The Story of Two Potlis

Story of Chatori Potli

Ms. Bhatt had a grimly look on her face. She kept pressing her cloth bag closer to her, trying to protect it from the unconscious slow drift of the hairy hand on the smooth left arm handle of the chair to the right side. Her right-hand neighbour, busy on the phone, was oblivious to the happenings. In a fit of rage, she got her right hand to intervene and act as a blockade to the drifting left hand of the ignorant neighbour. Thus protected, she took a sigh of relief and slid the bag’s zipper open with her left hand to peek at the 2 * 2 arrangement of Ziplocks containing - in clockwise direction - sweet namkeen, salted almonds, salted nuts and - her favourite - aluminum foil wrapped poori and aloo sabzi. Satisfied that they were well protected now, she tried closing the zipper but the bag’s sides had spread out like puffed cheeks and she couldn’t get the zipper closed. Harder she tried, more the sides puffed and greatly anxious she grew. In desperation then, she got her right hand to intervene and in that exact moment, the left hand of her right-hand passenger drifted rapidly by its let-free momentum and went onto hit her hands and the bag. Now Ms. Bhatt’s cheeks puffed with anger and her right-hand neighbour, who had been jerked to his left by his hand’s free motion, recognizing the harm his hand had unintentionally caused on Ms. Bhatt, apologized meekly and then turned away to continue his conversation. Ms. Bhatt was outraged at the lack of indifference on his part. And because of that outrage, she got up and occupied a different seat far away from the prying hand of her neighbour.

Story of Social Media Potli

Some sort of pathetic game was going here. There were moving lines, stationary lines, announcements for the moving ones, an irate wait for the stationary ones and a ground level seismic buzz from the ones sitting. Ms. Bhatt was feeling anxious. The aforementioned bag safely secured, she turned her attention to her other bag - the purse. Lying there patiently on her lap, it seemed to call out to her. She looked at it and adjusted her legs to provide a flat base to it. “Your anxiousness’ answer is here”. She fidgeted and a shiver went down through her body. Palpitations began to appear. At the same time, the pathetic game seemed to crowd her out from the little space she was occupying. She clutched her purse and brought it closer to her chest. The anxiousness was overpowering her. Tick-tock-tick. She finally conceded and put her hand in the purse and got her mobile phone out. It looked so peaceful. Her right thumb instinctively entered the pin and opened her world. The pathetic game shunned out. Her right thumb was twitching. It hovered above the different icons. The hovering pace increased and finally clicked on “Facebook” icon. The warmth of her purse, the overshadowing aura of her phone over everything and her eyes confined to the 5” * 2” screen.

*Potli = Bag; Chatori = Mild version of glutton; Namkeen = Salty