Be Connected - Kalai Selvi Arivalagan (macos ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Chapter 1

Arun stretched himself and looked around. Except for the sound of the revolving fan, everything looked silent. For more than ten days he had a vague feeling of someone following him wherever he went. This made him nervous.

The words he saw in his dream trailed long before his mind’s eye.

“It wont b long, b4 i get u by ma side & jst hold u, tease u, squeeze u. Tel u whtz been on my mind.”

His mobile phone beeped this SMS message not in real, but in his dreams. He could remember those words pretty well even then and they fluttered through his thoughts again and again.

After that day’s trip, when his friends asked him a treat for his marriage engagement, he had to take them for dinner to the best restaurant in the town. When he reached his home it was past midnight and there were no one on the empty streets.

While he removed the latch of the compound gate, a whiff of cold air passed through his face. The sweet smell of jasmine flowers in the midnight breeze brought a smile on his face. Arun pressed the calling bell and waited for his mother to come and open the door.

When Arun’s mother opened the door, Arun felt someone moving behind him noiselessly but he ignored and stepped inside.

While Arun slowly moved into a deep sleep, powerful whiff of perfumed air once again moved past the walls of the house. The strong wind moved the leaves and let them rustle together.

A powerful whiff of perfumed air swept past him with an admiration. His sharp facial features always demanded attention from girls who swarmed around during peak hours. His cheeks, jaw line which are perfectly masculine never failed to stir the emotion of a girl with a glance from his brilliant eyes. Irrespective of ages his presence always invited scores of glance to justify how strikingly he lit the place with warmth and love. His gaze simply locked the other person and literally sent a warning that he is not an easy person to meddle with.

Though Arun slowly dripped into deep sleep, his sub-conscious mind could alertly feel whatever that happened around him. His wrinkle free bed slowly crumpled and an invisible hand slowly drifted toward his forehead. His body lay there still, except for the rhythmic movement of his chest with the air he inhaled and exhaled every time.

Arun never had the habit of covering his head with the blanket while sleeping. His facial features made him look handsome even in the sleep. Arun never rolled on his bed to get the sleep. The moment his head touched the pillow, he will immediately go to sleep. As his job mostly involved physical work, when he went to bed he always felt tired and needed complete rest.

“It wont b long, b4 i get u by ma side & jst hold u, tease u, squeeze u. Tel u whtz been on my mind.”

Somewhere deep in his subconscious mind, these words got repeated again and again. Unlike the messages he received from his fiancée, these words floated in the air and someone kept on repeating those words again and again into his ears.

A screaming sound from the garden shook him up. His face smeared with perspiration made his heart palpitate faster. He heard the sound of someone jumping down from the roof, and felt relieved when he found out that it may be a cat. His eyelids heavy with sleep forced him to stay on bed and he once again drifted into deep sleep.

The same thing continued next also. From 2 am in the morning till the early dawn he could hear the wailing sound of the cat. He peeped out of the window and saw a female cat roaming here and there. For more than a week, he constantly heard the wailing sound of their neighbor’s cat.

Somewhere at the corner of the garden, he saw two or three Tom cats. Arun stood there silently watching them. The female cat continued to walk with her wailing sound and all the Tom cats followed her.

Arun remembered reading that this will continue until a male cat succeeds in attracting the female cat. Arun was so surprised at the behavior of the female cat. The male cat never showed his desire to mate, but the female cat kept on reminding by her wailing that she was ready to mate with him.

Arun remembered how his father did not prefer to have a female cat at home. Though the Tom cat would not stay most of the time at home, still he preferred to have a male cat as a pet at home.

It was once again a late night return home. Arun opened the front gate and pressed the calling bell. Something at the garden caught his attention. He could see two cats in courtship. Arun remembered it may take a few minutes to some hours for the courtship to complete. The female cat was kneeling down and standing still. The male cat grabbed the female by the scruff neck and mounted her.

When the mating action finished, the female cat cried aloud and tried to slap the male. Arun stood there watching the cats till they ran away from the place. Arun could not hide his rising feelings within him.

“It wont b long, b4 i get u by ma side & jst hold u, tease u, squeeze u. Tel u whtz been on my mind.”

