And Swapnil tip toes

As she reached the end of the story, she put away the book. Jhumpa Lahiri, why does she not write merry tales, she sighed. She loved Lahiri's prose. In fact she would often go back to the short stories- Interpreter of maladies. What made her read them again, was the details that gave life to each character. Like in the story, Temporary Matter, when she describes Shoba.....

'She'd come from the gym. Her cranberry lipstick was visible only on the outer reaches of her mouth, and her eyeliner had left charcoal patches beneath her lower lashes.'

That is some description she thought. The color of the lipstick. Visible at the outer reaches of the mouth... like so often after a day's work. It gave life to Shoba, this woman back from work and then to gym and then back home.

There was more she had liked, the description of food and cooking itself.

Shukumar gathered onion skins in his hands and let them drop into the garbage pail, on top of the ribbons of fat he'd trimmed from the lamb. He ran the water in the sink, soaking the knife and the cutting board, and rubbed a lemon half along his fingertips to get rid of the garlic smell, a trick he'd elarned from Shoba.

It was all so nice to read, how Shoba would unclip her hair, pry in the kitchen without untying her sneakers. How wonderfully Lahiri brings out reality in fiction, Reena smiled.

But she had not liked reading this story today. She had put the book away with her brows knit in a strange expression. This story was about a failing marriage. About the birth of a dead baby, and how the parents then slipped away from one another.

Reena gently touched her tummy. It was still flat. She had not suspicious when she skipped her menses last month. But her gynacologist had whom she visited yesterday, confirmed that she had concieved. That was a tremendous news, she realized why babies where called a 'bundle of joy'. She felt a lump in her throat, she could just not speak. But she was beaming with joy.

She did not want to tell Yatharth this news over the telephone. Yatharth had gone on his office tour for a month. She would patiently wait, she decided. And then she wondered if they would have a baby boy or a baby girl. She remembered how Yatharth and she had once talked about babies and both shrieked... no way, we are too young to be parents!! And still they had started to talk about names. I will call her Samragyi, the empress, Reena had said. Yatharth laughed and said, she would become Sami to her friends and our parents would never get her name straight, so be ready for " Somu or Somi".. And if we have a boy, but no we will have a girl first, Reena chirped. Ah! do you want an army, Yatharth had laughed heartily. And then he said, we will have a boy, only child. Our dream. He will be ' Swapnil'.

Reena already was talking to Swapnil and telling him that she knew he had tip toed!