Tongues clicked tsk tsk, eyebrows raised (an arch that traces their disappointed in me) and eyes rolled in dispair, gambling on the odd of me turing into a prefect indian girl.
In the fall of 1994, when the world was covered in white sheet, people cocooned into their warm lives, hunched bodies with drawn out faces, I was born to my parents and for me life was spread out just out of a Disney movie like a game of dice.
“How can you bring yourself to complain when we have provided you with everything that any 22 year old can ask for?”
I was born and immediately tied to relations I still don’t even understand, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, second cousins, the Bagalwali aunty, the one from dad’s hometown, mom’s classmate. We were a community in ourselves.
“That was very rude! You must apologize! Now! You are not lonely and lost, you are just spoilt!”
You can be lonely in spite of having people around you. And it’s very real. Its like a person. That quiet girl standing in the shadows when everyone danced in the party, that backbencher lost in Oblivion, that face amidst the crowd that translates into lost stories-loneliness. Its very real. Its sits next to me and when I close my eyes, it hangs around like an afterthought.
I tried getting busy, not letting moments burst into solitude. But voices don’t reach me, affection evaporates on me. I try to explain. But then she smiles, smirks, she knows nobody with believe me.
With my perfect evening tea, I always had a companion.