I was on my elleptical the other day. In my night clothes, feeling like the wedding band was cutting in a tad tightly on my finger. Sweat, mild but nagging nausea and lot of self loathing kept the wheel spinning. 90 calories burnt.
The iPod started playing Mary Jane. I stepped off the machine and looked outside my guilded cage on the tenth floor. Winter is letting up and the sun is out at 7 am.

Cuz, all that matters, Mary Jane, is your freedom.

A small smile slowly spread over my face.

onno dorja taye dhukle ki alice onno kothao pouchhoto? ei chinta roj raatey.

monay monay onno prithibi ta enkey felechhi. ekakityer cheye onek shundor.

There is so much tightly-clenched fist, gnashing teeth, fire in the eyes kind of anger inside me. I want to smash my own face in, tear up all the photos, erase every memory. Why can't we undo things we didn't mean for to happen? To forget everything I saw, to make the picture parade in my head stop would be freedom.

The regret of not having what I did not even know I wanted this badly, makes me so unreasonable. Being deprived of what I always knew comes naturally to every woman makes me so jealous. Jealous of lesser women, jealous of the woman I used to be, jealous of women I love so much.

As the routine plays out the way I always imagined it should, I rewind my own show and repeat , rewind, repeat, rewind, repeat and then I just want to lock myself up in a bathroom and shout till my voice cracks. To hear my voice, guttural, loud, and broken, could be freedom. But I shout with my face buried in a thick quilt and there is no redemption in the darkness that I see with my eyes tightly shut.

Months of visceral anger and hate, growing like a living thing that eats and breathes and sleeps and wakes at unexpected moments.

"Look ahead, the future isn't what happened to you. It's going to be better if you can just let go and get past it all. Even if you cannot forgive, try to forget. In forgetting lies your freedom."

True. Shotyi kotha, kintu. kintu. kintu

"khhobh" er kono ingriji hoy na ar deyaal ey matha thhoka chhara er kono mimangsha hoy na.

Y'know, people say beauty is fleeting and time takes it away from you, it's nothing to dwell on. But if you are beautiful for thirty to forty years of your life, people adore you, life is easier, crowds move over for you, then that kind of confidence stays with you for ever. When you meet an old lady with that quiet confidence, you know she must have been good looking a decade or two back. Yet the whole damn thing is so transient and subjective, guided by commercial motives and ever-changing guidelines. Beauty, that is.

A boy had his girlfriend over for the night in his rented apartment. She was leaving for her hometown , Patna, the next morning. A concerned neighbour called the police on them.

Two men from HaPo (Haryana police) charged into the house at 2 am making obscene remarks about the 'illegal activity' going on there, polluting the spotless clean neighbourhood where mothers carried children by immaculate conception, where respectable married people had respectable homes.

How much sir? How much money? Please don't call her father, he will have us both killed. Five thousand? Six?

Dekh bhaya, siddhi baat. Paise se kuchh nahi hotta. Ek ek bari hum dono ko teri chhokri ke saath chhore dey. Do ghantey mein raat khatam. Baat Khatam.

Of all the many different Indias, I hate this one the most. The hindi heartland.

Is it odd that my mother calls me everyday to remind me to have sex? Is it odder that she never specifies with whom I should be fornicating?

Does this mean she is slowly coming round to accepting that I am slutty by nature and must fulfill my destiny by have an unbearably colourful sex life?

(Because, she knows my husband is not in town all week)

Could this mean that she somehow knows about my ambition to sleep with one man of every nationality in the world?

Or could she simply be asking for a grandchild?

The mystery.

To, everyone ...

... who has said something about my rented apartment being too big-- jokes, snarks, sarcasm, plain surprise included.

I live alone most of the time and have little talent to practice and amuse myself. I NEED a mighty big apartment to play hide n seek with myself just to kill time.

My husband understands this as a basic need in our marriage and has therefore kindly provided me with the necessary space to do so.

Sometimes I also play catch with my shadow.

Kindly stop commenting now.