The Corporate Monster ✅

A G I T A T E D

"What are you wearing?!" Krithi asked Aniket. He was dressed in a black suit, a black tie, and a white t-shirt inside. Although he looked handsome, it was not the appropriate clothes for a pooja.

"You don't like it?" He asked, as she tried to remove his tie.

"It's not that I don't like it. It's just that it doesn't go well with this context. If I'm wearing a saree, you're supposed to be wearing a dhoti!" She said, pulling him in by the tie.

"I don't have one."

"Who says you don't have one? I bought one for you on the street shop yesterday. Come." She said, dragging him by the hand.

"Uh, Krithi?"

"Yeah?" She asked, looking for the white dhoti on his side of the closet. While Krithi's closet was entirely color coded, and alphabetized by brand, Aniket's side was a complete mess. Every time Krithi entered the spacious closet, she closed her eyes in disgust looking at the mess Aniket had made trying to 'fix' his side.

"I don't know how to wear a dhoti." The tips of his ears were pink when Krithi turned to look back at him.

"Then how did you wear it on our wedding?"

His ears were a deep shade of pink now, and Krithi wanted to laugh at his cuteness. He shoved his hands into his pockets, eyeing her with embarrassment. "My ma did it for me."

Krithi threw her head back and laughed. "It's a dhoti, Aniket. You can't even wear a dhoti?"

Aniket shrugged. "I've always went to school in trousers or long pants. It's like once in a blue moon that we actually wear dhoti for functions like Diwali and etc. And at one point, we stopped celebrating all that. And the traditions went flying out the window."

Krithi presses her lips. "True. If I hadn't classically learned bharthanatyam and kathak, I wouldn't have learned how to wear sarees."

"Woah, woman. You did a lot of things when you were young."

She twisted his ear. "Are you saying I'm not young now?"

Aniket winced. "No, no, no. I meant, you look young, but you're not young."

She twisted it even more, bringing her lips a inch within his own. The proximity tingled his senses. "Wrong answer."

"Fine, you look beautiful, and you're young, alright?"

"Better." She said, releasing his bruised ear.

Aniket rubbed his ear. "What did my poor ear do to you?" He murmured with a pout.

"What was that?" She asked, looking back at him from her search for the dhoti.

She had organized everything so immaculately, but somehow, the dhoti must've been wedged in within his other messy stack of clothes.

"Nothing." He muttered.

She spotted the white dhoti between one of his grey sweats and pulled it out victoriously. "Here," she exclaimed, unraveling the long white cloth. "Strip." She commanded.

Aniket looked back at the door, and saw that she had closed it before she had dragged him to the closet. He untied the knots on his tie, and took it apart. Except his white t-shirt and boxers, he removed everything and stood like an impatient teenager waiting for his cigarette at the tea-stand as Krithi tied a knot on one end of the dhoti.

"So, tuck this in," She said, handing the tied knot. He tucked it in, and waited for another order. She wrapped the dhoti this way and that before she asked him to tuck the other end. "And that's it." She said, smoothing the rest of the material down the front.