The killer smile which took him to a different world

She was back at her house. She couldn't forget what she had done. She was awake unusually early in the morning. She heard the knocking sound of the room's door. She got up from her bed and opened the door.

"You're awake, so soon" said her brother and entered the room. She didn't reply. He walked in and started to search the place. She silently looked at him. "I need your charger. Mine is not working" he said and kept looking for it.

She didn't reply. She was lost in her thoughts. Or she was just blank. "Hello madam", he yelled to get her attention. He waited for her response looking at her face.

She came back to reality. She could see that he had been searching for something. "Do you want something", she asked. "Charger, your charger", he said.

She just pointed at her pillow, and said, "there, below it". He moved towards the pillow. She slowly moved towards the window. He took three pillow and found the charger there. He took it with his other hand.

"Why do you keep your charger below the pillow", he asked gently placing the pillow back in its position. Since she didn't reply, he looked at her. She was approaching the window. He gazed at her as she reached the window.

She slowly moved the curtain away and let the Sun rays fall on her. She felt cleansed by the purity of Sun rays. She closed her eyes, raised her head up and allowed the rays to cleanse all her sins. She felt that it would take multiple births before all that she had done would be cleansed.

He walked near her. "Oh! Dear sister. Is this the first time you're looking at the orange Sun in the morning", he asked. She didn't respond. He realised that she was into a different world inside her mind. He didn't wanna disturb her.

He looked at the Sun and remembered all that had happened. He took a deep breath trying to digest the facts.

"How weird", she said without opening her eyes. "Or is it ironical", she asked to herself. "I don't know what to feel about it. It's strange, but not in a likable way", she said and came back to her consciousness. She turned towards him. He looked at her with confusion.

"Is it an irony", she asked. He couldn't make sense of anything that she was saying. With the confused tone he argue, "what are you speaking about".

"There was this movie in which the lead actor says, "Whenever she knows I'm not well, she gives a killer smile. That smile will make me forget all the pain. I would go to a different world". My husband was also in pain when I gave him a killer smile. After a moment, he felt no pain. He was into a different world", she said with a mild smile on her face.

He couldn't bear it. She was totally silenced. She looked at his face and realised the actual meaning of what she had said. The smile on her face vanished. Her head went low. She thought about how cruel she had been. A small drop of tear fell from her eyes.

Should we hate 90 ml as much as we hate it now?

Before going to the topic, let me share a small experience of mine with a bus driver.

During Pongal 2014, I was rushing to home from Chennai (where I was studying), and finally I got into an SETC, where the driver offered me to sit behind him on the bench which is supposed to be conductor's sleeping place. He drove it so fast that we reached Tirunelveli in 10 hours (the average journey in SETC takes about 13.5 hours). So, this is a story about a super-driver, not ordinary men.

During the journey, whenever he felt sleepy, he started telling me his past journeys and the interesting characters, whom he had met on bus. There was one interesting story in that, in which he said how a girl fell in love with him, and he had to advice her to find a better person, because he was already married.

He didn't stop there. He kept putting his arguments that women had changed a lot in the past ten years, which was unacceptable. I thought of being the devil's advocate and asked him why he felt so. His reply was, “Think about men before ten years. We were wearing shirt and pants. Men today are also doing the same. But women before ten years were following culture and wearing saree. Today's women wear Chudithar and jeans. That's wrong”.

I stopped my conversation right there, though I wanted to ask him, “Don't men have any sort of cultural wear, which they should be following because our ancestors were wearing that”.

That's a brief introduction to the mentality of a majority of men, in today's India (or Tamil Nadu in specific). I'm confident about men that men wouldn't comment, “Don't you dare generalize us. We all are different”, like how a group of women commented on my post in July 2014. I know men have other weapons against such writings.

Coming to the movie, it was of course a nonsense movie. I can give you all that. Despite that should we hate it as much as we hate it today? That's the important question (because that's what I've written in the title).

The reasons men put forward to hate it as much as they do now seem invalid of all sorts. Here's the list of reasons (or questions raised) and why they're so invalid.

1. Women are like God to us

First of all, if women are Gods, build a temple and worship them. They're more than equal to you all. Don't even imagine having sex with them. Imagine no sex, no flirting, no cooking, no send-off, no carrying your child, no taking care of children etc. Oh! You didn't mean that kind of God. You just meant the God, who would do whatever you ask for. I'm sorry. I didn't know the definition of God.

2. How can you say that all women drink?

Nobody says all women drink. Not even all men drink. We watch movies in which the lead roles have to drink to show that they're socially superior. There was no criticism when Nayantara drank in Raja Rani. There were many such movies. Why now? Was that because, housewives drank? The movie didn't show that every housewife drinks. What if the same rule is applicable to men? What if we ban movies from showing men drink? That would be so alien.

