Ceasefire

"That's beyond the point!" he spat.

"The point is beyond you!" she hissed.

They were beyond hope.

Whenever two people from the canine or feline family fought real bad, the onlookers would plead, "Stop fighting like Aloks and Janvis for dog's sake!"

Their neighbours Mr. and Mrs. Mehta prayed their daughter Sweety grows up to become a music composer so they can finally get the chance to sound-proof their apartment. But alas, she was only four, and they came to terms with the idea that in the meanwhile they'd better get used to this background score highlighted by name-callings such as 'Miss Bhindi Bazaar' and 'Monkeyface'.

During their courtship period, Alok and Janvi often went to the movies, and most often they saw Shah Rukh Khan films. They'd come out of the cinema hall, dazzled and twice in love. These days they only frequented Sunny Deol movies and then bought the DVDs, too, to secretly practise the yelling techniques and tonal inflections in private.

What did they fight about so much, one would wonder. The topic was almost always profound. Like this one Sunday when they went to the zoo and all the animals gaped with amusement and bemusement (alternatingly) as the two quarreled about the 'which colour's striped on which colour' of a zebra.

Then one fine day, Alok's mother came visiting. As she witnessed them bickering about whose head had sprouted the first grey strand first, something struck her. After Janvi requested Alok to go climb a tree, Alok suggested she should go make him a sandwich. This was followed by her asking him to go wash his mouth and finally he advised her to go jump out of the window. The third tip was delivered with such passion, thought mummyji, that a fleeting look of enlightenment crossed her face, and her experienced locks of grey shined and sparkled as in the ads.

As though by miracle, after mummyji left, things became perfectly harmonius between husband and wife. The usher at Maratha Mandir was shocked to see them after ten years; the garbage collector was thrilled at having found thirty-seven Sunny Deol DVDs in the trash (the couple immediately stepped out and picked up a few DVDs of another Sunny ;) Mr. and Mrs. Mehta enrolled their Sweety at the Tiny Tots' Engineering Prep School to erase completely the memory of the possibility of the career of a music composer; the zebra was disappointed to suddenly stop being the center of all the attention; and the canine and feline communities were outraged at having lost an idiom.

That night while eating dinner, mummyji popped into her mouth some Chlormint achaar that she'd made for her son with so much love.