Ladies and General of the Delhi Metro

The numerous metro lines that run across Delhi are like colourful veins that keep the city’s heart pumping. Before moving to this city, which was almost five years ago, I was told by numerous relatives who reside in Delhi that to truly experience the city, one has to experience the metro. This, and that Delhi was unsafe for girls, the rape capital of the country. I moved to Delhi in the burning summer of 2013 with a very regular fear in my heart about my safety. I tiptoed around the city, avoiding any corner that had two or more men standing in a group and avoided the city on the whole after sun down. As someone who had never been around large groups of men being in a girls’ school and then moving to a girls’ college, I was petrified of them. Plus, the news had also “informed” me that men in large groups were dangerous. With the Nirbhaya case still fresh in mind I swore off buses and decided to take a metro ride to go and meet my aunt and get me some home cooked meal. Better be safe than sorry!

I remember anxiously getting into the large crowded building lined with autos, rickshaws and always a Café Coffee Day. The serious grey walls and single, straight files of people familiar with their journey was intimidating. People passed through the security checks and ticket panels like trained machine parts helping in the smooth functioning of this well-oiled machine. They were so accustomed to this routine that they could do it with their eyes glued to their phones or between the pages of a book (the two most common sights on a metro). I, on the other hand, felt like a dysfunctional part of this machine, slightly rusted. I observed closely, the ways in which people got the entire process done and I focused on copying them. Balancing the change and my wallet in one hand, my bag on my shoulder and a bottle in the other hand, I stood in the ticket line. I was embarrassingly clumsy and walked into the male security checking booth. “Memsahab udhar,” the guard pointed in the direction of the women’s booth. I walked sheepishly towards it and made sure not to make eye contact with the lady checking me after my blunder. The girl on the gateway next to mine put a blue card against the counter and the gateway in front of her opened to give her way. Did the ticket guy give me the wrong kind of a ticket? What if this grey plastic disc wasn’t the ticket? I got anxious regarding how to open my gateway. Panic was slowly rising in me. The fear of coming across as stupid refrained me from asking for help. The line behind me was increasing with a few people getting restless about the delay. A boy behind me probably sensed my crisis and offered help. Reading the boards and following the arrows, I climbed up to the platform. I was super relieved to see a pink poster stuck on the ground that said “Women Only”. I remember thinking how pretty the poster was with white flowers sprinkled on the pink around the cursive calligraphy. Suddenly I wasn’t anxious as I followed other women in the women’s compartment. Metro rides are going to be hassle free, I thought.

Now half of the “Women Only” sticker on the floor has faded and with that, my uncertainty and hesitation as well. With my head bowed down to my phone or kindle I pass through the gateways and go to the platform without seeing any direction boards. I stand on the dull pink sticker that reads only “Women” now till the metro arrives and I mechanical climb onto the women’s compartment as soon as the metro door opens with a beeping sound. Sounds are my cue now. Sight can be used for other important stuff. I take the violet line daily from Nehru Place to Kashmere Gate. Yes, it connects to Kashmere Gate now. It is my daily route; monotonous and insipid. The metro empties a little at Nehru Place, fills in at Moolchand and Lajpat Nagar. Hardly anyone gets on or off at JLN or Khan Market. A chunk of the crowd gets off at Central Secretariat and I finally get a seat at Mandi House. I make space according for the incoming and outgoing crowd without even looking up. I don’t feel the need to be super alert all the time and I am so familiar with the process in these five years that all my self-consciousness has vanished in the thin air. However, one thing that still remains is that I religiously travel only in the women’s compartment. As far as I can recall, I have travelled in the general compartments twice in five years. One of those times I was accompanied by two male friends which made me feel safe and the other time I was with my father. Otherwise, I always preferred the last (or first) ones reserved for ladies. Prevention is better than cure and fear of safety is stronger than missing a metro because one could not reach the ladies’ coach. And life in the metro went on.

On September 6^th, 2018 when our class had to go on a field trip for a class assignment. The trip involved us travelling on the violet line, from one end to the other, that is, from Kashmere Gate to Escorts Mujesar then back to Kashmere Gate. We all assembled at the metro gate ready to start our journey. It was not a journey that strayed from my daily routine so I walked on my daily path to the violet line area conversing with a friend and guiding the ones who did not travel by this line regularly. Keeping to my routine, I stood near the pink sticker and got inside the women’s coach. I sat down on a seat and covered the entire journey till Escorts Mujesar on it. This was my comfort zone. It felt pretty regular till my daily getting off station, Nehru Place. A girl with her earphones on was watching a popular romantic Hindi television show on her phone. How was she getting any signal here? What network connection did she have? Two women were talking about their household chores and one woman was setting up boundaries for her over-active kid who hung around all the poles in that coach. This was such a mundane sight that I could hardly notice anything that was worth writing about. The humdrum of my daily route made my observational skills numb. It was only after Nehru Place that I started to look outside the window. The view was unfamiliar and unfamiliar always made me uncomfortable. I had never travelled past Kalkaji before. The buildings, the trees, the roads were subtly changing with each metro station. As I got down at the Escorts Mujesar station with the rest of the class, something about the view reminded me of my hometown Lucknow. A specific area of Lucknow that wasn’t completely residential yet. There were wider open grounds, less houses. The metro station was so empty that we were the only group creating a little hustle bustle.

It was time to make the return journey, I really wanted to find something that would strike an idea in my mind. That would speak to me. After much deliberation with my own self I decided to board the general coach of the metro for our journey back to Kashmere Gate. Our entire group dismantled to find their own little details to focus on. I sat on the corner seat near the charging point and noticed that for the very first time I was the only woman in that coach. All the seats were occupied by men. Three young men stood leaning against the metal poles situated in the centre of the coach. An old fear rose in me. A fear that I had put at bay with the help of my old friend “caution” who was introduced to me by my mother. My eyes automatically searched for a female in the coach to ease my sudden restlessness.

As soon as I saw one of my classmates casually leaning on the seat in the very next coach, a subtle relief washed over me and I sat back on my seat ready to observe. However, instead of observing around me, my mind got preoccupied with the abrupt and uninstigated fear that I just experienced. How was it that one coach of the same metro made me so comfortable and at ease while the other had me on the edge. The consciousness and the hesitation I had in my first metro ride returned unknowingly after five years. Just then, a middle-aged man in a bright red shirt occupied the seat just next to mine. The man was talking on the phone in a raw Haryanvi accent and even before he was about to sit down, I sat up straight again and shifted more to the left of my seat, increasing the gap between him and me. This action on a two-seater space with hardly any room to shift was a subtle sign of my constant edginess. Even though the man was extremely polite and was standing up and offering his seat every time one of my girl-friends stopped to chat with me while they were scanning through the metro, I could not shake off the uneasiness. He was busy watching a music video on his phone if not talking to someone on it every now and then, oblivious of my awkwardness. A part of me wanted to get up and go to my safe space; the ladies’ coach. More than half of my journey went by trying to be careful not to brush up against his shoulder. I sat very still and very straight. I was adamant not to leave my seat because I did not want my fear to guide me and box me up in a singular box. However, the fear was still there. At Jangpura, when an elderly uncle entered the coach booming with criticisms about the economy and the government, I swiftly got up to offer my seat to him and placed myself in a non-crowded corner of the coach.

I observed a number of things on that metro ride but this feeling that I had was something that got stuck in my mind for long after.

