Usri wondered why the women of her acquaintance called her 'Bisri', meaning ugly, behind her back. Little did she realise that by calling her 'Bisri' they referred to her ugly mind rather than her ugly appearance.
She looked at the mirror and saw a short, stocky woman in her fifties with a square face, thinning hair and fair complexion. She smiled at her reflection and grimaced. Her teeth marred the little impact created by her carefully made up face. An average person had, at the most, thirty-two teeth (including the wisdom ones). Usri never counted her teeth, but it seemed like she had sixty-four. They overlapped each other in such a disgusting manner that they really made her look 'bisri' whenever she smiled. Hence she restricted her smiles to the outer world. Actually smiling was not much necessary for her, considering the type of addas she had with her close friends. It was always bitching, bitching and more bitching. Usri and her friends derived perverse pleasures from criticizing others. Whenever she said, "Oh, we had a great time together," it would surely mean that she and her friends had been bitching about other women. Where bitching, backbiting and dirty politics were concerned, there was no one to outshine Usri. She was always the master planner behind every evil activity. Usri thought that she was very clever, very discreet and nobody knew. But everybody knew and hence they called her 'Bisri'.
Usri always used others to achieve her end. When she decided to corner Rima she provoked and used Chiroshri as her mouthpiece. When Rima retaliated Usri used Anuradha and her followers to bad-mouth her. Their verbal abusement...