21st Century Life

Silence isn’t something we both are used to. Even on the most depressing of days, there was at least a word or two that would break the grim atmosphere. But today, we knew we hit rock bottom when we sat at our seats and quietly ate our dinner for five entire minutes.

‘Daya...’ Kaashi said as she broke the silence, ‘what are we going to do?’ This is our way of letting the other know, ′I am screaming on the inside, help me already!′

I usually hate giving negative answers. No idea, sorry can’t help, I have always tried to skip on them and try to give constructive, articulated advice to help my friend who is in distress. But sadly, it turned out that I am not that great at giving advice. Nevertheless when Kaashi asks me something or when I ask her something, we always make sure to give some opinion to help the other. But not today.

‘I have no idea,’ I replied with a dull sigh.

She whimpered helplessly while letting her head fall onto the table. ‘We are so screwed!’ she cries. I choose not to reply and quietly return to my food, it took her a few seconds to realize that. She got back up while throwing a cold stare at me. ‘Would you stop eating for a second? We are having a serious discussion here.’

‘What do you want me to say?’ I ask her bluntly.

‘Tell something. You are the guy who always has a plan. Are you seriously telling me you don’t have any?’

‘I do... or at least I thought I did.’

‘Well?’

‘I don’t know. Back in college, everything felt plausible. But now...’

‘... now it feels scary to try anything, right?’ she completed.

She was one hundred percent right. Being in college felt like having a safety net underneath me. I could try anything and failure just meant a lesson to be learned. But now, failure was way scarier, I had no idea what would happen if I had to face it now.

‘It has been one entire week and look at us,’ she commented.

‘Only one week, right?’ I tried to put a positive spin on it. ‘Pretty sure everyone from college is sitting in their homes right now.’

‘Yes, but they have a plan!’ she tried to make a point. ‘Some have a job, others are planning for their masters... and look at us. Having dinner from our parent’s pockets.’

Oh man! that hit me right in the heart. I didn’t quite realize how my expression changed but it invoked an instant reaction from her. ‘I know this sounds harsh. But we got to face it.’

‘You are right. We are completely lost.’

My nerves went numb, my chest grew cold and my head went blank, so this is how it feels to hit rock bottom. It was almost like he could read our minds, but at that moment, when we at the lowest, my cellphone rang. I quickly pulled it out to see that it was from my father.

‘It is from dad,’ I said to her, for some odd reason.

‘Who else will call you?’ she replied, trying to be witty.

‘Hello?’ I answered the call.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘I am at the corner restaurant. What happened?’

‘Is Kaashi with you too?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then put me on speaker.’

I follow his instruction. ‘What happened?’ Kaashi whispered. I had no idea either.

‘Hi Kaashi.’ my father greeted.

‘Hi uncle. How are you?’

‘I am fine. I wanted to talk to you about something important.’

‘Definitely, what is it uncle?’

‘It is something we best discuss face to face...’ we both had no clue what he wanted to talk about. ‘I don’t want to keep you both guessing. I do know how you both are feeling right now. Having just come out of college and all, so I would like to speak to you both about it.’

Oh no!, I panicked. ‘Tell him your busy, tell him you are busy!’ I warned her but she threw it right out the window. ‘Oh yes, definitely uncle. We too wanted some advice.’ she replied to my dad.

‘Fantastic. Shall we meet for lunch?’

‘Oh sure uncle.’

‘Alright. We will see you at our house.’

‘That is fine by me uncle. Thank you very much.’

‘Take care. Daya, be back before nine today.’

‘Yeah, yeah. I will be back soon.’

‘Are you crazy?’ I screamed.

‘What is wrong with talking to your father about this?’

‘Two jobless people talking to a parent. I wonder how it will all go wrong?’

‘Dude! Your father has way more experience than us. It is not like we have any bright ideas.’

‘Yeah... but he will just ask us to get a job.’

‘Maybe that is only fit for us,’ she replied bluntly. ‘Look, we both are not really capable of thinking right now. Let’s talk to him and I am sure he will give us some good ideas.’

I let out all my frustrations with a dull sigh. Accepting my fate I said, ’fine. Let’s give it a shot