Paro

They lived in one of those dungeon like apartments. Hidden in a corner was the mattress which she unfolded in the night and slept upon. Along with her other flatmates, several women living alone together, sharing home cooked dinners of foreign vegetables. Low on fat. Paro was used to staying home all day, all afternoon as the others left for work. She had been laid off, it was 2009. Some said she had been fired, there had been a drunken affair at work. But people say such things, the whispers of the wind shan't be trusted. She was on a semi solid diet those days, to shed some belly fat. Some slurpy wheatish soup she drank two times a day and that was that. In the evenings, she left for the market an hour away, wearing the slippers and capris she had gotten from the weekend flea market and came back with bag full of beans and climbers and creepers of all kind. To be chopped and boiled and eaten with pickle as she sat beside with her bowl of soup. Her boyfriend lived in another town, they had met online. He was younger, still studying. Paro would say, since she wasn't making rent for the last few months, she would move in with her boyfriend as soon as he graduated, with a job and everything. Paro was the eldest of three daughters. Not necessarily pretty, this one. Her face was large with features defined good enough. Sleepy eyes and a nice pair of black lips. Her hair, fell till her waist. Curled in their own insane uneven manner. She would often knot them to have them in place as her heart fluttered each time she imagined the future looking at the night sky through the iron grille ringing their dungeon like balcony, and smoking.