The ladies’ coach, “Women Only”, was no more than an air-conditioned cage which I walked into willingly because fear. The so-called “general” coach was actually a men’s coach if you think about it with one or two women sitting there in their allotted seats under the green stickers. Most of these women were accompanied by their male peers or relatives. If, by chance, they happened to be alone, they were careful to look down on the floor or phone and not make any eye contact with the fellow male passengers. They were cautious enough to put on earphones throughout their travel and sit straight with their bags in front of them on their laps. They often crossed their legs and refrained from sitting back comfortably. These were like the unsaid codes for women sitting in the “general” coach; the masculine space. I realized that Delhi Metro’s claim of a woman’s safety is a huge illusion made of glass that would break the moment a woman decided to travel in the general coach. If a woman makes a choice to not sit in the first or last coach of the metro, her safety was not guaranteed. A feature of the Delhi metro that felt like a boon to me, suddenly felt suffocating. It was another way of pigeonholing women under the context that the outside world was dangerous for them. Haven’t we heard similar arguments for several other things like going out of the house or going out at night? Making a separate coach just for women is a solution but an utterly short-sighted one. It propagates the archaic idea that women need to be separated from men in order to be safe or to even feel secure. Creating a safe space for women should not necessarily mean creating a space where men aren’t allowed to enter. These “pockets of freedom” are merely an illusion. They act like small concessions in the public sphere which is otherwise entirely dominated by men and even functions on their terms. The presence of a conscious and scared female in the general compartment of the Delhi Metro, waiting for her station to arrive as soon as possible, is a proof that the claim of safety for women is a hollow one.

This deliberate compartmentalization of men and women in the capital’s most sort after public transport creates a risky rift where there is no possibility of forging a decent human connection. There is always a danger in such separation where the former might see the latter as a distant object while the latter’s fear enables a predatory perception of the former.
I mean I could have just had a mini interview with the man seated next to me for this piece, but my fear washed over that possibility.

Telling My Mother about my Dark Skinned Boyfriend

Light skin equals beautiful and dark skin equals ugly. I was introduced to this skin colour based discrimination prevalent in India at a very young age within my family. To be honest, I was taught this discrimination. My young, mouldable and rather naïve mind perceived this discrimination as a given. The privileging of the fair skin seemed like common sense to me; something inescapable, especially since it worked in my favour.

As a fair skinned girl in a North Indian family of Uttar Pradesh, my skin colour has always been an aspect of obsessive pride for my family. For as long as I can remember, every compliment directed towards me always had something to do with the way I looked which was directly related to how gora (light skinned) I was. My light skin was such a highlight of my personality for the people around me that slowly it became the only highlight for me as well. As a little girl of seven or eight I had internalized this contradictory perception of skin colours so much so that I felt superior in having a lighter skin tone. This was also instilled in me through endless comparisons with cousin sisters, family friends or my school friends who had dark or relatively darker complexion.
This comparison never always worked in my favour since I obviously wasn’t the “fairest of them all.” I always aspired to have an even lighter skin tone; the kind I witnessed on the glowing television screens or the front pages of the magazine. My self-worth was involuntarily attached to my complexion and I clung on it as hard as I could. Even with the social privilege of a light skin, I was constantly trying to better it and was immensely frightened of losing it.

The paranoia cultivated in me was so much that during the awkward years of my teenage when my skin tone darkened a shade or two, my self-worth took a huge plunge. I tried every method in the book and my mother’s ‘indigenous’ knowledge to lighten my skin shade. I harboured great insecurities and took pleasure in comparisons with girls having darker skin colour. “At least my state isn’t that bad,” used to be my saddening line of thought.

Thankfully, that phase passed and I grew out of my prejudices as and when I was introduced to newer ways of perception. But as I look back, I recall some cringe-worthy (or funny) moments that reveal the staunch prejudices regarding dark skin that have circulated in my family since I can remember.
I recall the day my niece was born and how everyone fixated on the skin colour of the four hour old baby. She was instantly given comic names that like ‘kallo’ or ‘kariya’ that were colloquial synonyms of black. The word was spread throughout the family that the baby was healthy and the mother was fine but “bas thodi kaali hai but theek hai. Shayad kuch samay baad rang badal jae. Papa mummy toh dono gore hain” (She is just a little dark. Maybe after some time the skin colour changes. Both her parents have a fair skin).
It was really troubling to witness this attitude towards a new born. It was equally troubling about three months later when the entire family had a video chat with the little baby and expressed their collective relief afterwards: “chalo rang to saaf hogya hai. Ab iss parivaar ki lag rahi hai” (Thankfully the complexion is clearer now. Now she looks like a member of this family).

Similarly, whenever any wedding is about to happen in our huge joint family, it always starts with one question: “ladki/ladka dikhne mein kaisi/kaisa hai?” (How does the boy/girl look?). By look, it is always assumed that one is talking about the skin colour because beauty is always associated with the colour of the skin.
So when my gora (fair) cousin decided to marry a dark skinned girl, everybody took turns to convince him against it. The funny part was that no one knew exactly why they were trying to do so because the divisions of class, caste and religion were not working in their favour. Their reasoning was something vague like, “a fair guy would look better with a fair girl.” It was actually pretty surprising to see how this reasoning was used to devalue the love shared between the couple; it was genuinely considered bigger than it.

Of course my family isn’t to be blamed entirely. Discrimination based on skin colour is deeply rooted in the normal Indian psyche. Skin colour forms various layers variables and acceptability with the Indian society. For a long time now, beauty standards have been governed by the media. The media glorifies the fair skin both in male and female models. Moreover, television stars, movie actors and actresses openly endorse fairness products. If one observes closely, it is hard to ignore the predominance of light skinned models on the billboards. Often, even authentically Indian products like sarees and antique jewellery are advertised by white models from the West. These ideal or aspirational images available everywhere for ready consumption certainly reset notions of beauty and define it in terms of skin colour.

However prejudices associated with dark skin do not limit themselves in defining what’s beautiful or not. Acceptability in the Indian society is not merely limited to skin colour even though a fairer skin colour is constantly desirable. Many derivatives are responsible for a person’s reaction towards someone’s skin tone. These derivatives play a role in the acceptability of the person as well. For example, an upper caste or upper class man or women have acceptability than their lower caste counterparts. However, within the same class or caste, lighter skinned individuals are almost always preferred to those with darker skins. Similarly gender also is a part of one of these derivatives, a man with a darker complexion would be more accepted if he has a good financial status than a woman. In our society a woman is required to be beautiful according to specific standards. Her acceptability is very much dependent on how she looks.
It is also important to note that caste prejudice is invariable connected to colourism in India. It is often believed that all Dalits have dark skin tones. Even though this assumption is clearly misplaced, it is a commonplace belief in the Indian society.
The fixation with this classification into good skin or bad skin manifests itself in the humongous market size of fairness creams and lotions, which is approximately 450 million USD.

My mother is a person who has been born, brought up and marinated in this discriminatory setup. It is very difficult to change the perspectives of someone older than you; especially in our country. If someone has survived for more years on the planet than you, it is inevitably assumed that that person has the ‘right kind of wisdom’ and well, you’re wrong.
My mother, who is an upper caste, upper middle class, fair woman, never bothered to question the hierarchies based on race, caste, class, gender or skin colour. Or, as she would say, she never had the time to do so. The invisible privilege that she enjoys also invisiblize for her any problems that crop up with the existence of such hierarchies and discrimination. Moreover, she even contributes in strengthening these hierarchies on a familial level quite ignorantly.

Even then, I consider my mother to be a progressive Indian mother who is open to somewhat newer perspectives. In today’s day and age when body shaming, skin colour based discrimination, limited ideals of beauty and the violence of caste and class structures are actively being questioned and deconstructed on social media platforms, our parents are always on Facebook consuming all of it. The base of such ideologies of division is unstable right now. While some people reject it as a corrupting new thought propagated by the ‘irresponsible millennials who have no concept of culture’, others struggle with what beliefs they should adhere to and what to let go of. My mother falls in the latter category as she calls me up for explanations when she reads something online and it strays away from her pre-existing ideals and beliefs. But one can ignore the effect of the fact that she moves about in circles that are filled with people who have the former line of thought; people who do not shake the foundation of her entire belief system like new perspective do.

