Category: She Series

She Plays Dress Up

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She wears the long face of an adult. Worry lines crease her forehead like the easy curves waves continuously retrace on sand. She sits on the couch, slumped. She is a beached whale, giant in her helplessness. She wears her hair in a careless updo her mother would disapprove of. Along the sides of her cheeks, bouncing over her springboard ears fall a silent stream of tears that chokes her. The room is dank, smelling of dust and pointlessness.

Tears on adults is worse than death. Why is she crying? Why doesn’t she know how to deal with the world? Look at how well everyone else is doing. They had seen it all, many times over. Grown women in dishevelled living rooms, struck by tears. She was a statistic to them, at best. They collected her tears in beakers and measured it out. She had overflown her quota. They had a name for her ‘condition’.

She was crying because she couldn’t feel the wetness of her tears on her skin. She couldn’t see the disarray of her hair in the mirror or smell the despair in the room. She was crying because she was drowning in all the tears she had shed but no one seemed to notice. She was crying because she didn’t want to cry.

Nobody told her they would help her. Nobody offered to wait it out with her. Nobody held her hand. Nobody saw her.

But when they came back to tattoo her forehead with her condition, she had changed. She was all smiles. Her eyes were clear and framed with kajal. Warm twirls of rouge danced on her cheeks and her house smelled of hope and babies. Her hair was long, her dress was crisp and she twittered like a dainty bird.

Nowadays her tears run from her head to her heart in an elusive underground river. Her heavy heart is drowning in the merciless liquid as the sun shines, lighting up her face. Being an adult is like playing dress-up, the best look always wins.

Feeling Pure Joy

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There, far away in the distance, high above the mesmerised heads, on a large dark platform, a light shone bright. It felt like that light shone only for her. It spoke to her, directly, as if in a private interaction. Its tone crumbled her heart into countless crystals but also made them all come alive. She felt its energy ride on the wave of its voice, warming the crowd; now the middle and finally the shy ones at the back.

When it hit her, she was shocked by its power. The light reeled her in but also repelled her. She felt small and naked, shaking in her boots. The light had enveloped her, like a blanket on a cold winter morning, regulating the temperature at cozy, maintaining the delectable space between sleep and wakefulness. She was fully aware of the warmth on her skin and the curve of her spine.

When the light stopped speaking and moved away, its warmth lingered like the thermal aftertaste of ginger tea. She ran towards where the light had been, craving to rekindle that connection. She could still see it. The light was visible but so far away from her that it was feeble. Brilliant yet feeble like a star. She ran with abandon, through the crowd, over them, despite them.

Suddenly the light was upon her. She was stunned by its brilliance. Its energy was dualtone–it filled her with colour and blanked her mind at once. There were no words left in her quiver of languages. Instead, she stared, open-mouthed, her thoughts stardust.

The light is kind. It adjusts its luminance to suit her eyes. Its holding her in its embrace. In its infinite grace, there is only joy. She and all her leaden worries evaporate without a trace. This is what pure joy feels like. Present but weightless and without form.

She has a lifestyle disorder

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Today, the sun is not yet overhead but she’s already fed up. Fed up of not doing. Fed up of the news in the media. Fed up of the grains she eats. Fed up of the thick smog behind her eyes. Tomorrow is a new day, if she gets through today. It could be that rare burst of volcanic activity–cleaning, eating, planning. Or just the usual; another day of procrastination.

When she thinks of freedom she thinks of white doves flying off from the confines of a hanging metal cage against a black background leaving the tricolour in its wake–yes, like all the independence day imagery out there. Along with her drawing sheets, she has also traced that image onto her brain. However, she didn’t realise then that white doves are not alone in their freedom. There are other birds in the sky. A whole lot of them. True that white doves fly in pure, white, sweeping flocks with no room for discolouration. But there are also birds that don’t fly in flocks. And birds that don’t fly at all. You have to be a white dove to fly with the white doves. Not a parrot. Not an eagle. Not a sparrow. And definitely not a fowl.

She was a fowl. A scraggly one with indiscriminately multi-coloured feathers and no distinguishable feature. She found her own dreams of flying laughable. She lived on a farm, roosting in the bushes behind the tree, capable only of flying onto the fence and perching there undecided. Should she go off into the big bad world not knowing where her next meal will come from? Or should she remain cooing in the calm of her familiar routine?

When had they taught everyone else to deal with the world? She felt like she was looking in on a world with rules that didn’t make any sense. She felt excluded and alien. Logic was a squiggly worm just beyond her reach. How do these other fowls know what to do? How do they go about they mundane business as if it were the most exciting undertaking? Why should she follow rules that didn’t apply to males? Why should she pay taxes for trees to be cut and lakes to foam? Why should she bring eggs into such a world? There were no answers. And the questions were reducing her visibility.