3. Is drinking the only equality you want?

No. There's a lot they want. They ask for freedom to choose what they wanna do with their own life. It should be their choice whether or not to drink. The same applies to men.

4. It's not in our culture

Culture is so undefined for men. Is there even a culture for men? What if men choose to follow culture and from tomorrow, everyone would wear only dhotis to wherever they go? Is it even imaginable? Why culture is so focused on women when it doesn't speak even a word about men? Does culture accept men to drink and smoke? Does culture allow men to stalk? What else does culture allow men to do?

5. Why don't you take a porn movie instead?

Because they don't want to. Leave the adult movies for men. What about mainstream movies that should mandatorily have an item song, and at least one songs where the divine disciplined cultured white skin goddess actress have to do a skin show? Should everyone start doing porn movies?

6. There's gonna be family audience

Family audience don't have to go to this movie. The trailer shows all adult content, so that the audience can choose whether or not to go to the movie. Cinema is not something of a need which you could not restrict to everyone. Frankly, we can't really take family to any movie, because we don't really know when a hot actress would appear and let me stop this here. Peranbu, Thadam, Thirumanam and a few other great movies were running alongside this movie, but unfortunately the great movies saw lower croud than this movie. Unfortunately...

7. Cinema is an art

Wow! Finally I heard someone say it. The same person had chosen Maari 2 over Seethakathi because cinema was …Wait a minute. What?

8. Youngsters would get spoiled on seeing this

Ok. That's true. There was an youngster in my area. He watched Mankatha movie, and started to gamble, cheated on his girlfriend, stolen her father's money, and killed many people. Why is this rule not applicable to other socially irresponsible movies?

9. Can you let your children to watch this movie?

Why would anyone take their children to adult movies? At least theatres don't allow that. The people who ask such questions should really stop watching Bhagyaraj movies at night.

10. Can you show this movie to your parents?

Nice question. Anyone can show this movie to their parents as much as anyone can explain Tamil song lyrics to their parents.

11. Women are not prostitutes

I think this person means “not all women are prostitutes”. Everyone agrees to that. Even in the movie, there was no prostitute. There is no connection between partying and sleeping with everyone. Also, for the convenience of audience, most of the party scenes in the movie were “girls only parties”.

12. A mother like you should not take such a movie

When fathers watch such movies, why shouldn't a mother make such movies? Also, rules are applicable only to mothers and not to fathers.

13. Why don't you learn from Kanaa, 36 Vayadhinile, or Irudhi Sutru? They're also women empowerment movies?

Is it possible for all male directors to create movies like Edhir Neechal or Sarvam Thala Mayam? When most mainstream movies are about men partying, enjoying and living their life as they're, why restrict women from doing the same? Women need to live a life. Not everyone wants to drink. The same way not everyone wants to become a collector, a cricket player, a revolutionary or an achiever. They just wanna live their life.

14. Movie encourages women to drink and acquire other bad habits

Let me think. When was the last time such a criticism was placed when a man drinks or smokes? In nineteen forty? Or eighteen twenty maybe? OMG!!! Never. Drinking is bloody injurious to health. No matter who do it.

15. Women speaking about their private parts

Remember the best comedies in Tamil cinemas, especially the ones in which Santhanam is involved?

Technically, men speaking about women's private parts should be considered more vulgar than women speaking about them.

Now, let me be a socially acceptable good person. The movie is utter nonsense. The portrayal of Oviya as a smiling beauty is just like every other dumb heroin in Indian cinema. She is always high and smiles (and carries an over enthusiastic and super excited body language) for no reason.

Everyone has their own problem cliche as in all other movies. They tried to address untold problems of women's married life, but they were super exaggerated, just to justify their drinking habits.

There's this point, which needs to be addressed all the times. Even in this movie, women need men's protection to live the life as the wish. There should definitely be a compromise. They can't have it all, and then ask men to be their protectors. Men have other work to do than protecting women.

It is so socially irresponsible. Leave that. The negatives about the movie are way too high, but they're not worse than any other commercial movie. If anybody can enjoy a cheap commercial movie, they could really enjoy this too.

Your smile is my melting point

After a few days the friends had met again. After twelve minutes of awkward silence and twenty nine minutes of unnecessary introductions, they started to speak about the murder.

"You should have tried hard", he said. "Hard? What type of hard are you saying", she asked him.

"The type of hard, which would be more tolerant to all forms of evilness", he replied. She started to say something, but then she stopped, because she knew that he was not ready to listen.

