Shattered Desires

Chapter Four

*Flashback*

A week later

"What girl this is? No makeup on face." said Lakshmi Aunty. I was yawning at being woken up at 4:30 am for grooming classes. You can't exactly blame me for not wearing makeup this early in the morning!

"Sorry Aunty. I will wake up at 4:00 next time and spend time with my make-up." I said sarcastically. Apparently my sarcasm was still intact even though I lacked from sleep. I cursed my grandmother over and over again for this stupid grooming class thing I had to go to.

"This girl need the grace of girl. Look at her tongue! Look at the slumped shoulders and demon walk. She will have to attend dance classes." said Lakshmi Aunty.

"Dance classes? I can't dance for my life aunty, please don't make me!" I begged her. I was so bad with balance but Lakshmi Aunty forced me to join her best friend's Kathak dance classes, because it had grace and poise in it.

A month had passed, school had gotten busier and I was busy with college applications. Priyanka and I both wanted to stay in state for college and Vikram had also planned on applying to the same colleges as us and some other out of state colleges so he could select where to go after he gets accepted. I had decent grades, a decent GPA and good extra curricular activities so all I needed were some smashing SAT scores and a well written college essay. Ved had become a part of our group and we hung out often. But Ved and I were particularly close. We shared a love for music and ranted about our favorite kinds of music.

"You have never listened to American Music?" He asked me one day as we walked to AP Computer Science Principles.

"Nope." I said with a wave of my hand.

"What have you been listening to?" he asked me in disbelief.

"Hindi and Tamil Songs! Duh." I said, as we walked into the classroom.

"Maya, please go and get a life. Too bad I can't purchase one for you as a gift." he said. I hit him with my book in response.

Meanwhile, I had grown to really like Kathak classes and we were performing a dance drama soon on the epic Ramayana story. I was essaying the role of Sita, angering some of the other experienced dancers but the teacher had dismissed them saying that I deserved the role.

One day during rehearsal, someone was taking pictures, particularly zooming into me. I was too focused on the dance so I could only see a hazy outline of the guy from my peripheral vision. After I finished though, I looked up only to see that it was Ved!

"Ved, what are you doing here?" I asked.

"Taking pictures of you dance!" Ved said, taking another picture of my bewildered face.

"Ved! Quit it!" I said. Parvathi Aunty, who was my dance teacher walked over to Ved.

"Ved, nee vandutiya, nalladhu (you came, that's good)" said Aunty in tamil. She looked at me and smiled. 

"Kanna, this is Ved, my nephew. He has an eye for dance photography and he will be the one doing your photo shoot on Saturday." said Parvathi Aunty. Paati demanded that I should have a photo-shoot of myself so my future husband could look at me as a graceful person. Do not ask me where she gets these ideas, because I am not getting married anytime soon!

These grooming classes didn't really change anything for me except for the fact that I stopped slouching after being so traumatized at the gory images of what would happen to me if I slouched. I still didn't really care for make-up and could not cook anything more than keeping rice in the rice cooker.