Short Fictional Piece : Part 1

A girl walks up to the podium and puts her mouth close to the microphone. She is lithe, slim, pretty and has long, brown hair. She wears a long, flowing skirt that reaches her ankles and a loose T shirt with a peace sign imprinted on it. She's sexy, but in a somewhat sloppy way. Fix a bandanna on her forehead and a joint in her hands and she is a walking, talking image of your yet-another-cute-hippie-chick-next-door.

But she's more into New Age than hippiegiri per se. She's also into vague, esoteric and sometimes unpronounceable Eastern Cults which pass off as serious religions on so many college campuses. She tried crediting for a Sankrit class once, but dropped the course when she discovered it required serious effort. It was then that she decided to get herself a tattoo on her arm in Sanskrit with her name engraved in that holy, classical, uber cool language of yesteryears. Even now, when she wore shirts without sleeves you could read her name : जेसका [pronounced 'jay_sucka' as opposed to the intended 'jessica' - this typo having become a constant source of in-jokes for her East Indian friends].

She's a grad student in literary theory, which means that she is poor, thinks highly of herself and her idiosyncratic tastes, is into extreme avant garde fiction, music and films and can spout off names of obscure people only a thousand odd people in the world would've heard of¹.

Jessica: On behalf of the University and the grad school, I am very pleased to introduce a man who needs no introduction. The winner of two separate MacArthur 'Genius' grants, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the subject of the Sundance Festival award winning documentary "He Defecates Art", a routine contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, a writer we all look up to and an alumnus of the University - Mr Limp Member.

<*deafening explosion of thunderous applause*>

Jessica: And now, I'll invite Mr Member to read his latest short story.

...

End of Part 1

...

1.

It might of interest to note that she'd recently broken up with a bright, young guy who'd loved her very much over an incident that had outraged her delicate sensibilities. [He'd said that he hadn't understood much of Camus when he read him first. Jessica was large hearted almost to a fault and would've forgiven this lapse on the boy's part but for his pronouncement of Camus' name as 'Kai_muss'. There's only so much a woman can take.]