She lives in hope that one fine morning, the smog behind her eyes will lift and she will fly up, up and away to perch on a weightless cloud of clarity. This hope sends her to bed at night but also wakes her up every morning to be just another fowl. On some days, the same hope makes her kick indecision off the fence and make a flight of faith. But on other days hope tells her that the trick is in setting yourself up for success. Hope also says that success is in knowing when to let go. Right under the nose all these suggestions, indecision was slowly eating her up inside, giving her deadly ulcers, a lifestyle disorder.

Like this post? Check out the previous one from the She Series here.

She Cleanses

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She was a hoarder. A hoarder of feelings. Every emotion she felt joined a pile in her heart.

When the heart pile grew too heavy making her heart sink, she compressed them and sent them away to be composted into memories in the minute wrinkles and folds of her brain. She would call on them later with smells, food and music.

She imagined her brain to be an endless landfill capable of infinite tricks. The ultimate resting place where all emotion–vile, virtuous and vain–rolled over each other in deep, companionable sleep. But there are days when these alleyways get clogged by the truckloads of feelings waiting to be dumped. Thankfully, her feelings like her sleep, smell like bedsheets. The fragrance is officially called Linen and Sky.

When the sinews of her brain city get backed up with compressed feeling cubes that smell like designer perfection, some cubes were bound to fall out of the trucks and litter the streets. The delectably fragrant spillage always hypnotised her brain into a dark, brooding mood. And its on days like these that the trucks were rerouted to purgatory to be put away till they could be properly put away.

Down there in the fat cells of her midlands, nothing much happens. Ever. It’s a lot of abandoned cubes sticking out like cacti in the desert sands of time. This purgatory is their hell for now. Behind the backs of calorie-counting cow-worshippers, the hinterland grows lawless and distends accommodating more degenerates. In time, this protruding landmass begins to wobble dangerously.

Each time the belly wobbles, some renegades jump the fence and go hitchhiking across the expanse of her body. It’s not like anyone is watching them. Sometimes in the steep mountains of her arms or thighs, the plateaus of her lower back or along the shore of her ankles, they pitch tent. Wherever they stop and linger, they cause trouble.
Be that as it may, she occasionally comes alive in the torrential rigorousness that rains in sheet after cleansing sheet of wellness from god knows where. Without warning, she begins to wake up early, prioritising exercise and eating healthy. She’s excited about cleanliness, order, art, books, pickling and even talking.
There is a upturn in the air, much like a beach on a bright, summer day in an otherwise cold country. A flurry of activity clears up the brain, reduces the wobbly bulge, balms the aches and calms the mind. When the rain ends, as it must, the cleanse is complete and she is ready for the next onslaught to begin.

They Fought For Her

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She opened her book and held up her pen. Everyone around her was very proud of her. The table and chair, held hands. Clearly, holding up the writer and her book were crucial to her success. The bottle of water on the table smiled in clear blue. Without me, she wouldn’t be. The half cup of black coffee was furious. You may be a requirement but I am her drink of choice. Two books that were lazing on the table laughed in unison. Together we take her into worlds none of you could ever see. The notebook she wrote in cleared its throat. She shares all her thoughts with me, I am her ultimate confidante. Not without me, the pen butted in. I am the one who turns her thoughts into words for you to store. The multi-coloured pots on the widow sill congratulated the plants that grew in them. We are nature, together our 14 leaves provide the greenery that inspires her. Even the fan in the room gloated over its air circulation skills that kept her at ease.

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Oblivious to the commotion in her room, she sat staring. Her gaze drifted focusing on nothing. Her thoughts were far away from here. They were nowhere. She was thinking of two people who did not exist. She wanted them to have a fight. What would they say? To know that she had to know what kind of people they were. Were they passive aggressive, hiding behind sarcasm and striking with sharp words that hurt? Were they short-tempered screamers who enjoyed a shouting match? Were they silent bearers of insults, avoiding a showdown at all costs? She didn’t know. And she couldn’t force it out of herself. Because it didn’t exist. It had to come to her. And for that she had to think of the kind of holidays they took, their most painful experience, their friends in college, their temperament at work. She imagined this to be the feeling of bearing a child to term. An impatience tempered with humility at the beautiful wonders your body was capable of. Building an entire human from scratch.

She forgot to blink. She forgot her hot drink. The generous fan and the dutiful table and chair were summarily dismissed. The books on the table slipped away too. Though brightly coloured, the plants faded from memory.

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Now she was in a beautiful, old city, walking beside them, egging them on to fight. And there, in the middle of a crowded foreign bazaar of curios they blossomed into the most colourful of abuses. Once they began, they could not be stopped. They didn’t care where they were. They just accused, cursed, ranted and raved. They fought for her. And all she had to do was to jot it down.

She Floated With Fear

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All it took was a knock. It was as if the door was waiting for that knock. Anyone who knocked at that exact moment would have been let in. Waltzing in, grand and majestic, was the oppressing feeling of fear. The air in the room grew dense as if sinking to its feet, incapacitated. The carefully cultivated silence wilted in a corner under the dry heat of the ringing in her ear.