"Please tell it", he said. "You're not ready to listen. You're gonna blame me anyway. Why should I", she asked.

"That was before a week. I've thought over things. I could understand that you've been in a stressful situation. Just tell me your point", he replied.

"How often have you seen me behave like a human", she asked. "Not quite often. Actually never as per my memory", he replied.

She moved away. She took a bag and opened it. After searching it for a while, she took a piece of paper and showed it to him. "You know I'm not so strong in science and poetry, but I still managed to do this", she said as she walked towards him. She handed over the paper to him.

He said, "Firstly this is unbelievable that you're making it dramatic, instead of just speaking about it. That's so like humans", and opened up the paper to read the contents.

He read it loud. It was written, "Mercury melts at -38° F". He stopped it right there. He turned towards her and asked, "How many times to tell you? Farenheit is simply a stupid unit of temperature measurement. Why don't you use Celsius? What makes you feel that Farenheit is more convenient".

She paused for a moment, because she wasn't expecting that from him. "You're unbelievable", she said and continued, "It doesn't matter. I'm not writing any scientific formulas to use convenient units. Please read further".

"Whatever", he said and continued reading, "Gold melts at 1948 °F. Iron melts at 2800 °F. I melt at the glance of your smile".

He started to smile. There was a moment of peace on his face. He slowly turned towards her, and asked, "You've done such a wonderful thing, but why didn't you give it to him".

She replied, "I tried to be a human. This was not my first attempt. Many of my attempts have failed. But this time", she paused to think about the right words.

"What happened this time? This letter could have changed everything. What stopped you from doing it", he asked.

"The very fact that he literally melted before I could tell him about how his smile was melting me", she said. There was a silence again. He was trying to understand what could have happened.

She continued, "That day he said something pleasing. So, I did this in his absence to surprise him. But, what he meant with his sentence meant something unpleasing. I lost all my temper at once and punished him. He melted. Actually he didn't. He got burnt. It would have been awkward, if I had told him about I'm being melted by him at that moment. So, I chose not to".

"Years ago I thought you're quite predictable and needed a small inspiration to change everything. But, I was wrong. There's a lot more involved in it", he said.

And the awkward silence filled the room.

Loved him every second

"It is unbelievable that you would kill him", he said. "Why so unbelievable? It was like a reflex. I couldn't tolerate his torture anymore", she replied. He frowned at her angrily and turned away.

There was silence for quite a while. Then he asked her, "Do you remember the gift that I gave you on your wedding". She replied, "Yes. It is hanging right before you on the wall". "And the note attached with it", he asked. "Of course. How could I forget that", she asked. "How could you", he asked. She tried to reply, but he stopped her right away.

"I still couldn't believe it. I never thought that you would break your promise. I trusted you so much", he said. She turned towards him, he was facing away. "Look at me. Look at me", she yelled. She turned his face towards her as he was not responding.

"I did not lie. I did not break your trust. This guy was so unbearable. It was your mistake. I told that I as comfortable alone. You convinced me to marry him. Him, you know what kind of awkward creature he was", she continued.

"It doesn't matter how he was. The one thing I told you to change was to be tolerant to everything. You broke my trust. You don't remember, what you promised. Do you", he asked.

"Why wouldn't I remember it? The note you had attached to the gift. Yellow color paper with violet writing on it. "Leave everything. Love him every time the second hand touches a marking". How would I forget it? I still remember it", she replied.

"So, you loved him and yet you killed him", he questioned her. "No. I didn't love him. Not as much as I hated him", she replied. He was exhausted with her contradictory replies.

He just moved away. He wondered how she could remember everything about the note, but still couldn't do what was said on that. He felt like his efforts were in vain, and there was no purpose to continue his life.

She moved close to him. She said, "Listen. I loved him whenever the seconds hand touched a second marking, but I hated him every other time. In the clock, the area of blank space is way higher than the area of second marking. So, the hate was obviously a lot more".

He was even more shocked. He looked at what kind of blunder he had done by not saying directly to love him all the time. His choice of words were poor.

"There is no fault with me. It was all him", she continued. He could not reply. His brain seemed to have paused for a moment. There was silence in the room. There was horrifying silence in that room.

Laugh might bring a love

She was really a peaceful soul. She never actually got angry on anything. She knew how to control her emotions. She was a master in patience. She would not even use a harsh phrase against anyone. Not even for defense.

She was calm and settled, but so silent in a bizarre way. She rarely had any conversations with her husband. He would either be on call, or busy with TV, and other works. The occasional conversations that would happen between them were of the preferences and important updates.

