She has been so restless these recent days as she found out she has to be present at the book launch. What to wear? What to say on stage in case she is wanted to be going on stage and answer an interview question she doesn’t expect?
She must faint tomorrow. It’s going to be a huge book launch at an urban hall people love to visit. It sounds prestigious and great… and so unimaginable to her, an informal sector worker basically paid monthly for a quite lucrative business. She works for a lodging house that serves as a temporary homestay for a lot of salary men.
“What if you’re asked to say what the book tells?” I frightened her several nights ago. She shook her head, as if she told me,”That can’t be happening, young man.”
Yet, she has to be there while she knows some dirty laundry is waiting at home to be done as soon as possible, while the sun is shining brightly.
She keeps complaining about how painful her right shoulder. And I start to feel somewhat sickened by the intensity of her complaints. She scratched it with any therapeutic stuff she can find at a nearby kiosk and counter. Whatever that brings a little comfort to her right shoulder which doesn’t feel so right. Poor woman.
But as I said “poor woman”, I cringe. It’s I who is poorer because as I think more, I learn she has erected a brick house in the hometown. But I still rent a not-so-spacious room for almost like 5 years. Who says it isn’t an achievement on and of itself? She has three offsprings altogether and the eldest now launches his book co-authored with his friends.
It’s a type of book I hardly ever want to read or touch. Who cares about motivational books? I don’t know about the mainstream readers, but as far as I’m concerned, that motivational genre is already the past.
Akhlis's Blog 