However, her sheer effort and the fact that I am really close to her, makes me want to share every aspect of my life with her. She has been my go to person all my life in times of happiness as well as crisis. So, it is only natural that I wanted to tell her about my first relationship.

Even though she is someone who will directly think of marriage when I tell her about any boy, she does listen to my relationship stories quite enthusiastically and with minimal judgement, mostly. In any other case, I would have just walked in the house and declared my relationship status to her accompanied with pictures and stories. However, since I had chosen to be with a boy who had a dark complexion, my approach was different. The politics of introducing the fact that you are seeing a dark skinned boy is full of scheming, planning and plotting. I did not hope for an immediate approval. I even prepared my mind for a disapproving shrivelling of nose or a sigh of disappointment but I still was adamant to facilitate acceptance.

Forgive my hypocrisy, but instead of trying to dive headfirst into the topic and attempting to radically argue how skin colour is irrelevant or how acceptance or admiration cannot be guided by something as superficial as skin tone, I chose a direction that would be more hassle free. I had my reasons and my very real anxieties. To be honest, this bias attached to skin colour is so deeply rooted and internalized, that on some level, even I felt like I was disappointing my mother. I was looking for aspects that would compensate for the dark skin and encourage acceptance.

I was home for the holidays. It was a scorching summer and all the June conversations revolved around how bad the weather is. My mother and I spent our days laying on the bed in an air conditioned room. There were multiple instances where I could have told her about the recent development in my life on the very first day of my arrival but instead I resorted to a more manipulative approach.

I began with talking about this ‘new friend’ I had made in the past months. I was careful not to mention him too much as well. I have a clever mother. However, my mentioning was strategic. After spending twenty two years of my life with her, I knew the attributes that pleased my mother and I told her stories about this boy who helped me so much when I was shifting flats in Delhi. In one conversation, when we were discussing the general messiness of the male kind and my mom was frustrated with my father, I slyly mentioned how there is only one guy I know so far who loves to be neat and tidy. I was conniving enough to tell my mother how my ‘new friend’s’ mother sent home cooked meals for me. How very sweet!
Other little anecdotes of this ‘new friend’s’ politeness, chivalry, intelligence and kindness were sprinkled across conversations throughout summer. I was extremely anxious about my mother’s disapproval and hence refrained from telling her till the very last week of my vacation.
Since, the boy was also a Malayalee, I had been sure to bring up some positive stereotypes attached to Malayalee people as well. It was a tough endeavour to causally break into conversations like these, but I managed.

Seemingly trivial yet degrading commentary and disdain over darker skins has been regular feature in my family. Skin tone related jokes and judgement is a Monday morning breakfast in the house. “How did she even become an actress, she is so dark,” is what they would say when they saw a picture of Priyanka Chopra in some newspaper or magazine.
I was usually unaffected by such statements and brushed them off as ignorant banter because it never personally affected me. I never felt personally attacked by such comments and to avoid unpleasantness in the house, I stayed clear of arguing over them. But that summer was different. It felt bad to hear those seemingly harmless ‘jokes’ and remarks. Moreover, they further discouraged me from opening up to my mother. Every joke confirmed her eventual dissatisfaction.

It was a three days before I had to go back to Delhi that I gathered some courage and opened my Instagram page and pulled out a photo of K and I. I really wanted to share my experiences with my mother and  tell her how happy. I had consciously pulled out a picture where his skin appeared the lightest it could and felt a little bad doing so. As I said, I was adamant for acceptance.
I had even armed myself with very specific information about his class, caste and financial status that would compensate for his dark skin. I was aware of the questions that would come my way and I had rehearsed my answers to all of them.

I moved my phone towards my mother while she was scrolling through her Facebook newsfeed on her phone and watching a random video of a money drinking coca cola. I was careful enough to make lace my voice with honey and appear as docile and non-defensive as I could. Taking a strong defence never works well with Indian parents.

“This is the boy, I have been talking about. I am sorta in a relationship with him,” I avoided eye contact like I was ashamed of some unknown thing. My mother picked up my phone and abandoned her’s on the bed next to me. She instantly tried to zoom the picture by pinching the screen to focus on the guy’s face. She squinted her eyes for clarity of vision and moved the phone a little away from her face. Defeated, she sat upright and picked up her reading glasses from the bedside table. After placing the glasses carefully on her slender nose she resumed her inspection of the image.

This small act felt like it lasted for a day as I was getting anxious for her reaction. Even after she had inspected the photograph for two full minutes, she was silent for what felt like an eternity. It felt like she was also trying to formulate an appropriate response; a response that would not hurt of offend me.

After a long time she finally spoke but what she said wasn’t very pleasing. She inquired about the seriousness of my involvement in a manner that made it clear that she was hoping I wasn’t very serious. My heart instantly sank to my stomach but I wasn’t ready to give up. I honestly told her that this relationship mattered to me. Almost instantly I got what I had feared; the sigh of disapproval. I felt frustrated and angry at my mother’s shallowness and perspective but I knew better than to start an argument over it. Arguing wouldn’t bring about acceptance, I told myself to push down the bubbling anger.

“Is he a south Indian?” the series of questions began. This was the good part, I was prepared for this. I nodded my head to convey the yes and also pointed out the fact that he is from Kerala but has lived in Delhi all his life. I felt a pressing need to tell her that in his mannerisms he is more North Indian. I guess I did not want the regional prejudices to get attached to the already existing skin colour prejudice even though I knew they were hardly detachable.

“From Kerala? Is he a Christian? A converted Christian? You know lower caste people converted to Christianity?,” the agitation in her voice increased and she was no longer careful about not offending me. Her eyes widened and the crease between her eyebrows deepened. Her nose involuntary shrivelled up and her horror was palpable on her face. This reaction and such line of questioning was infuriating. “You wouldn’t have asked me all this if it was a fair skinned boy,” every cell in my body was urging me to blurt out these words. I wanted to argue the very premise of such commentary but I had some convincing to do. Ignoring the rebellion within me, I calmly answered her queries even if my voice was involuntarily laced with acid now.

“No he isn’t a converted Christian mom, he is an upper caste Hindu for God’s sake. His name itself is of a prominent Hindu God’s name. He is a Nair to be precise who belong to a high caste. They worship the same Gods. Not everyone in Kerala in a converted Christian,” my defence was satisfactory for my mother as her body loosened a bit and she sat back against the headstand of the bed. However, it was quite shameful for me. My inner voice was vigorously shaking her head in immense disapproval of the stand that I was taking. But it felt necessary to do so.

I knew what the next question would be and my mother did not disappoint me. “What does his father do and where is he studying?” This is one question that every girl’s mother has irrespective of a boy’s physical attributes so I did not mind answering that. What became troubling was my mother’s surprised reaction when I told her that he was from an upper middle class family as well. Seeing his skin colour, she had already assumed in her mind that we did not share the same class and was rather surprised when I told her something contrary. Her eyes widened again but out of astonishment.

I was done with this conversation when she said, “Then it’s alright.”

I remember being extremely hurt by my mother’s attitude and series of questions even though I had already prepared for them. I felt hurt that she never bothered to ask about what kind of a person he was or what made me choose him. She did not want to know whether I was happy or not.
I also remember being excessively angry with myself for indulging her.

I walked out of the room feeling lighter that I had finally told her but with a heavy heart. I never got a chance to tell her about my happiness or discuss any experience with her. I knew in that moment that her approval or disapproval did not matter to me anymore but my inner voice did.  I felt ashamed for ignoring it. I also knew that the more humane aspects of being in a romantic relationship did not matter to her.

