It is a cold morning. Wet like
Monsoon clouds. I pick up my deep red sweater. My bodily warmth stays in it.
Like coffee in the morning – burning your tongue, smarting your eyes with tears
as the brain-fog lifts. Warmth like the burnt edges of a cigarette. (I’ve only
seen them. The back-bencher boys tell me that I shouldn’t start the habit,
because they now regret it.)
My body fills the gaps of the
sweater and I watch a fat woman stare at me in the mirror.
To whom can I say, “I hate my body
because Pa always said I had fat thighs?” Who will not look, and still love me
anyway? There’s a loss here – cold like the clouds and discarded cigarette
butts.
Today is a side-saddle-bag-day. I
like that college days can be assigned type-of-bag-by-the-feel- days. I like
that my powder blue coloured jeans hold the fat in. Makes me lithe. Or what I
imagine lithe to be – a woman in tassel earrings, hunched over a book in a
calming corner made of stones – hidden by the college corridors because the
architect suddenly thought of the water tank. And the milling students hide the
flaw in the architecture. The bag hangs at my side.
How do you make mistakes like
that, always? Choosing impractical side-saddle bags because you feel like it
accompanies your casual, insecure outfit. Unable to hold the heavy books I will
have to borrow from the library. Op Amps and Linear Integrated Circuits by
Ramchand Gaikwad.
I hate being a science student.
Electronics is still somewhat interesting (electrons and their relationships
are polyamorous and exciting), but physics is a pain in the ass (especially
because of the judgemental teachers (AF!)). And math? That was a shitty
breakup. Now we tolerate each other exactly three days before the exams. BSc.
Mathematics 1st Sem, 2nd Sem, and now, 3rd Sem.
By G. K. Ranganath. He is not so bad. The teachers are even better –
especially when they give us the solved problems in the exam so we can throw up
what we already know. But it bothers me. I want to be a literature
student.
I imagine it sometimes – old dusty
books come home with me from their lonely shelves in the library. Yellowed
pages hold secret promises; someone ate a samosa while reading Elizabeth and
John’s adventures and misadventures; it was the first time I was reading an
entire novel in rhyme – sonnets to be precise. It was also the first time I was
reading details about homosexuality (in rhyme). I was curious, because there was
something about it that felt natural, but also forbidden.
I picked up The Golden
Gate because Vikram Seth wrote it. (More for the
surname of the author than for his fame).
Someone else went on a marking
frenzy on the pages of Multiple City: Writings from Bangalore (I
read it only to find out that I hadn’t been to any of the most important places
in the city I have lived my whole life in and so returned the book, feeling a
little depressed).
Heart of Darkness depressed me even more. I hated
the book. Hated reading it. Hated the dehumanisation. Hated that I just could
not understand this “self-other colonization dichotomy” bullshit. Maybe, if I
were a literature student, I could pretend I understood. But
that’s not why I loved reading. I loved it for the image in my head. The image
of a woman lost in the art of reading. The femininity of it, somehow.
There was grace and sensuality in the moment of reading.
Feet curled under each-other, head
nestled in your palm, even as the elbow protests lightly. Your eyes travel
across space. You exist where pain is yours, but accountability is not. When
you’re there, you’re not aware. Everything around you dissolves into the words
on a page.
When you see the word “engrossed”
– this comes to mind. What is it about women’s bodies – their hips, their arms,
the book and a face lost in the pages? Does the other Seth – the one named
after the author of The Golden Gate, the one who may be my boyfriend – think
about women’s bodies like this? About mine? Probably not.
That day, two books are cradled in
my palm. Electronics and Mathematics. The bus from Town Hall to KR Market is crowded.
I should wait a little, but some days the evening light just reminds you, you
have 15 kilometres of public transport commute to bear with, a boy-friend like
a question-mark (who is not answering your calls currently) and a home that
waits for you outside the city. There are other college kids as usual waiting
to board. Aravi and Samir also get in with me. Aravi is doing her Bachelors in
Chemistry, Biology, Zoology (CBZ) and Samir studies Visual Communication.
We know each other from college corridors. Through
silent smiling nods exchanged in between easy or brisk walks – depending on how
late you are to class. These friendships are easy. Unlike the groups I
hang around. Girls and boys are always having serious conversations about Game
of Thrones and “What is a Classic?” and “Religion and Atheism.” When I’m among
them, I am always missing Rcahel and Revu. How we hooked arms and sang random
pop songs out loud in the school corridors. How we created a world with just
the three of us and no one bothered us too much. Because they probably thought
we were crazy. But it didn’t matter. With Rachel and Revu, I never had to think
a million times before having a conversation. I didn’t have to be afraid of
teasing and how it made me feel stupid. Now Revu is doing engineering. She is
happy. Rachel is studying B. Com and regretting it. Like me.