Once again he remembered the message that flashed in his dream. He could not tell who was trying to contact him through dreams.

Though he never believed in such happenings, he had an intuition that told him it was a message from a true heart that desperately needed him and wanted to get connected with him.

Chapter 2

It was a dark and stormy night. Neena woke up suddenly hearing a noise in the kitchen. A male feral cat had come inside the kitchen and with threatening growls it was trying to harm the three kittens that were there with the female cat.

Neena’s father kicked the kitchen door open and chased the male cat. Frightened, the male cat ran jumping toward her father. He gave a fierce kick that sent the male cat flying across the kitchen. It hit on a container in the shelf and fell down. The feral cat got up on its four legs and ran toward the front door.

When Neena opened the front door, the male cat escaped through the open door. The female cat inside the kitchen was trembling with fear. The three little kittens were found shivering and hiding behind the buckets of water in the bathroom. It was raining so heavily, and Neena felt so shaken that she could not sleep. The sudden chaos created by the cats made her heart beat faster.

For days long, whenever she got nervous she started to murmur these words to calm her down.

“It wont b long, b4 i get u by ma side & jst hold u, tease u, squeeze u. Tel u whtz been on my mind.”

Repeating the words again and again she slowly went to sleep. Deep in her heart she yearned for a warm hug that would make her feel comfortable and happy. Though asleep, some of her thoughts wavered in the air and disturbed her dreams. She felt how her father tried to protect her and keep her happy.

Whenever her marriage alliances failed to click through, Neena could feel the pain in his heart. In India, if a girl failed to get married by 25, it made her parents more worried and unhappy. The feeling is same across the country from poor parents to rich parents.

With Neena, it was more. With sharp facial features she looked good to look at. But people did not stop judging only by looking at her face. In spite of having 28 inch waist that could be hold with a single hand, she lacked some more flesh to fill in her skeletal structure. Lack of muscles made her look skinny and unattractive.

From her teens she had seen men who raised their brows and chuckled at her. But her urge for writing raised her confidence level higher and she thought she would be the best match to eligible bachelors in the whole world. But the world thought differently. Even her relatives who had an eligible bachelor in their family looked away from her.

After college, she started to realize how the world looked at her. For a girl, the society expected her to be fair-skinned with curves sufficiently filled in which fulfilled the norms of the society to meet the sexual needs of a man. Intelligence, smartness, creativity comes only after that.

Some of her friends in the class planned to go and spend their time at the sea shore. As it was the last day of their semester exams, they wanted to relax and cheer them up at the Elliot’s beach, which was quite near to their college.

As the last exam happened in the forenoon, they decided to spend the entire afternoon in the beach.
When they reached the sea shore it was around 2:30 pm. Though the sun would be hot at that time, the sea breeze took away the heat. They all threw their bags and slippers and walked into the water.

When Neena hesitated to get into the water, her friends dragged her along with her. As most of them were wearing chudhidar, it was fun to stand in the waves. The cold waves rolled smoothly and touched their feet. Some of her friends waded through the waves till they got damped from head to toes. The chudhidar tops clung to their ribs and showed their youthful bounties.

Some of her friends sat on the water and let the waves roll them. The entire place was filled with their cheerful laughter. Unmindful of other people around them, they screamed and jumped inside the water.

One of her friends started to catch their pictures on her mobile camera.

‘Hi, Look at Neena.’ Their laughter mocked at Neena. Neena understood what they were commenting at and felt embarrassed for a moment. The dampened clothes clung to her and showed her not as a young girl with perfect curved features but a girl with a flat chest, skinny and not impressive.

Without answering them back, Neena walked away from the shore and picked her bag and her slippers. With staggering steps she started to walk on the sand. The sea breeze and the hot afternoon sun dried her dress within minutes.

‘Neena,’ everyone started to call her. Not answering them back, Neena hurried toward the bus stop. She just wanted to get away from there and hide herself from the prying eyes of the world that always judged people by their appearance and looks and not by real virtue.

Chapter 3

National Highway 45 is one of the busiest highways in South India. It extends to a distance of 472 km. The two important cities connected by this highway are Chennai and Trichy. During night, this highway experiences huge volume of traffic. The highway has several motels and restaurants along the entire stretch.

For