It felt like I had just been in a battle after days of preparing for it. A battle that I had won since I got the acceptance that I was fishing for. I came out of it physically unscathed but with no idea about how to escape this patronising system that is so deeply embedded that I can’t help but perpetuate it every now and then for my own benefit. My conscience was in tatters and so was my desire to share with my mother.

New Girls in The City

 “He was sitting on the sofa and asked me if only girls were going to live in here. When I said yes, my sister and I, he took a brief pause and then took a heavy disappointed sigh that bordered annoyance. He didn’t even try to conceal his touchiness about the matter like most other landlords do,” my friend Subiya told me in a rather exasperated manner after another day of failed flat hunting.

At that time we were both looking to shift our accommodation separately but our situation was quite similar. She wanted a two bedroom flat in South Delhi to move in with her sister and so did I, but the intricacies of the stark difference in our experiences became pretty evident to me as we casually conversed or even vented or ranted after multiple failed attempts of finding a flat in the capital city.

“Di, he even told us that no one apart from family is allowed in the house,” she continued her rant about her recent encounter with an obnoxious landlord. “We don’t want any media in front of our house because of what girls do nowadays,” she mimicked a heavy voice to quote the landlord and we all eventually laughed at the silliness of it. The entire story behind such a comment was that this landlord had previously rented his place to a single girl who ran away flouting the contract and did not pay rent for three months. Even though I understood where his prejudice and assumptions seemed very misplaced. According to Subiya, he agreed to rent the place to girls only if they followed a long list of rules that he laid down for them. He started with the basic ones regarding no drinking or smoking in the house. No one apart from family was allowed in the house, not even female friends. He even told them about the guard who would keep a close check on them. “We politely declined his ‘favour’ and got out of there as soon as possible,” Subiya told me amidst our collective laughter.
But there was something to it, because almost every landlord and every broker that we came across was anxious about the fact that just girls were going to live in the apartment. However, the anxieties did not stem from just the gender. It wasn’t as simple as that.

Before I started looking for flats for the first time in my life, I was given a dense set of instructions that I had to follow to pacify the landlord into giving us the place. It was like an orientation program that my sister and my mother conducted for me since neither of them could be in town to take charge of the process. Some of these instructions included the kind of flat I was supposed to give a green signal to and the locality that was acceptable. However, most of the directives were regarding how I was supposed to conduct myself in front of the landlord if I liked the house and how I what all was I supposed to say.

1. “Don’t tell them that only two girls are going to live in this flat. Tell them it’s for family. First thing you tell them is that it is mainly for your sister who is married.
2. “Don’t go to see the houses alone!”
3. “Don’t go in shorts or skirts to see the houses.
4. “Ask them if they have any problems in friends coming over. Tell them that it is very rarely that friends would come over and even if they do there won’t be any disturbance created.
5. Tell them that male friends would come over but not a lot.
6. Do inform them that parents might come and stay for longer durations.
7. Tell them all these things on your own before them asking so that they know that you understand their concerns.

Every time I went to see an apartment, it felt like I was going on a mission armed with these tactics. Or it was like going to buy vegetables that suited my diet but instead of a simple transaction, I had to convince the shopkeeper to sell me those vegetables.

Like an obedient younger sister, I followed all the instructions pretty religiously even though I did not think they mattered much. I was in an illusion that if I was willing to pay the said amount I could easily rent a flat in most areas of Delhi. I went from flat to flat and never experienced any sort of a bias or resentment or even hostility. I was never asked questions that felt rude and intruding and never given any warnings because I was very much shielded by the golden instructions I followed.
It was only after conversing with my friend Subiya that I realized the latter part of my sentence above. She was looking for a flat in the same area and she was also looking to move in with her sister. Both of us often gave each other leads about flats that were up for rent but both of us had starkly different experiences. I did recognize my privilege though. Some aspects gave me an advantage in this entire process. I was a North Indian Hindu with light skin. Things that put me at a disadvantage were that I was from Uttar Pradesh and that I was a single girl. The latter got diluted because I was moving in with my sister who was married.
The fact that my sister was married somehow made us a more complete family for flat owners than two unmarried sisters living together away from their homes. They were at a disadvantage to start with and this disadvantage invited a lot of uncomfortable questions that I never had to face.
She was not new to the flat hunting experience in Delhi and had several other experiences to share with me. She moved to Delhi from Saharanpur in 2015 and lived in a girls PG in Greater Kailash while she did her graduation. When I asked about her PG experience, she said that she was just out of school and her house, so she felt that living in a PG was a good mix of freedom and safety. “The time limit did start to feel very restricting but it never bothered me a lot at first, being able to be out of the house till nine also felt like freedom at first,” she told me.

She first started hunting flats with a PG mate near the North Campus in 2017 when all of her friends in the PG were moving out or shifting to flats. “It was my first time and I did not know how to go about it. I saw a lot of flats in Mukherjee Nagar, Model Town and Kamla Nagar but it took almost half a month to finally find a flat that was movable.”
“Most of the people showed us the flat but not all of them were keen to give it to us. They weren’t direct about it but their lack of interest showed. Our broker took us to this one flat in Model Town where the landlady outwardly told us that she doesn’t give her place to single girls. I would not have felt that insulted if she left it there but she made it a point to add that ‘inke harr time bhaiya hi badalte rehte hain.’” Because of the candid nature of our conversation, she told me how low she felt after that visit and how infuriated she was.

She also told me that somehow everyone felt the need to educate her and her roommate about the ethics of living alone in the city. Her brokers told her how to behave in front of landlords like my mother did. The landlords often gave her a set of rules and regulations regarding how to live in the house before even initiating a conversation about renting the house. Even the residents of the locality took it upon themselves to educate her to be “good girls” in case she was not.
“In the Mukherjee Nagar locality we visited multiple flats and on the road inside a colony a middle-aged woman randomly stopped us and started talking to us. It wasn’t a normal conversation that she was trying to strike but another educating session for girls who were  total stranger to her. I don’t remember all parts of what she said but there was stuff like ‘aap logo ko apna dhyaan khud rakhna chahiye’, ‘aisa kapde nahi pehna karo jab pata hai ki yahan kaisa mahaul hota hai’, and the best of all remarks that I can never forget, ‘taali ek haath se nahi bajti beta.’ The gist of that entire conversation was that she wanted to make sure that the girls moving to her locality were the right kind of girls.” She had a lot of stories to tell me about her experiences and all those stories came back to her being a single girl who dressed in a certain way.

“Mostly we got refused because out gender. After a while, it started feeling like that the brokers and the house owners all saw us with suspicion. There were hushed glances that were a proof of shared suspicion and always an underhand warning about prostitution. The assumption that girls living alone can be prostitutes was disturbing, infuriating and sadly, always there.”

Though she believed that it was because of gender in general, I knew because of my own experience that other factors played a role as well. I was never experienced the encounters she narrated to me and they felt outrageous to me. I asked her about how she dressed when she went to see flats and she responded with, “Like I always do Di, I mostly wore jeans and top. The day that woman stopped us, I was wearing a tank top and jeans.”

With her response I was taken back to this one experience I had when I did not follow my usual apartment hunting technique. I had to urgently go to see an apartment really close to where I was residing then in Chitranjan Park. It was early morning and I did not bother to change. I went with my then roommate. We were both in out night pyjamas and tank tops but I wrapped a thin shawl around me. We rushed to see the place which was on the third floor of a yellowish house. It was a big apartment with two rooms and a hall. We were joined by the landlord a little later. He was an old man, well in his sixties and as he saw both of us, I could hear him whisper to the broker, “These two girls want to move in?” The tone of his whispered question had a lot of scepticism in it and his nose wrinkled a little almost involuntarily. The broker immediately reassured him that my sister and I were the ones who would move in and that my sister was married. He was trying to make the sale on my behalf. Even with that piece of information, the landlord did not seem convinced. Unlike the broker, I could sense that he was not trying to make the sale anymore. He reluctantly showed us all the rooms of the house and after the brief tour in which he hardly inquired about anything, unlike most landlords, he showed us directly out of the door. While are way down he made just one remark that made it clear to me that he was not interested in giving the place to us. “Ye ghar thoda bada hai sirf do ladkiyo ke liye rehne ke liye.”