She was at the desk, seated on the chair, reading. The chair was the only friend the desk had made. They were very unlike each other but they were inseparable. As they sat with their legs intertwining, basking in the warm smile of the table lamp, they knew that their friendship was central to her reading habit. She always read here, leaning back on the chair, her legs tucked away under the table, careful not to leave footmarks on the white walls beyond.

As fear walked in, she stood up to face it, as if expecting it. But, as if in a spell, her head bowed involuntarily, her courage slipping out through her ears. She felt the heaviness in the air stretch her lips into a frown, force tears out of her eyes and sobs through her lips. It felt like she along with fear were being sealed and dropped into the vast, endless ocean. She was not wet but she could sense the water right outside her window. It was dancing coyly around her window, making friends with her walls. Greenish blue water, light and dense at the same time, rippling all the way to the horizon.

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She loved the water, she always had. She was a water baby. But this was different. It had taken her a decade to build this room for herself to sit in. She had saved up money, learned about construction and built it brick by brick. But floating in water, this room was not a buoy, it was her prison. She had no money. She worried about how she would buy things. What would she wear? How would she feed her unborn children? What would she read? Yes, she had built the room with the idea that she would sit in here and read to her heart’s content. Even though she’d never had money, having ground beneath her feet had kept fear at bay.

If she got out of this room now, which direction would she swim in and for how long? And what would happen when she tired?

Gliding down the gurgling spiral of fear, outdoing herself, she had forgotten one tiny detail. The luxury this predicament afforded her. She could reread all her books. She could spend time with fear, get to know it better, appreciate its magnetism. She could watch the ocean all day from her window. Amid the chaos of spiralling, she had not stopped to consider the absurdity of her doubts. Why would she have to feed her unborn children?

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The ocean is a living being that breathes in waves. Eventually, it always heads to a land to entertain the beach bums. And if she were in fact to be consumed by the ocean, wouldn’t that be the end of fear as well?

She opened her eyes and sniffled, recalling all the shed tears and straightening out her mouth. She offered fear some tea and leaned back in her chair to reread her favourite book.

She Laughed Like A Child

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She laughed like a child, without inhibition. Her open-mouthed laugh baring teeth and the pink palor of her tongue was endearing. And in that moment, everyone watching her turned believers. They believed that the joy in her laughter was permanent. They believed that life was joyous moments strung together. They believed that sadness was an impossible myth. Everyone who saw her laugh was sure that they were in the exact place they were meant to be. They did not question. They did not complain. They let the pleasant feeling of being sprinkled with stardust wash over them. They surrendered to the transient feeling of contentment.

I found it strange that no one, ever, not even once, had stopped to think what it was like to watch her cry. Well, when I saw her laugh, that was my first thought.

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She had been like this forever, laughing only in public and crying only in private. But no one had noticed. When the first sob left her lips, she had tried to ignore it. Accounted for it, first under periods, then under stress and finally under L for loser. When the sobs grew louder, loud enough to echo, she trained herself to purse her lips and swallow the sobs. Swallowing a sob is not for amateurs. It made her sad, mad and then more so. And she ended up crying some more. But when all the sobs were eaten and the tears wouldn’t stop, she decided to experiment on how to make things better. Soon, she noticed that decadent food made her cry less. She cooked all the world’s finest food in her kitchen and ate it too. While she ate, she felt great. Her cheeks stayed dry as long as they were full. She felt as if a hole inside her was getting filled. But eat as she may, that hole never filled all the way to the top. Sometimes, she would have to stop eating from not being able to breathe. Another trick to dry her tears was to watch TV. Television sent her flying into an imaginary land where she was forbidden from crying. A world where everyone wore wonderful clothes and no one was ever unhappy.

No one ever saw her cry. She cried alone in her room, standing expressionless in front of her mirror, eating her dinner or cleaning her bathroom. She cried quietly, the only outward indication being the overflow down her cheeks. It was a steady flow of clear liquid, compromising the downward turn of her mouth, falling down the top of her dress, outlining the heave of her breasts and puddling at her feet. When they had puddled a while, they flowed outward, along the natural slope of the room, across her floor and out the door. Though they hesitated momentarily on the stairs, wondering what it would be like for tears to be seen flowing down the street, they cascaded down the stairs, one step at a time like sobs that now did not exist.

No one noticed the tears flowing down the street being joined by other streams of tears. There were many tears like hers but they all sat crying locked up in their own rooms.

Can you imagine a world where all these tears would get together and skip rope? Skip rope till they grew out of breath and all they could keep track of was the rhythm of their skip. When the tears mixed with the nascent sweat on their indoor skins, their heart would beat all over their being. Tears and laughter would step aside for perseverance to pass through every inch of the body, aware only of the muscles shaking off its lethargy. In that moment, everyone watching them would cease to exist and the only truth would be the resilience of their bodies.