The lil’ toe story

Kalavari sat nervously in a salon. She was getting a pedicure for the first time. “Madam, should I put nail paint on your toes? Your feet are thin and small; it will look amazing on you!”

Kalavari smiled and nodded. It was a bit awkward, and she didn’t know how much extra it would cost, but it was too late to say anything. The parlour lady had already started painting her nails violet. Kalavari glanced down and found it pretty. She had a clumsy grip; whenever she tried to apply nail polish on her own, it always looked like the bizarre scribblings of a toddler, so she stopped trying or buying it.

Now that it looked so pretty, she cheered up. She thought even if it cost an extra 100 rupees, it would be worth it. She couldn’t stop staring at her feet on the way home. She tried to click a picture to upload on her social media, but she thought it didn’t look as good as it looked in reality.

She reached home and washed her feet. While having dinner, she put on a movie. She wanted to sit in comfort, so she brought her feet up onto the chair. In the process, her little toe rubbed sharply against the seat of the chair. She felt a sting of pain. She panicked about her pretty nail paint; she desperately tried to swing her legs back down, but in that split second, she ended up stubbing her little toe even harder under her own thigh and the chair.

She quickly checked her toe. The paint looked intact, but the nail was slightly broken. She tried to press the broken piece back into place instinctively, but instead of sticking, it peeled back further. Sadly, she had to use a nail cutter to remove the broken part of the nail. She looked at her feet, and they didn’t look that pretty anymore. She felt bad thinking about the extra 500 rupees she had to pay, extra whole covering herself with a blanket on the bed.

She opened her phone and started typing a text “I’ll be late for the function tomo…” Just then, a mosquito bit her already injured little toe. She gave a knee-jerk reaction, and the friction of the heavy blanket scraped the toe, and it started to bleed.

She sighed and got up, wrapped her toe with a bandage, and sat back on the bed. She erased the text she had been typing. She took a picture of her Band-Aid toe and sent a message “Sorry, I can’t make it.” Then, she went to sleep.