In that candid conversation between my friend and me about our perils of flat hunting, the way we presented ourselves and us being single girls or not came in almost all our experiences. Our coffee conversation almost seemed like a one-sided rant against landlords and their biases and judgements. So I decided to get some insight about how landlords chose their tenants. I talked to my current landlord who lives on the ground floor of a four storey building in Lajpat Nagar 4. He is a young man in his early thirties who lives with his mother. I live on the second floor of the same building now. I remember him telling us while we were finalizing the flats that he only rents it out to families and so I thought he could be a useless addition to my exploration.

“It’s not like I am biased against girls so I don’t want to give them flats. I don’t want to give it to single boys as well. Not because I think all of them necessarily wrong. It is just easy that way. I work till eight in the evening and my mother is alone in the house all day. Sometimes I have to travel as well. I feel safer to keep families as my tenants. Have some biscuit as well,” he gave me a tiny insight of his process while offering me some tea. He was excessively cautious about not coming across as someone who just denied residency to single girls.

“We keep hearing these stories in Delhi and one can never be too cautious. I think most landlords, like me, are just trying to play safe and in this world where everyone watches Crime Patrol, suspicion is inevitable. Plus, renting the flat to single girls means more responsibility for me. But yes I agree, some landlords are way too interfering and obnoxious. I have lived away from home as well and even I was given a lot of rules and regulations while I was renting a flat in Pune. But you know I don’t do that. Have you felt I have been interfering in this one month?” We shared a laugh as I reassured him that I was very comfortable living here.

After a conversation with him I was really unsure about what stance to take and my mind immediately started pondering over the possible solutions for this knot that was created between landlords and female tenants. It was a difficult terrain. As a girl, my sensitivities obviously lay with how almost all the girls living alone in the city had to face the consequences of certain assumptions. But I could not completely ignore the anxieties of the people giving their place to complete strangers. I did not know how to respond to my landlord when he expressed his anxieties. Hence, I prefer to articulate this conflict rather than find a hasty solution for it.

Nani’s Garden

The strong smell of freshly brewed coffee was the most appealing part of it all. Nani’s house was the most soothing place for me. I could just sit on the porch with that strong coffee and watch the squirrel play on the mango tree in the centre of the garden. Relief washed over me when Nani came and sat next to me. She smelled of medicated talcum powder and incense after her evening bath and puja and that for me was the best combination of fragrances in the world.

The township was small with a large number of trees scattered throughout it and sitting on the chair in backyard porch chair it felt like staring into a jungle. I never liked utilizing my vision during my lying around time in my favourite spot in the world so I closed my eyes and let the surrounding sink in me through my senses. The sound of Nani chopping and slicing the fruits for the fruit cream I asked for brought a smile to my face. That woman would really give me anything I ask for if I agree not to wear my ripped jeans and crop tops in front of her.

I could still hear the squirrel rustling through the leaves of the tree and the soft wind that kind-of created a harmony in the air. I took a deep breath to gather every inch of the moment before I had to go back home the next morning.

The space was a riot of fragrances. One fighting the other for dominance. The deep breath filled my senses with all of them at once and it felt beautiful. The smell of green chillies was the most dominant one. It came from the freshly planted green chilly plant in Nani’s tiny kitchen garden. Being a fan of spicy food, my mouth instantly started watering.

The gardener had just watered the plants in the garden and even though the numerous flowers were all emitting striking scents, my senses were attracted to the sour scent of the soaked leaves of the lemon plant and the smell of the wet mud. People wait for the monsoon to get hit by this intoxicating fragrance; I say why not water your own garden once each day?

It was almost time for sunset and in the plains it was not a big deal for anyone. The sun neither artistically set behind the mighty mountains nor did the sea swallow it. So, I decided to keep my eyes shut. I knew it was time for sunset because I could hear a swarm of birds chirping in the sky eager to go home, unlike me.

“You don’t want to go home tomorrow do you?” Nani asked in a loud voice because of her hearing impairment. I just nodded my head with my eyes still closed. Somehow closing my eyes shut out reality for a while. Memories of this happy place could be better preserved through fragrances. Recalling these fragrances would be of great help when the stench of alcohol and smoke overpowers me back at home. The stench of alcohol coming from my father tripping and stumbling in the house each night. The sound of the birds chirping and the smooth breeze rustling through trees softly could help drown the sound of things breaking and parents shouting at each other at midnight.

Visual memories would not help. I had to gather memories of fragrances and sounds in store for when winter came.

The Pet Shop

1

I am someone who is prone to accidents. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never crashed my car to a lump or got my skull cracked open to end me up in intensive care but I am a frequent visitor to the emergency room to get a cast or a crape bandage or dressing. To put it as simply as I can, I get involved in a lot of self-induced accidents that stem from my clumsiness and as my sister puts it “pathetic mind body co-ordination.”

Twenty three years of dealing with this innate feature and breaking “handle with care” things and myself, I developed a certain mental dos and don’ts: Never be adventurous enough to think that you can cross through wet floors gracefully; never walk too close to the shelves at the super market or gift stores; sit down with ceramic plates at buffets and don’t think you can do it this time, you cannot.

With all these rules well set in my mind I entered the pet shop to buy a present for my mother on mother’s day and found my soulmate. Well, at least in my mind.

Amidst a gallery of small aquariums and fish bowls was a rather tall guy having a conversation with the shopkeeper. He was kind of sort of cute with his ruffled hair and awkward body language so I focused my attention on him for a while before going to see some puppies in the back room.

He was constantly shifting his weight from one leg to another and had no clue what to do with his hands while standing and talking to this unknown person. He decided to rest one hand on the nearby table and lean on it but instead it hit a fish bowl on that table making it swing back and forth a little and the gold fish in it went berserk assuming it was its end now. Close enough though.

He decided to consciously stand upright again to prevent any damage and a sudden empathetic relatability made me crush on him a little harder. As he was about to end his conversation, I decided to shift my focus to not make it too embarrassingly evident. He walked towards the birds section probably to select one of the colourful parrots for himself (and not his girlfriend I hope). The floor was absolutely flat but he tripped on some invisible object in the small distance between the counter to the bird cage. Somehow managing to not fall on his face he continued his walk a little embarrassed now because he probably heard my slight giggle.

I decided to blush a little less and move on to select the cutest puppy in the house. As I opened the door of the room where the pups were having their gala I heard a loud thud of something heavy falling on a glass. Yes, I knew what material sounds like what when it falls, judge me all you want. The thud was followed by crashing sound of glass breaking and a loud shriek from the counter side.

I turned to see what the hullabaloo was all about and was amused and worried about what I witnessed. The guy had somehow managed to topple a huge and heavy cage of tiny yellow birds on a beautiful glass aquarium that shattered it to pieces. So now, the small dingy room was filled with twenty tiny birds flying to their freedom in frivolous frenzy with the shopkeeper shouting “What the fuck” in continuous chorus. Meanwhile, the water from the aquarium along with the unfortunate fish was spreading on the room floor making it a huge mess.

The loud noises of crashing and falling somehow triggered the puppies in the room that I had forgotten to close in all this confusion. Six of them rushed in the room of catastrophe to sniff the fish on the floor, bark at the annoying birds or play with the water filled on the floor. The shop-keeper, like us, had no clue how to contain the situation and just stood there with exasperated immobility.

