The Road Not Taken (YET)

All day long, Samir felt something nagging at the back of his mind. It was a mixed feeling- a feeling of excitement and apprehension. As he prepared to leave the office, he remembered. And a wave of discomfiture washed over him. He knew he was the only one who could do it.

He drove to a nearby market and parked his car in the space left by an outgoing SUV. Locking the doors, he walked with a heavy tread towards a chemist shop. He didn't know what to say. Obviously, it was not a crime and yet he couldn't just bring himself to do it. After all, he had never been one of those confident people, neither in school nor in college. And now even after reaching adulthood, he was always fraught with nerves and this time, he actually had a reason.

He pushed open the glass doors and entered. Hovering uncertainly, he wondered what to do, what to say, more importantly how to say it. He stood like that for a few minutes. He knew he would have to say something sooner or later. But he couldn't help standing still.

"What do you want Sir?" 
A man behind the counter had just released a customer. Samir turned beetroot red. It was even worse now that he had been singled out, that he was being asked directly. He babbled the first thing that came into his head- the name of some moisturiser that he had seen in Ekta's bag. The salesman dug into the shelves, looking for the product asked, while Samir heaved a temporary sigh of relief.

"Anything else Sir?" the damned salesman had returned sooner than expected, bringing along with the moisturizer, a fresh burst of color to Samir's cheeks. 
Samir stood transfixed for a moment, not knowing how to respond. At one point, he decided to drop the idea. However, he had resolved to do it that day. He didn't want to give up. Not at that point. At least not at that point of awkwardness, when the fellow at the counter was ogling confusedly at him and he had almost made a fool of himself. So, he mustered all his manliness and decided to take the plunge.

"Manforce", the words came out in a croaky tone, slightly broken. But thankfully, the salesman seemed to have understood.

"Flavored or normal?" he had the audacity to ask. Samir felt as if he must have looked naked to everyone at the shop. He felt as if every eye was on him, wanting to know what his preference would be. If he said flavored, they would probably take him for a kinky sort. If he chose normal, they would probably classify him as a noob in the bed business. But he preferred noob to kinky. So, he went for the ordinary one.

"How many?" 
The sales guy was now definitely making fun of him. Samir's face assumed a darker reddish hue, if there could ever be such a shade. He muttered through gritted teeth, "A pack of 5 please". 
Now he was just waiting impatiently to get it over with. His modesty had already been battered to pieces. He was now merely trying to salvage the vestiges of his virtue as all the buyers and sellers alike looked on, as if watching some freak comedy show.

"Here," the now-superior-for-having-sort-of-caught-Samir-in-the-act sales guy handed him a black package, as if it contained sanitary pads or something. Sanitary pads would still have been better, for that matter.

Samir was ready with a 500-rupee-note. He could have ran away without waiting for the change had he been financially that stable. But, he was not. So, he waited while the cashier fished out the balance notes from a drawer. As soon as Samir got the money, he stuffed them in his pocket without bothering to even open his wallet.

He pushed the door, set to walk out of the hideously focusing limelight. 
Surprisingly, the door didn't budge. He pushed it twice...thrice. 
So much for manliness. He wondered if he was pushing the wrong end of the door. He remembered having seen something similar in an advertisment of glass wherein people failed to perceive the glass barrier and rushed into it, thus banging their heads. But he didn't think that was the case here.

He felt as if the people at the shop had trapped him, as if they wouldn't let him escape unless he told them what he was planning to do with the stuff in the black package, to whom he was about to do it all, where, how and all sorts of vivid details. His face had reached boiling point and its redness measure had surpassed the topmost calibrations.

Just then, someone from outside the shop pushed the door and entered the shop. Gosh ! He just had to pull !!! He had managed to avoid maximum number of circumstances in his life that concerned all those fears of his about public speaking, interviews and so on. However this time, he had been caught with his pants down. Literally to some extent. His confidence had taken a sound beating. 

All the way to his car, he wondered about the travails that he had to endure for a night of happiness, for a night of Ekta.