All Yours Stranger By Novoneel Chakraborty

All Yours Stranger By Novoneel Chakraborty

Prologue: The photograph of love is sometimes so big that you can’t fit it into the frame of your relationship. If you force it, you are sure to lose some of it. Maybe most of it.Sitting at the bar, Rivanah watched as her boyfriend Danny danced with the ‘other’ girl in a close embrace. Rivanah had promised herself she wouldn’t drink since the next day was Monday and Monday morning hang overs made her feel the world was conspiring to bring her down. Minutes back the three ofthem had been sitting on a couch. It was when Rivanah had stood up to get her Virgin Mojito refilled that the ‘other’ girl Nitya had asked, ‘May I ask your boyfriend for a dance?’ Rivanah had given her a tight smile of acknowledgement. Nitya was one of those people you could never be ‘friends’ with and there was no reason why. But Rivanah couldn’t afford to be indifferent to her because Nitya was her boyfriend’s best friend. On other days, Rivanah neither liked nor disliked Nitya but she hated her whenever she started a statement with ‘May I ask your boyfriend for . . . ?’ Why this seeking of permission? To Rivanah, it always sounded as if the statement was gravid with a hidden taunt for her to decipher.