Once upon a time, there were two sisters who lived with their mother. All three of them were cranky and selfish and cruel. It didn’t matter as long as there were just the three of them, because each one took it in turns to be the crankiest, the most selfish and the cruelest. They found new ways to outdo each other’s sullenness and meanness and spite. (It’s not to be wondered that the father had walked out, is it … ?)
The problems began when the mother met another man. He was a copywriter, at the advertising agency where she worked as account-supervisor. He was new in town, and didn’t know much about her or her reputation as a cranky one, so he fell for her. He was a single-Dad, and he thought, both being single parents, they stood a chance of understanding each other and making a happy family. They courted. He sent her chocolates and perfume, she bought him a watch, they went for a couple of movies followed by dinner, and one moonlit walk. He proposed, she accepted, they had a lavish wedding because she wanted it and a luxury-cruise of a honeymoon, again because she wanted it.
Then the time came for the two girls to settle down with their new step-sister.
Their new step-sister was kind and sweet and cheerful and well-mannered. In fact, she was the exact opposite of everything they were.
And did they ever dislike her for it.
They knew they could never be as kind, or as sweet, or as cheerful as she was, and they retaliated by becoming – you guessed it – even crankier than before.
Their cruelty knew no bounds.
They stole her cell-phone, so that she could not contact any of her friends or family members. They hacked into her email account and sent horrible spam mails to all her contacts. They made her do the research on their projects; they made her write clever slogans that they could enter in SMS-contests and win amazing surprise gifts. Worst of all, they un-friended and blocked everyone on her Facebook contact list, and changed her password so that she could no longer get in to her own account and un-block and re-friend everyone.
She was so miserable.
Then – there was a big announcement. (It came on TV, not by SMS, so she got to hear it.) There was a modelling contest for girls who had never modeled before. She was really, really excited. Ever since her Dad has started working in advertising, she had nursed a secret desire to model. Now, her dreams could come true!
Her step-sisters were thinking the same thing. They simpered, they preened, and they giggled. They tried on clothes and shoes and hairstyles and pirouetted for their doting mother – tripping on the carpet in the process. On the day, their mother hired a cab, and the three of them drove off, screaming shrilly with joy.
The sweet step-sister was left crying in the garden.
“Here, what’s the matter? Why are you crying?”
It was the Flipkart delivery boy, come with a package for her father.
She didn’t know why she did it, but she poured her heart out to him. How much the contest meant to her, how much she wanted to go. She knew, all along (being sweet and kind) that he had a job to do, so she signed the receipt, took the delivery chalaan, put it in her jeans-pocket, and put the package on the table.
“Is there anything else I could do for you?” she asked the boy, noticing that he was still hanging around.
“No, Madam. I was wondering if I could do something for you,” he replied.
“For me?”
“I could take you to the contest on my moped, Madam, if you’d care to sit pillion with me.”
“But I have only old dresses!”
“Madam, one of the deliveries is of a top. It happens to be to someone I know. You wear it today, I’ll get her another top later.”
Things were a whirl of excitement after that. The top fitted perfectly, and matched her jeans, too. She climbed on the moped, he drove like he had never driven before, and they reached just in time to register.
She went through – preliminary, semi-finals, finals … and … she was declared WINNER!
The MC was just holding out his microphone to get her name (contestants had been referred to by number, during the contest) – when she saw her step mother and step-sisters in the wings, making threatening gestures.
Terrified, she bolted. She ran off the stage, through the hall and out the door, sobbing. What she did not notice was that a small piece of paper had fallen from her pocket – the Flipkart chalaan.
They traced her house, they recognized her, she signed her modelling contract.
As for the step-sisters – well, the creative director thought that they looked like perfect ‘befores’ to her ‘after’ – so they got signed on, too. Happiness all round!
This re-telling of “Cinderella” by Sonali Bhatia was ranked 4th in the Twist-A-Tale contest on Tell-A-Tale. Find other winning entries here.
(Image credit: Houston Museum of Natural Science used under a CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license)