Though they did not interact with each other, everything in their life seemed so synchronous. Things were so smooth and without any differences. "What do you want for dinner", she asked. "Cut my head and cook it", he shouted.

She was silent and waiting for his anger to reduce. He cooled down after a moment and walked towards the kitchen. In a way to explain what she had done wrong, he said, "Don't you even know what I like? Why do you expect me to tell this everyday? I should write a book about me and make you read it. Maybe then there won't be this problem", he said.

She was confused and clueless about how she should respond to it. He wanted to make her comfortable. So, he thought of making a joke, because he thought she would fall in love, if he made her laugh.

He thought of showing off that he had a great sense of humor. After thinking for a while and couldn't get anything funny, he looked at her. She was still calm and cleaning up the mess as if she was born to do only that work.

He sort of gained a sense of pride. For a moment he wanted to prove that he was supernaturally intellectual, and he still married her, who knew nothing more than household works. He thought that maybe if he could make an intellectual comedy, she would be impressed and happy.

As he was thinking to frame the intellectual joke, he started to smile. There was a sign of excitement on his face. He asked her to come near him. Then he said, "You know something? If I kill your parents, I wouldn't go to jail". She could not believe that such words would come from his mouth. To confirm what she had heard, she asked, "what".

He couldn't control his laugh anymore. He burst out laughing and continued, "because it is a murder only if their bodies are found. I would hide them secretly and file an FIR that they are missing". He continued laughing out loud.

She paused for a moment without knowing how to respond to him. She couldn't even understand his intent in attempting to make such a statement. He saw that she did not react. So, he said, "I know you won't understand this joke. Go back to work". He laughed and laughed as she moved back to her work.

You look exactly like your mother

The next morning when he woke up, she was already brisk and cleaning the room. She had turned off the fan and cleaning the room for a long time that she was sweating out badly. Her face was dirty due to the dirt.

As she found him waking up from the bed, she went near her and said, "Wait a moment! I am cleaning the other room. Please stay here till then". He gave a disgusting look on seeing her that way. It felt that he had been betrayed by her parents that she was a beautiful woman. "It is all makeup and scent. I should have married a scent bottle instead", he murmured to himself, because he didn't wanna hurt her by saying it loud.

As he tried to wake up from the bed, he slipped a bit. She tried to catch hold of him, but he slipped from her hands also, and fell back on the bed. He looked at her up and down. He turned his face off her. He noticed that when she tried to hold him, the sweat and dirt from her hands had stuck with his arms. He wiped that with the bed sheet and swiftly moved towards the bathroom.

She could not do anything, but to stay calm. She seemed to have disturbed. "Towel" his sound reached her ears. She went to the other wash basin, washed her hands and brought his towel. He seized it from her and closed the bathroom door.

She went back to clean the room. Once, she had finished her work, she freshened up and came back. He was waiting for breakfast by then. She warmed the food, which she had prepared earlier and served him.

After eating, his mood had calmed down. There was a bit of smile on the edge of his lips. She looked at her face and realized that she was not ugly as he thought she was. As he was staring at her face for a long time, she asked him if he had wanted to say anything.

"Nothing", he said and she turned away. "You just look like your mother", he said. She couldn't believe her ears. She realized for the first time in her life that her husband had some feelings for her. As she smiled, her eyes were filled with tears of joy. It was the first time, she heard something of that sort from him.

She turned towards him, and asked, "Do you really mean it". "Yes, not just look. You even behave like your mother" he answered. Her happiness knew no bound. All the sufferings and pain, she had suffered flew off in that one moment. She fell in love him. He was wrong when he thought that she would fall in love when she would laugh. Instead it was the tears that brought out her love for him.

After a small pause, he turned towards her again, and continued, "Look at you. Fat and dumb, just like your mother. And those wrinkles on your forehead. Were you born old? You both look to be of the same age. No sense of humor, foolish enough to not understand how much I had sacrificed to have you as my wife. You are blessed that you are living such a luxurious life. Without makeup and scent, I cannot really come near you. I think this also has inherited from your mother. Don't know how your father is even managing with her. She is as dumb as you, or maybe even dumber. I hate my life".

She couldn't believe that it was happening. She was frozen to a stone. Her senses failed, her heart beat increased heavily. Her peace was totally broken. Tears started to flood from her eyes. That was the breaking point of her. She felt dead by his words. She became a body without soul. She fell down as she couldn't breath.

When she woke up, he was spilling water on her. "Thank God! You didn't die here. Otherwise who would go to police station, court, jail etc. You could not even take life tips and suggestions to be a better person. I don't know how you're gonna survive in this world. Now get the bed ready. I don't have time to advice you all the time", he said and pulled her up.