Detestments of Pity (Flash "Fiction")

It was a late monsoon evening in the Deccan. A cool breeze blew outside, carrying on it the smell of rain not far away. Light had just faded, and the sky was still a golden grey when I entered a bougie coffee shop in the heart of the city. The road was alive with traffic, and Butterfly by Smile was ringing in my ears. The blast of the AC, unnecessary in my opinion but not unwelcome, shook me out of my thoughts and I returned my earpods to their case.

I was the first member of our party to arrive, and so I grabbed a table of four and sat. As I waited for my friends and my soon-to-be fiancee to appear, I ordered a slice of cake, and decompressed. I noted that the table opposite me were ostensibly having a work meeting, but their laptops were switched off and they were talking about cricket. At the table to my right, a tired looking young man was periodically glancing up, forlorn, at the door to see if his date had walked in. Perhaps he'd been stood up? That's what it felt like, at least. Then, I turned my attention to the world outside. Rickshaws, the buzzing bumblebees found on every street in every Indian metropolis, were puttering along at greater speeds than perhaps should have been allowed. Sedans and hatchbacks were driving more calmly, with maddened scooters and bikes weaving through their ranks.

It is a miracle, I thought, nothing less than a miracle that Indian traffic doesn't claim more lives than it does.

So lost in my thoughts was I, that I barely noticed being checkmated in the game of chess I was playing on chess.com. Annoyed, I turned my phone off. Then, came the swishing of the door. My fiancee had entered, and we launched into conversation. Not long after, our friends - we all went to the same school long ago - walked in.

Time, then, flowed like water.

The group of colleagues paid and left, having achieved nothing. The forlorn man's date arrived at some point, and I noted their conversation was muted. The staff were apologising for delays to another table, the traffic outside still rang out their chorus of horns and engine revs, headlights flitting about in the window like torchbugs in a jam-jar. The dying evening light had finally disappeared, replaced by the pea-soup blackness of a smoggy early night. The AC had made the room really quite cold, and my fiancee refused my offered jacket. Our fries, coffees, and food came, and, in the midst of this all, our little group was talking about the job market in the West.

Here, I suppose, it's important to note that for a certain class of Indian, there is no hope placed in anything as there is in finding a white collar job in the West. My fiancee had been lucky, extremely lucky, to land a job that paid her extremely well in EUR before she even graduated. I had been less so. The year prior, my fiancee noted, I had spent in looking for a job. Finally, after a great depression, I found a freelance job.

It wasn't enough to pay the bills, and so I returned. I have been happier since, she said, and she spoke the truth. I work now in the family business (advertising, you see - the greatest capitalist art-form), and am very good at what I do. To this information, my friends reacted immediately. To my surprise, they reacted with cavalcades of pity.

"Yes, he seems so much better!" he said.

"Honestly, he's really powering on!" she said. "It's like... he's finally free! He looks so much happier!" she continued.

They meant well, I'm sure. But these comments, these observations, were directed not to me but to my fiancee. As though I were not present. As though I were a sick child, whose health has just begun to show signs of improving. Wasn't I so very brave?

"And honestly..." she said again, with a great deal of love and kindness. "I can really see the difference."

"Yeah!" he agreed. "He looks better, walks better, dresses better... I mean... last year, he was just... dragging himself along. I'm really so glad he's back! The rat race isn't worth it at all!" said my friend, once again, to my fiancee.

They're not wrong, per se. But I had no idea they pitied me.

What a detestable thing I was last year, I thought. A creature to be pitied... a fate worse than any misery I could have immersed myself in!

Then the conversation shifted, and, hours later, we broke for the night.

A passing, fleeting evening. But I shall remember that pity, and the creature that begot it shall forever haunt me.

I am better now, yes... but... at what cost?

****

Just a very quick story, written in exactly 7 minutes. Kinda based on a conversation I had recently. I don't much write literary fiction, but I hope this one was good! My main questions:

1. How was the prose?
2. Did the character immediately feel real?
3. Did the monologue read realistically?

Aside from that... how was it in general?