I took a deep sigh thanking the stars that for a change this was not caused by me and then glanced at the boy standing in the middle of the disaster. He was looking at it all in a daze for a few minutes and then he looked at me and his lower lip pouted a little with mortification and a hint of mirth.

I pursed my lips in an attempt to contain my laughter but eventually we both gave in and the room was filled with booming laughs.

2

I walked in the pet shop because it was starting to feel lonely since my break up and since Kanika moved out. Not that I missed her. It ended on a pretty bad note where I wouldn’t want to see her again at least for a while but I missed having someone in the house. Instead of resorting to tinder, I decided I would buy myself a cute fuzzy pet. “You are horribly irresponsible,” are one of the accusations directed at me by Kanika and I resolved to get rid of it by taking complete care of a living creature.

But not a dog. That’s too much responsibility. Let’s not get too ambitious to start with. Let’s take it slow. Krish suggested I should get myself an aquarium but honestly, that’s the worst pet to have in my opinion. They are just there with their presence only being evident when the aquarium water starts looking like sewage and it’s time for some tedious cleaning. So, NOT after much thought but just on a whim, I decided to get a birdie and the pet shop near my apartment seemed like a good place to get one.

I kept delaying the endeavour of actually going to the shop because human interaction made me uncomfortable to no limit. I liked to live alone in my now “bachelor’s pad” and order almost everything possible online. On most days my human interaction was limited to delivery boys of Amazon, Flipkart and Grofers until Krish dropped by and forced me to move out.

So, this fateful day I decided to go inside the shop and finally get the damn bird.

It is not like that I am clumsy but somehow things around me tend to go bananas and this makes social situations very embarrassing and an ultimate level of this embarrassment happened inside that pet shop. To worsen the circumstances, all the misadventure that happened inside that tiny shop was in front of a very pretty girl. Universe likes games.

So I was talking to the grumpy shopkeeper about the prices when she entered in the shop and suddenly I was very conscious of my posture and looks and position in the shop. From the corner of my eye I could see that she was observing me and my nerves went crazy.

My mother would have been very disappointed in me because in that moment I didn’t know how to stand like a normal person. I did not know what to do with my hands or which side to lean on. I casually tried to lean on a table nearby and almost toppled the fish bowl on it.

Realizing that I had made a fool of myself already. I took a deep breath and decided to stand straight like an obedient school boy. Ignoring the girl as much as I could I decided to move towards the birds and select one from the bunch but my conscious being decided to almost stumble and trip me on the way and make the girl giggle. Good going Abhay!

Distracted, I picked up a small cage that had a pretty red bird in it that matched the top of the girl in front of me. But picking up the cage somehow slid the huge grey cage next to it and to my extreme horror that humungous thing fell on a crystal aquarium situated just below it.

A series of F word played in my mind as I watched the disaster I had initiated unfold in front of me. Like in a bad comedy play, the situation escalated very quickly with the maddening swarm of birds fluttering irritatingly all about the room.

I watched the water from the broken aquarium fill up the room and the fish flow with it in pity and good amount of guilt. This accident was fatal for the completely innocent. I tried to avoid any eye contact with the shopkeeper who was evidently angry because he got louder with each “what the fuck.”

To make the situation go a little more out of control (if that was even possible) some puppies from the other room joined the party I had hosted. I watched all the elements go bonkers one by one and threw an instantaneous glance towards the helpless shopkeeper but quickly moved it to the stunned girl in front of me.

To be honest, I found all of this a little funny now but I was anxious about what the girl thought before being a laughing jackass. Her eyes were a little lighted and I saw pity coupled with surprising appreciation in it.

We both could not hold it in any longer and burst out laughing at it all together. Amidst that shared laughter I realized I wouldn’t get a no if I asked for coffee.

 

 

 

 

Doctor’s Clinic

1

Life had become a huge act of persistent waiting in the waiting rooms of hospitals and clinics now. Some or the other body part was refusing to participate in keeping the body functional in its entirety and this time it was the heart. The waiting room had a soothing fragrance of some disinfectant and this was the most familiar smell lately. The spotlessly white room with plastic figurines of the blood vessels and the heart was the weekend retreat. I glanced through at the charts that educated people about how to keep a healthy heart every time I visited; murmuring each instruction in my head before I even read it. “At least the memory is intact,” I thought to myself proudly.

I followed all these instructions by now but I guess age didn’t really care about leading a healthy life. After seventy, your body did not adhere to any kind of rules or regulations. It would just randomly one day tell your hips to give you trouble and then it’s your head’s turn the very next day.

The waiting felt nice. There was always some other human in the room as well, unlike back at home, and it was comforting. The silence of the house since the death of Sunita was piercing and haunting and the murmur of people talking on phone calls and complaining about the waiting was a fresh change.

Maybe I liked the place because the disinfectant reminded me of Sunita a lot. It reminded me of the endless fights we got into because of her love for cleaning and my total neglect of that love. Or maybe we fought because of my total neglect of her. But now, when I sit in clean clinics that are totally unlike the hole for a house I live in now, I miss her.

The place on the whole reminded me of her. It promised endless care; the care that I had not cared about because it seemed natural and certain until I lost it. I was never a great husband. I wasn’t even a good one. I was hardly a husband at all actually. I was a visitor who realized the value of the home when there was no host to open the door. And now sitting in a cardiologist’s clinic, I was searching for a familiar home and a functional heart.

I came here to regret. Even if I could not love or appreciate the woman I had, I resolved to miss her right.

2

The relatively quiet room that was especially designed to comfort the ailing didn’t really help to calm my anxiety as I sat there on the edge of the milky white sofa with my legs shaking a little. I constantly looked at the no smoking sign on the corner of a white wall to remind myself that for a while I could not use infamous roll of nicotine in my pocket.

The little plaster of Paris structure of the heart on the reception desk was sort-of creepy. It made me realize that heart wasn’t as beautiful a thing as portrayed in art and poetry. It was an ugly lump of flesh that could dismantle your entire life if it wasn’t taken care of. Quite a drama queen in my opinion. Since Ma’s heart started to create problems making her bed ridden for long durations, heart breaks started to seem miniscule in comparison to heart diseases.

The receptionist sitting in the room constantly taking calls and notes simultaneously made me want to consider becoming a receptionist myself. Studying further wouldn’t pay the bills anymore, I thought. It just gave me more debt. Plus, she looked busy enough to not have time to think about life; I needed that. Attend calls, say the same practiced thing, note down appointments, repeat.

I was never a very patient person and the green wall clock that had ‘HIMALAYA’ printed on it was painfully testing me. Waiting rooms were not a place for me. I got up to walk a little around the room.

I was here to take the doctor’s opinion on Ma’s angiography reports and whenever it came to Ma’s health my anxiety went berserk more than usual. The report paper was as crumpled as my cotton top now because I kept fidgeting with it during this unending waiting period.

Waiting gave me a lot of time to think and I did not like that. A lot of unanswered questions and worries clouded my thoughts as the room I was walking in became a little blurred. Would I have to leave my studies and take up a job now? How would I earn enough to pay for Shweta’s education, the house and take care of Ma alongside?

I knew Ma was not in a good state. Anyone could tell that by just looking at her but the reports would tell the extent of her illness and that scared the shit out of me. I had a very hazy memory of a bearded man who Ma told me was my father. I remember him coming home every evening and taking me in a bear hug till the age of four until one day only a crumpled car came back. Shweta was just a few months old then. I remembered Ma crying a lot for months since then and I guess that’s when her heart started to become weak. But Ma was always there. She was the only one there and now the fear of losing her crippled my mind.

The loud ringing of the receptionist’s phone brought me back to the waiting room and she signalled me to go inside the doctor’s office. I took a deep breath in order to appear prepared for whatever was coming and walked towards the office.

