Two orange cups

I enter home with a frown, unsettled from the latest catastrophe in my life. I banged a shopping bag on the baggage counter and broke a bottle of soya sauce in it, which got my favourite capri stained. I then drag it all the way to my apartment, staining the floor and the lift. I pick up a newspaper, lying aimlessly between my apartment and my neighbours' (the paper wala is trying to lure one of us to subscribe by dropping the newspaper on no man's land but both of us try not to succumb to pressure). I decide the dates of the newspapers are old enough to dump the leaking bag. I open my home and see the floor cushions stacked rather untidily, arranged so different from how I had left it. I get the scare of my life seeing papers on the dashboard and so neatly pile them up.

I try suppressing my mania for orderliness and rush to the second bedroom to look for a cloth to wipe stains at the door step. I see clothes left on the clothesline since a week. He told me he had washed them a week ago. I tell myself and grunt wondering how long does it take to fold clothes and why has he not. I don't find a cloth but do encounter a cockroach and try exterminating him/her out of my home.

I suddenly realise the door is open and rush back with a cloth lying in front of the wash basin.
It looks dusty but soya sauce is going to make it dirtier so I compromise and wipe the stained floor.

I hate the way the apartment looks and move things here and there to make my presence felt. I suddenly feel like a stranger and uninvited. Tears stream down my cheeks and I start looking into the refrigerator for a chocolate (great antidepressant) but then go for salted gooseberries (helps when you got low BP). I start tracing for my presence around. I see my pics on the dashboard but I have gifted him those so that seems a thumbs down. I see no clothes of mine lying around and that's a thumbs down again.

I finally decide to cook and switch on the lights in the kitchen and there in the corner of the granite table I see two orange cups. The cups we have tea in. He had left mine next to his I felt an unexplainable pleasure surge to my head and make me delirious. He thinks of me every day in this kitchen when he makes tea and cooks, I said to myself with pride. I began humming and cooked dinner.

He came home and we were merrier than ever. He loved the food and joined me to wash the plates. He looked at the cups and said "You know I think of keeping one back inside the cupboard and then get lazy, it's a pain to take it out each time you come". The humming in my head stops and I realise that's just the way he is.

Not that he loves me any less ;)