Preethiya Nalku Abhirupagalu: Part One

Aikhya

I meet him, he takes the print in his hands. His finger traces my collarbone in the photograph. A faultline of consent. Invitation? I am a silent spectator to this interloping.

Your skin stretches taut against lithe bones. The hushed lisp of a smile. The violence of memory. In the fairy-light glow of your finger tracing the scars I’ve carried, I am afraid to touch you. Light stumbles upon the contours of pain etched on me. I submit to the silence of the moment. My sleep reaches for your silhouette, seeking comfort.

How is Deepa? Friend I’ve carried from the dust roads of our one-kilometre walk to school. I seek her in this city of perennial rain. I haven’t called her in a week since she moved to the city of old ruins. When I was young, I sought my friends when the boy ignored me. Now, I seek my friends, and you.

After I devour you, you pull out a camera from your backpack. You wore it on our second date. We ate pork chops and spoke of apple cider and of loving men. Slipknots of time unravel, my heart spilling in confused desire. There are moments when I want to fully own you. Your sleep, your snores, your peeling nail-paint. When you return to him for the night, I uncover a bleeding loneliness. Where our crimson and violet hearts satisfy my urge to hold you close and disappear into your folds. Later, Deepa calls. Tells me she has come out to her family. I tell her about us.

I stare at our photograph, hanging in the abyss that envelops this room of one’s own. Will my mother ever know? She cannot even hear of the interloper, stealing five years of my naive twenties. The candles she burnt praying for me hide the shadow of my resentment. I will clasp this building fury with my skin. Washed, hung out to dry beside the photograph of us. When will I find a place that doesn’t tip over the edge of sadness? I shall wait until I am legally free of the interloper and his imprint on my life. 

Meena

Jhanvi reaches for my slippery, unwaxed skin after a bath. In this moment of need the pain is lesser.

Now, Aikhya, now, I have private knowledge of your mother’s complaints… Every day, you know, I discover pain in different parts of my body… Maybe pain is an invention to escape the drudgery of this life. But for me, work is not a choice, so pain is a discovery... Yeah, it’s okay… See, how she sits up on the bed and tilts her head. She is seeking my nod of approval… I need to go, Aikhya…

When I return from the bath, she makes her way towards me—from the bedpost, to the stack of books, to the little stool on the corner, to my feet. Stubbled calves do not deter her walking with great significance. My back pains after days of cooking and cleaning. You should see how she reaches for me in the middle of the night. A part of me reaches desperately for her small warmth. Another turns away.

My body is no longer mine. My baby drinks from it, another pours into it. I long for wind in my hair. I was married in the midst of a pandemic; we did not have a honeymoon. Now, he eats the sambhar and rice I make, wordlessly. Sometimes too salty, sometimes too many red chillies. He works through the night. Tells me I don’t need to worry. In my memories, a half-written MBA exam screams the end of my education.

Jhanvi tugs on my hair as a tear trickles down, soaking into this bed I’ve grown to hate. I need to turn to her, hold her steady. But before that, my palm fits in the hollow of my eyes and brushes it away. I cannot let her see my pain. She was housed in it for nine months after all.