28/09/19
Today is one of those days. When the air feels heavy around me, burdened by gloom and apprehension...one of those days, when I look into the mirror and a slightly metallic taste coats my tongue. The taste of blood, the taste of disgust.277Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoLLewoSVbv
On days like these, I wish I was paper-thin. Like one of those models on the runaway. On days like these, I wish I had hips and breasts so large that men and women alike, were rendered incapable of turning their heads away....
On days like these, I close my eyes and try to will my scars away. I will the goddesses of beauty and vanity to rob me off the stretch marks scattered across my body..."Like those of a tiger!!!", my niece had announced once. And proudly so!
Yet, a tiger is the last thing that I feel myself to be. A zebra maybe?
"Meera, let me comb your hair...come..", Maa says, coming up from behind me.
And I let her. For this will be the last time in a long time. To get me married to someone in such a haste, not even bothering for a ceremony, Baba must have been really desperate. And of my husband, I know little.
"He's wealthy...what else do you want to know?!", Baba had chastised me when I had broken into a fit of hysteria, upon hearing news of my to-be flash marriage, "But..but! I don't even know his name!!"
"Aranya, that's his name. Happy?"
Now, as Ma's aged fingers maneuver through the knots in my hair, I feel despondent tears welling up my eyes. I try not to show it but the guileless, stubborn tears manage to trickle down the brook of my cheeks. If Ma sees it, she shows no sign of it.
"There, we are done!", She says, an out of place enthusiasm scattered in her voice. And yet, it's all a charade. I know it. She knows it. But we don't say anything. Instead, she wraps me up in her arms. I grasp at her hands, their wrinkles and marks, alive and breathing beneath my fingers. It is then that I let out a full-throttle cry.
"Ma, I don't want to. There's something wrong with him. Please...I beg of you!"
"Shhh...I know..I know, dear." And know, she does. For Ma and I have always been different. Always....
A swelling hatred fills my heart. This woman, so terribly weak, so terribly beneath her husband's foot, that were he to drop his shoes, she would get crushed beneath them....how could I have ever expected for her to stand up for me?!
And yet, am I any different? So desperate to please her father, deprived of courage and little to no self-respect. Self-loathing. Self- hatred. What am I? Who am I? Why?
Outside, the blaring horns of perhaps a fancy car (of cars, I know very little) resound through the walls of the house. The time has come...
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