "Ma'am? Madam?", Karishma was now standing in front of her boss, growing worried as Susheela still didn't respond to her calls.

'Hey bhagwan! Kahi main mar toh nahi gayi na? Madam ko meri aawaz sunai hi nahi de rahi hai, kahi main invisible toh nahi ho gayi na?', Karishma said in her mind, assuming she was dead as her boss had still not taken a notice of her presence.

Karishma moved forward and stood beside Susheela. She peeped in a bit slightly to see Susheela lovingly staring at her's and Pramod's picture. Suddenly, as if understanding the whole situation, Karishma grinned.

'Ohh toh ye baat hai! Madam apne boyfriend ki picture ko nihaar rahi hai. Haa ye sahi baat hai, jab main office hours main apne boyfriend se baat kar rahi thi toh Madam mujh par bhadak padi aur ab khud apne boyfriend ki picture ko dekh dekh kar timepass kar rahi hai! Hey bhagwan! Tu dekh raha hai na, tu dekh raha hai na kaisi nayansafi ho rahi hai teri iss masum aur bholi bacchi ke saath!?', Karishma thought in her mind and dramatically threw her hands up in the air. Having her little chat done with God, she turned her attention back to her boss who was still lost in her memory lane.