The arrival of Friday brings the new prompt from the lovely Ronovan of Ronovan Writes for his Fiction Friday Challenge. Read more about it here.
This week’s prompt.
Challenge This Week: Write about a family gathering. I know that sounds like non-fiction but by writing pieces like this you tap into emotional and sensory experiences you use for other writings. An example of this would be a short piece I did quite some time ago called My Ocean, My Lover. No Word Count limit this week, just no book lengths please.
On The Shelf
I had been summoned home.
Another family function.
Great.
I had finished university a few years ago, and had managed to secure a pretty amazing job, even if I do say so myself, at a high flying marketing agency in Central London.
Living with two other girls, in a little, but very expensive flat in Shoreditch, I had got totally into the independent woman’s lifestyle, gorgeous clothes, nights out, a good salary… and now this call from home.
Now people would be happy to be going home, to see the family, and that would have been me too, a couple of years ago, but now things were different.
We had been invited to a large family gathering, to celebrate some milestone birthday of a cousin of mine, and I love a party as much as the next person, but I knew there would be a totally different feel to the whole event.
You see this wasn’t the first function I was going to as a graduate. Having graduated means, in most Indian mummies heads, that I was ready for marriage. So as I walked in, I would be being appraised by certain people with regards to my suitability for various boys of a certain age that they knew.
But the thing was, I didn’t want to get married. Not yet anyway! I had only just managed to get away from home, after living through my university years at home too. It had taken so much convincing to get my parents to realise that me moving to London wasn’t a bad thing, and all the talk of marriage proposals would start mum and dad off again, about me getting older, and not being settled, like all the other girls of my age.
That’s if I even get looked at… I mean come on, I was 26 now, practically mouldy in comparison to the fresh 21 year old meat that would be there! Oh well, let’s see what happened.
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Oh it is painful, you know, sitting here, swirling the ice in my glass, trying not to make too much eye contact with the old biddies! I just about convinced my brother to get me a Bacardi and Coke… no one would know, it was just Coke to them, but I needed a fortifier.
My reliable family informer, a younger cousin, who is in awe of my ‘London-Life’, was telling me the latest gossip, about me! Apparently, I was shacked up with some man in London, which is why I wasn’t agreeing to any proposals, according to Pritam Aunty. Seriously? Just because I was not interested in her nephew? Why can’t people leave me alone!
But looking at my parents, and their downcast eyes, I do wonder, should I really be thinking about settling down? They look so upset, and it’s like a light has gone out in their eyes. Damn the family gossip queens!
Ritu 2015
But I Smile Anyway... 