IT was a mid winter day yet an unseasonably warm sunlight glimmered on the blue stone through the transparent window panes. The warmth was almost a relief but it did little to ease Robert's anxiety as he sat on his 'lucky' armchair observing his unlucky ring. His other hand lay negligently on an arm of
the chair.
Robert Gordon, we must admit, was not a man capable of great reason and was frustratingly superstitious.The latter was a reason his wife had deserted him, but Robert was too stubborn to admit this.His superstitious nature also was, some people whispered behind his back, a cause he lost his job. But that is all nonsense, Robert told himself now, all went wrong due to this ring.
Robert had been very fond of rings since he was a child. He believed rings held special powers to influence stars and a person's fate. However he had not been able to afford a gold one until recently. Two years beck he had bought this particular ring on his visit to Delhi.
"Gold rings are good omen," he had told the fat jeweler.
But Robert had been wrong. In merely a few days since he bought the ring, his wife divorced him.Poor Robert! And a year later, he also lost his. Lonely, jobless and bankrupt, he now lived on a hundred pounds a month that his elder sister allowed him.
Robert never had courage to throw the ring away. It was Gold! But now he was about to be married again and considered himself very fortunate. Dear Katherine was lovely, beautiful, charming and even had a job in a bank. He decided it was long since he should have got rid of the ring. "I am not going to," he told himself," let this ring affect our relationship." He could sell it of course but had better a idea. He would gift it to his sister as a mark of gratitude for her help.
A few days later, on his sister's, Natascha's, eighth marriage anniversary, he gifted her the ring. (Yes, her marriage did last that long, lucky eh?)
"I am afraid this isn't new..." he told her as he gave it.
"I loved it," Natascha said. She was familiar with her brother's fondness for rings and knew it was his only gold one, hence took it as a mark of his pure love. She kept the ring gladly; Robert was relieved to get rid of it. He wouldn't exactly miss it.
But Natascha Simpson did not share her brother's fondness, nor was it a perfect fit for her tender fingers. She took care of the blue stoned gold ring for two months and then passed it to her husband who gifted it in turn to his old Grandmother. Dear old grandma died in merely a few fours since she slipped her finger inside the ring.
(Man, there must really be something wrong with the ring)
Robert felt sorry for the lady but was secretly glad when he heard of the ring. Had the ring been with him, he thought, he would have been the one dead.
(Told you he was a great reasoner.)
At last the ring was sold.
"Gold, yes, but a bit old," the jeweler said, observing the ring,"can't give more than a two hundred."
"At least a five hundred," Natascha bargained.
They ended up on a four hundred pounds.
But the ring did prove lucky for someone after all.
The jeweler polished it added two white stones, one on either side of the blue and put it for sale.
One day a young lady entered the shop, she was so graceful that the jeweler was stunned for a second.
"I got this one for seven hundred from a young man," the man said, smugly. He was not exactly known for his honesty."I added these very costly stones," he pointed to the one in the middle," but to you, Ms.Anderson, Ill give it for eight hundred."
A few days later, on Roberts thirty-first birthday, his fiancee gifted him a small package. Inside was, to Robert's astonishment, another gold ring with two white stones wit a blue in middle.
As Ms. Katherine Anderson, who soon became Mrs Katherine Gordon, slipped the ring in Robert's fingers with her soft hands, Robert found his eyes caught in hers with a strange force.
At least, he thought, this ring would be lucky for me!
---ROHIT MULANGE
