manshi mamgai. born on 7 July 1997, a monday. a hard worker, average student, plain girl.

not o ne to be talked about too much, unlike some of her more popular friends. she had an isosceles nose, a side of which had been slightly crushed when her father ha d dropped her as a baby. she despised her father. if there was one thing she wanted, it was to never end up like either of her parents. her father was one of the most renowned surgeons in the city, who had a passion for only two things: alcohol and humiliating his family. while she didn't despise her mother as much as she did her father, she d id dislike her for putting up with her husband as long as she had. contrary to t he myth, shyness did not necessarily equal meekness, and manshi knew that were s he ever trapped in a marriage like her mother's, she would have escaped. she loved to gaze at paintings. she felt like she could lose herself in them, pr etend that her father hadn't just told her that she would end up cooking for som e man her whole life, or that her mother had chosen to ignore her husband's word s and had quietly cooked his dinner. she could stare and stare at the image on h er desktop, vermeer's 'girl reading a letter at an open window', and imagine the day when she would leave her stuffy life and travel the world, looking at the p aintings and describing what she felt about each and every one. her favourite colour was red. most of her friends found it surprising, shocking even, seeing as red was the colour of fiery passion, and manshi was as fiery as much as indian drama shows made sense. but her best friend, neha, knew the reaso n for red being such an attraction to manshi. she knew that manshi had always lo nged for something or the other: normal parents, to be intelligent, to have the kind of experiences most girls her age were having, to have a crush on a boy, et c. etc. she knew, without having been told, that manshi, who had never felt a st orm stir up in her heart, longed to be passionate, to love someone so deeply tha t she would be shattered without them. but manshi had never felt that. she had a lways gone with the flow, taking each day as it came, laughing, sighing, talking , working, sleeping. she did not have great or ambitious dreams and goals, and w as worried that there was something wrong with her for feeling that way. manshi mamagai. a simple girl with a complicated soul. a simple girl who wanted to love and be l oved in a relationship equivalent to chuck and blair's from gossip girl. a simpl e girl with simple dreams, who would have liked nothing better than to exchange them for new ones.