Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Simple dialogue, Complex reactions

It was raining so hard that day. Nothing was visible beyond a metre or if you were Superman, two metres.

Arjun was seated in his desk wondering if he could close out the stall earlier today because of the rains. But then, he couldn't go home because of the rains, so there was no point doing it. He checked, cross-checked and checked the finances for the day again. Everything was perfect. Sales had been pathetic in the last few days, but he didn't really care. After all, he was seated at the dairy stall at the gate of the biggest dairy in the state and they couldn't care less about the revenue from their single most insignificant stall. Why? Because this was in the middle of nowhere, usually frequented only by people visiting the dairy for business or those school kids who are brought here in the name of an 'excursion'.

Today, thanks to centimetres of rain, he had nothing to do.

"Hello" A voice out of nowhere scared him to death. There was a man in a dark raincoat at the counter, nearly camouflaged by rain.

A customer? in these rains? Probably not.

"Yes? What do you want?"


"Milk, probably"


"..."


"Milk."

A customer, after all.

"How many litres?"

"How many do you have?"

He was stunned by this cross-question. He continued, though.

"Immediately, (pausing for a moment) I have around..."

"No, no...", sounded like he was laughing a little. "...I was asking about the entire dairy"


"..." Stunned was certainly the word.

"You don't know?"

"Tho.. Thousands of litres, sir."

The stranger continued calmly."How many of it can you load into one of your lorries in the next ten minutes?"

"I really don't understand. This is not where you discuss big orders. You can..."

(Interrupting) "No no. Look here, I'll give you 1000 bucks. Can you give me 1000 litres in 20 minutes?"

Arjun felt that there was a sarcastic tone, there. Definitely.

"No, Sir. Half a litre costs 12 bucks. For 1000 rupees, you will get only around 83 litres."

"Sigh", he paused. "I am trying to save you 1000 bucks here with this transaction. Never mind."

"..."

"...and I'd leave for home, even in these rains, within the next twenty five minutes if I were you." ...and the guy turned around and walked.

Arjun kept looking at him as he faded into the rains at a distance.

Today, in spite of centimetres of rain, Arjun had a lot of things to do.

-The End, literally?-

NOTE: Off the top of my head. took 10 minutes. Don't expect even the regular poor quality. This should have been at the top of the post, you say?

2 comments:

  1. Dude, are you trying to guage people's reaction to a precursor????
    Would prefer a complete post from u... though this one in its own is good but as had been expressed in buzz by many, initiala ena sola varanu puriyarthuke time aagudu... :P

    olungu mariyadaya do one full post...already u have left that coll experience thing hanging somewhere... :P adan world cup mudiya pogudhu la apuram unaku ena vela, blog panu :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmm.

    Imagine that there is a bomb in that campus that'll go off in 25.

    Read again :D

    ReplyDelete

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