3

As I entered the waiting room, a slender girl of twenty six or twenty seven was moving towards the doctor’s office. I went to receptionist to confirm my appointment and then took a seat on a green chair in the corner of the room while my little boy climbed on my lap.

I checked the money in my pocket for the fiftieth time. It had taken a lot of night shifts at work to gather money for this appointment. Looking at the waiting room made me understand why the consulting cost so much. He was one of the best cardiologists in the city and he made sure that the appearance of his office conveyed that.

The office was shiny. My six year old’s eyes sparkled seeing the little toy area in the waiting room. He jumped off my lap to play a little. A deep sadness gripped my already dysfunctional heart because I knew I would never be able to give him such toys at home.

The receptionist looked aristocratic and intimidating. The entire room looked intimidating and I slouched my shoulders a little like that would make me invisible. My appearance was the most out of place thing in the perfectly synchronized room. The old brown pants and dusty cream shirt were a total mismatch with the sparkling white room with green stationery, accessories and bonsai plants.

I watched my little one play with the toys ecstatically. Had I ever seen him happier? I glanced at the clock in the room. It was about time to go into the doctor’s office so I called out to Ayush to stop playing and come to me.

He clung to a metallic blue electronic car as he came to me obediently.

“You have to keep that back you know right?” I told him and watched his face change colour. His eyes instantly became sad with a hint of tears in them. He loosened his grip on the metal toy reluctantly but didn’t let go completely for a while and looked at me expectantly for the first time in his six years of life.

I felt the money kept in my pocket once again and gave a defeated sigh.

“Let’s get out of here and get you one of those,” I said with a weak smile on my face and Ayush’s face lit up like the streets on Diwali. He threw his arms around me in immense excitement and I guess my heart healed a little as we walked out of the waiting room.

In Search Of Aasha

Aasha gave me a cultured smile as she presented me the sparkling white china cup with aromatic tea in it. But my joke was worth a laugh, I wondered a little annoyed. What happened to the Aasha that burst into a robust laughter at the silliest of jokes? I observed her closely as she resumed her work in the kitchen with practiced expertise. She was dressed as if she were about to go out; a skinny tight blue jeans with a fancy black cotton top that did not seem comfortable at all. She even had a little makeup on. Her demeanour was calm and composed and her face, expressionless. She had also lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw her. I recalled her telling me that she was joining a gym over a phone call.

This was not the Aasha I grew up with. The girl whose entry was announced by elaborate chiming Indian accessories and a pleasant laughter was not here anymore. Even though I was meeting her after almost two years, one does not expect to meet a completely different person altogether. What happened to the colourful salwars and flashy dupattas? What happened to the impatience of her character and multitudes of fleeting expressions that adorned her face twenty-four seven? What happened to my elder sister in all these years? Even though I was wondering about all these questions, I knew the answer to them pretty clearly.

As I watched the defiant school feminist make lunch for me, I was forced to recall all the articles she used to write for an online feminist portal. Some of their titles swam in my mind as I heard the rattle of utensils like a music I didn’t like.

‘Being a Woman Does Not Mean Compromise’.

‘It’s a Man’s World But Women Run It”

“Importance of Sisterhood”

“Married, Feminist and Housewife”

I know those words would be accusing her of hypocrisy now and burning a hole in her soul.

The thought made me nauseous and I decided to give up on finishing the tea. The silence between me and Aasha was unsettling for me because I wasn’t familiar with such a scenario. We used to have hours dedicated to pointless banter and numerous stories about each other’s life. There was judging and giggling and even fights but never silence.

Some decisions in a person’s life really take a toll on them. There are some decisions that you want to take and some that you feel like you have to take and it’s always the latter that render you speechless, sometimes for your entire life. The decisions that take your life away from your values are the hardest to make and they leave a lasting impact. They have the power to crush your previous sense of identity and then, you are left in the dark, desperately trying to form a new one. More than often, this new shattered identity that you form is a culmination of bits and pieces borrowed from others.

After that one taxing day in July of 2012, Aasha forgot who she was. On that day she was suddenly thrown into a Robert Frost poem and was facing a forked road in the journey of her previously proud and happy life. She had to choose one out of the two and I witnessed her breaking down in front of those long-stretching and seemingly dark roads; her beliefs faltering, her convictions losing strength and her confidence slowly disappearing in the musty monsoon air, making it heavier on our chests.

Kabir had left his phone at home before going on one of his many Europe tours. Kabir was Aasha’s high school sweetheart. She had never known romantic love outside of Kabir and she never even wanted to. He was the perfect guy in her mind. Respectful, ambitious, caring and even a male feminist. At the delicate age of eighteen, Aasha was drooling over baby socks in kids’ clothing stores and imagining her dream house with Kabir.

She always yearned for a happy family life since we never had one. An absentee mother and a very busy father didn’t account for a family as such. So, we found solace and family in each other. During truth and dares, whenever she was asked what her deepest desire was, she always said she wanted a blissful and coherent family life where everyone is there for each other. I found my mother figure in her and she was trying to be the mother figure she never had.

She didn’t want to become a female President or a CEO. She wanted to become a nurturer. I knew it from a very young age. The amount of blossomed sunflowers in our balcony garden were a proof of her motherly instincts. I was a proof of her motherly instincts. She was determined to prove that a housemaker could also be a feminist. She just wanted to build a home and be the strongest and most supportive pillar of it. But now, only the pillar was visible with all its cemented strength and Aasha was nowhere to be found.

When she saw the texts and pictures of Nadia in Kabir’s phone that day, her world and beliefs crumbled like stale bread and I could do nothing but watch it disintegrate. It was just before I was about to leave for Canada.

Kabir was cheating on her. As she investigated more after her initial shock, she found out that he had been cheating on her for solid eight years now. His business trips were trips to the other woman as well and his love was divided in two.
So there she was with the forked road glaring down condescendingly on her like a strict professor with folded arms, waiting for her to give the correct answer. But she didn’t know what the correct answer was.

I expected my sister to choreograph a big confrontation when Kabir returned to pick up his phone but she wordlessly gave it back to him and wished him a happy journey. I also assumed that she would leave everything behind and accompany me to Canada to start a fresh life. She did ponder upon that possibility for a long time before choosing the road she did. But unlike the defiant rebel she previously was, she chose to stay.

Wasn’t she the one who stood by her best friend when she was procuring a divorce on the basis of her husband’s romantic affairs? I remember Aasha stringently counselling Heena and giving her numerous reasons to not stay in a relationship that had no trust or equal emotional investment. So what was different now?

You might wonder why would a girl who never compromised on her ideals and was ridiculously proud of them, not leave in such a circumstance. Wasn’t cheating, in a marriage or any relationship, in the list of ‘not acceptable 101’? Wasn’t staying with the defaulter a form of submission and unhealthy compromise?

I never had the courage to ask the reason for her staying. I never had the courage to bring this topic up again. Being the only one who knew about this limited my scope of verbal deliberation. But in my head I thought of the numerous reasons that might have made Aasha stay.

Maybe it was for her little six year old boy. Maybe she stayed to give Abeer a happy and coherent family.  The Stockholm Syndrome of Motherhood often forced you to make unreasonable sacrifices.

Maybe she stayed because she married too young and didn’t have the financial stability to start a fresh life. How would she support a kid and herself when she was financially dependent on Kabir? She wouldn’t be able to give Abeer the lifestyle he was accustomed to already.

Or maybe it was just fear. Fear of starting over and starting alone. Fear of not having a complete family again. Dread of probably not finding love again. Loneliness can be really scary when you’ve grown up with it. It makes it very hard to leave behind the person who filled in the gap. Probably she even had the fear of society, which was unlikely though. But you can never tell how strong someone’s abstract convictions are until it is time to incorporate them in their intimately private lives.