In the midst of this uncertain loneliness, corridor
friendships are soothing. Simple. No judgments. No efforts made to know
another. I remember Karthigayan Sir telling someone he taught the Natural
Sciences batches, while I was at the Department Staff Room. And from the one
conversation I’ve had with Aravi, she mentioned that Karthigayan Sir was a
great teacher. So, we have English Teachers and the college corridors in
common. To make us smile-exchangers.
An old uncle also gets in. He
occupies the space between the books I tightly clenched to my sweater-ed chest
and the silently nodding college-mates. It’s funny, isn’t it? You can hate your
body, but you still protect it. It still tells you when something feels wrong.
Will there ever be a time, when I can just be? Without that gaze measuring and
deciding upon what makes my body mine, and how much I can own it? Probably not.
Probably only within the fantasy
of the reading girl.
I turn after nodding to them. I am
thinking about easy friendships again. Sometimes, you see these people with
their close ones. Laughing. Swearing. Hitting a boy. And you are surprised.
Smile-exchangers have their own personalities with their friends. You never
imagined them like that. They ceased to exist beyond the shared public space.
That’s what made you strangers anyway. Argh!
I thought it was the strap of my
bag. Nipple pinched against the heavy books, jostled like the people in the bus.
Funny. How you don’t want to admit certain strange invasions. But in
college corridors, strangers can turn into smile-exchangers. And you’re not
thinking about your self-loathing or your fear of molestation in the college
corridors. Funny. How self-loathing becomes
moral policing becomes disgust becomes sleep paralysis. Except now, you’re
fully awake. The old man’s fingers are slowly leaving. He stares into a
distance as though his hands have a mind of their own accord. As though I will
brush this away as just another incident. WHY DID I WEAR MY JEANS? WHY ONLY THE
SWEATER TOP? WHY NOT A PRACTICAL BAG TO PUT MY FUCKING BOOKS IN? WHY THE FUCK
DID I GET INTO THIS BUS?
Later, in a less crowded bus, the tears evaporate
before they fall, and a black puddle in the middle of the road that curves onto
the flyover (that will go all the way until Rayaan Circle) swallows some of the
shame. And then I scream at the man in my head.
NOT YOURS. MINE. MY BODY. HOW FUCKING DARE YOU?
He looks a little scared and a little ashamed.
(But I did not believe in feminism then, so maybe
that’s why I couldn’t shout at him, when it happened.)
Aravi saw. Samir did not. Thank God. Maybe Aravi
will tell me a story like this, and maybe we will become more than smile
exchangers.
No. I was wrong.
Samir had pushed the man down the cold steel steps
of the bus when it stopped at Market. Then Samir got down and waited. I think
there was concern in his eyes. Aravi had patted my sweater-ed back. Sweaters
don’t protect you from prying fingers. They should put that on the DO NOT WASH
DRY CLEAN ONLY slip of cloth.
Are you alright? She asked.
Drink some water, she said.
I nodded. I smiled. I’ll be okay, don’t
worry, I said.
Then we went our separate ways. Aravi took a bus to
Chikpet. Samir to Girinagar.
I wonder why we tell people to drink water when
something bad happens. I want to ask him this. It’s been a bad day. Maybe he’ll
know and reply. And he will comfort. But I was still scared of a rejection on
call, so I texted him. When the bus reached Rayaan Circle.
I feel horrible, I type. What words describe an assault? Pain? Anger? Shame?
Powerlessness? I feel empty and horrible. I wish you were here,
with me.
(As if that would change things)
Back home, I bathe for the second time that day.
Can soap scrub away bad memories?
I cry a little.
He would dilute this nauseating sickness. He would
negate it.
(That’s what they do in the dark young adult
fiction that Rachel is always reading.)
No
texts. The minute hand on the clock counts the number of times I check my
phone. It slowly turns into an hour. Then there’s a message notification.
Oh, it’s okay ya, it happens. Especially bus and KR
Market that too. Forget it.
How do you forget. It. I want to
ask him.
***
Finally, Ma does it.
Was it my fault?
No, sweetie no.
Her face is the colour of a monsoon cloud.
A blinding fury and pain hits me like the storm
outside. Wet. Hot.
I will ask the boys to teach me to smoke tomorrow.
Ma lets my tears burn through her sari.
________________________________________________________________________________
*Artwork by Nicoline Tuxen, Portrait of a Woman Reading in Bed, courtesy Wikimedia Commons