Whatever the reason might be, she chose the road that led back to Kabir and the enormous empty house that felt emptier since July twenty third. She chose the road of denial; carrying on with her life as it was.

She would never tell Abeer of his father’s liaisons, she once told me. She did not want to taint the superhuman respect Abeer had for his father. Moreover, she did not want to indoctrinate the thought that cheating was acceptable in Abeer’s innocent mind even if she was accepting it.

She never even told Kabir that she knew about Nadia. Everything she was going through was inside her body that had practiced composure to perfection. But I could see her insecurities manifesting in her appearance. She was trying to turn into Nadia now. She had discarded the Indian clothes she adored and her wardrobe was now full of jeans and dresses and tank tops. She had developed a vehement dislike for her own chubbiness which once was “enviable curves” for her. She had given away her loud laughter and garrulous character for proficient sophistication. Probably she had the banal hope of getting Kabir back to herself if she could imitate Nadia. This made me sad. My sister thought that her supposed shortcomings were the reason behind Kabir’s philandering and that shattered me to no extent.

As she came back in hall to sit beside me and ask about my work I heard the message tone of Kabir’s phone as it lighted on the table next to us. We both peered to see Nadia’s name flash on the screen. Aasha’s eyes became blue for a nanosecond before they went back to their trained calmness. She pressed the power button to switch off the lighted phone and turned towards me to resume the meaningless conversation.

My heart sank to my stomach as I searched for my sister while she indulged in small talk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sisterhood

I twisted the head of the tap and the water ceased to flow down on the sink. I wiped the water off my hands with a handkerchief. How long had I been zoned out washing my hands?
The face in the mirror looked unsatisfied and tired. Festivities of this kingdom always were a taxing job. They required me to play the part of the timid, conforming, virtuous girl more efficiently than on normal days. It drained the life out of me.

This coronation was especially depressing. It had malice written all over it. Wasn’t King Duncan just murdered? Yet no one, especially Macbeth, had an ounce of grief. This celebration was tainted and to a great extent, insensitive.

As I was preparing myself to get in character before moving out, I heard someone’s clumsy handling of the washroom door knob. After a few minutes of noisy playing with the doorknob, a tall woman in a black robe stumbled inside the washroom.

“All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” She shouted and burst into a fit of manic laughter as the door shut thud behind here.

As she tried to walk towards the sink she toppled and fell on her knees still laughing. She was lean with her hair tied in an aristocratic bun, but a few non-conforming strands of it were all over her face. Her complexion was flushed and her face sad. For a moment I couldn’t recognize who she was because I had never seen Lady Macbeth that vulnerable. She was a marble statue at every occasion. An unapproachable figure with a plastered smile and very few, but only kind, words.

I hurried towards her to help her stand up but she pushed me away to lean on the wall and sit awkwardly on the washroom floor. She was wrapped in a repelling stench of liquor. I carefully placed myself next to her to provide assistance which she obviously denied.

“Is something wrong my Queen?” I asked in a whispered tone but it somehow triggered her. Her sad face had angry eyes bored in it and my question acted as a catalyst to that anger.

In a hushed tone that was full of rage, her words came out from between her gritted teeth, “But everything about this is wrong. HE wears the crown of MY ambition.” And a tiny tear escaped her left eye as she swiftly wiped it off.

“Because I had too many dreams for a girl I was married to an ass-licking, ambition-less man and now look at him! He is the KING! MY GOAL, MY PLAN, MY BRAVERY, and MY CLEANING UP THE MESS; and he gets to sit on the throne with a gold crown on his rather dumb head,” Her voice got louder with every repeated and emphasised ‘my’.

“What are you talking about my Queen?” I ask in a concerned voice even though I knew what she meant. Treachery aside, I knew what she felt at the moment. Wasn’t this my life on a daily basis? Frustration of not getting what I deserve. Frustration of not being who I am meant to be. Frustration of being a woman in a man’s world.

“But you get to be the Queen! You get to sit next to him and wear your own crown.” I give my vague consolation that wasn’t even sufficient in my head.

She winced and laughed sarcastically. “Oh no, I get to be Lady Macbeth. Do you know my real name? Does anybody know my real name? NO, because I am Lady Macbeth. Lady to King Macbeth. That is all I am and that is all I’ll ever be. But do you know what I am should be? I should be Ruler of the Land Gruoch. I deserve to hear ‘All Hail the ruler, Gruoch!’ I am meant to be the power on that throne because I’VE done the good, the bad, and the ugly for it. But…”

As her voice trailed off she stared into the void for a few seconds and abruptly stood up to settle her garment and hair in the mirror. Still a little tipsy, she moved towards the door rather gauchely and unacknowledged my presence altogether. She sent a clear signal of ‘this talk never happened,’ to me and I was more than pleased to oblige.

“I know what you are going through my Queen. Trust me, I know,” I said in a reassuring voice. She stopped for a minute at the door with her back towards me and took a deep breath to fake composure, before finally joining the festivities again.

We all were playing our parts.

Life as a Literary Art and Creative Writing Student #1 (What do you want to explore through your writing?)

It is rather funny and astounding that we are generally enthused and quick to answer fact based questions about this humongous outside world but falter and stutter when we are asked the simplest of questions about ourselves. You know what I am talking about right?
When a new professor in a new class goes on a ‘tell me a little about yourself’ drill and you vehemently hope that he’d start with the other row so that you can paraphrase their answers to form your own or at least borrow some ideas.

Have you wondered what makes us do that?
Well at least I have.

A similar thing happened when our creative writing professor asked us our first question that was simple yet eminent – ‘What does writing mean to you?
An awkward silence spread throughout the room followed by exchange of uncertain glances. One person waiting for the other to answer in confusion. I’m sure everyone had an answer to it but certain doubts and anxieties made them refrain from voicing their answer. Ever wondered what doubts people collectively share that render them speechless when asked a personal question in a particular setting?
Many a times these doubts stem from our inability to articulate what we actually feel or think. Language seems like an insufficient medium of expression making us decide to stick to silence instead. No one has the gift of perfect articulation of internal thoughts anyway.

Nevertheless, sticking to my resolution of speaking up more in class, I blurt out ‘hobby’ as my answer and immediately realize how inadequate that word was to explain what writing meant to me. I wouldn’t be sitting in a creative writing class if it was just a hobby. I was here to pull it out of the shallow kid’s pool of hobby and make it swim in the deeper adult area (or at least height above four feet area).

Later, at home, I sat down chewing the end of my pen and struggling to answer the second unsettling question – ‘What do you want to explore through your writing?’

A lot of potential answers knock on my door but none of them is happily welcomed inside in isolation. I begin to wonder what can be the potential meeting point of all those ideas, ideologies and social issues that I want to write about?
After a lot of deliberation while taking showers and cooking meals I realized that the point of confluence was my own mind or human mind in general. So, I got ready to write my slightly vague idea within five hundred words.

Human psyche or mind is in a constant state of confusion and conflict; a duel ground where two ideas fight with each other to gain prominence. Every single decision we take is preceded by this confusion and since life is nothing but a prolonged act of perpetual decision making; confusion becomes very central to one’s being. I want to explore this confusion and the resolution of it that occurs in a person’s mind before they take any big or small decision; the confusion that resides on the line of control of internal and external worlds.
I want to weave stories inside a characters mind and explore the ideologies, social influences and histories that create these conflicts and shape an individual’s line of thought and hence, way of life.

This exploration of the human psyche will also allow me to unravel the features of such ideologies and social constructs and showcase the dangers of their partial understanding or prevalent misinterpretations.

 

Hand Prints

But no one ever touched it softly enough to leave subtle fingerprints.

It was usually grabbed with a violent intensity and squished hard before leaving.

Thus,

The surface of my heart looks like a clumsy crime scene.

With irresponsible hand prints all over it;

Of reckless criminals with no fear of being caught.