Yellow, orange, and a dash of purple—the sky was drenched in the colour of an unevenly ripe peach. A congregation of birds reunited after solitarily scrounging for food, flapped their wings in the direction of the drowning sun. Breaking the calm of this serene scenery was the screeching of the metro, halting every few minutes. Its cramped coaches carried souls weary from overwork and the gruelling travel that followed after it. If luck was on the side of a few, the temptation to sleep while sitting comfortably was difficult to overcome. The other fellow travellers found themselves leaning against the arm that held the handles dangling above their drooping heads.
“The next station is Rajouri Garden.” The metro announcement went off. Maya waded through the crowded ladies’ coach and stood against the door. She glanced at her phone. 6 pm. Maa won’t scold me today, she assured herself. With weary eyes, she mindlessly gazed at the sights the glass window offered. The day was nearing its end, and the desire to hold on to it for a little longer simmered inside her.
“You’re late, Maya”, a familiar, husky voice called out to her as she entered the two-room apartment. The owner of the voice, a pale figure with neatly plaited hair, sat in the living room and spoke without looking up from the newspaper held firmly between her hands.
“Maa, it’s only 6:15”, she replied, shutting the door behind her. “Besides”, she continued, “you should really cut a college student some slack now”, wrapping her arms around the slender woman from behind the couch. Seema put down the newspaper on the brown coffee table.
“Why is your hair so sweaty? Did you have dance society’s practice today?”, Seema asked, brushing her feeble, long fingers through her daughter’s hair.
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you tell me you won’t be having practice since internals are approaching?”
“Erm, some special event came up today, so we were asked to perform”, Maya muttered impetuously.
The special event was the celebration of the first anniversary of the historic judgement that scrapped the archaic law, Section 377. The sun-lit, regal building housing one of the oldest colleges of Delhi University was soaked in the scent of glitter and fresh acrylic paint. The booming sound of the dhol pierced through the faint chants of students gathered near the main entrance. Their zestful bodies swayed to the beats played by a middle-aged man, his bulky arms covered in sweat and his lower lip clenched as he struck against the tightly stretched skin of the instrument. At one corner, a queue of people waited impatiently for their faces to be painted. Besides them, their backs facing the luscious front lawns of the college, were painted faces glimmering under the yellow light, cheering at the camera. Amidst this astir crowd was the slender, dusky-looking Maya. A silver nose ring rested on her hooked nose. The skin on her long face had turned pink like a ripened plum and beads of sweat rolled past her narrow, dark brown eyes. Her silky raven hair, styled into a bob, was damp. But none of this seemed to bother her. She moved to the rhythm of the music and glanced above at the iridescent flags lining the sky.
With closed eyes, she listened to the gentle strokes rustling through her hair like a cool breeze against the warm scalp. Would Maa still caress her hair if she found out? The question hovered in her mind for some time before she realised she was being naive. The heat had escaped from the top of her head. Maa’s magic touch had done its job well. The soreness from a frenzied day at college and the gruelling metro journey had all but vanished—except for a guilty conscience.
The difference between white and black didn’t matter for parlous lies like hers. Once the truth behind them is revealed, the real casualty remains unknown. Must we pity the one in shackles, buried away in a dungeon? Or the one set aflame by the fire of light? There are no answers in a tragedy.
Seventh grade. Maya fell for her best friend, Mansi. The confession didn’t yield the results Maya had daydreamed of. Instead, it was brushed off with a chuckle. A chuckle that she replied to with, “I am kidding”. The first lie had been spoken.
When friends huddled around her to probe about her secret crush, their questions were laced with pronouns of the opposite gender. She responded to their incessant bugging with, “I like someone but they aren’t from this school.” Because that someone is a girl from another school who takes the same bus as me, she wanted to say. Another lie stacked up.
Time passed and she turned 19. It was the second semester of college when she found herself falling into the deep abyss of forbidden territory, again. This time it was Saniya, a friend who had taken a different major but shared an elective class with her. After six weeks of camaraderie, Saniya confessed her feelings to Mayafirst. The moment the words, “I like you”, escaped from Saniya’s lips, Maya held her breath and waited for her to finish. She glanced at Saniya, who curled her lips inward and tucked tufts of her long charcoal hair behind the ears nervously. Maya wanted to hear the end of the sentence. Say you’re kidding. Say it’s a joke. But all she saw in Saniya was a reflection of all these years—of how she bundled her love as a joke, carried it on her back like a curse and watched girls gawk at her in bewilderment and denial. Their faces flashed in her memory, a reminder of her wickedness, unable to keep up with the ways of the world.
Standing before Saniya, for the first time, she could see what the other person always witnessed—how they saw her quiver with the anxiety of a love confession. Girls had been told all their lives that love was volitional and neither manufactured in the textbooks that presented love as a fait accompli between a man and a woman nor in the loud gossip of aunties in drawing rooms bantering them for their future husbands.
So, if she were to confess, her revelation would be the pebble that disappears after making ripples in water. Were they supposed to feel betrayedfor believing in the integrity of desires, their trajectory and form carved by centuries that bent and broke them before bringing them to life? Or were they supposed to feel disgusted and revolted at the sight they were never shown in stories they had spent their summers reading?
If the blame game must start, should it start from these girls who walked on these parochial roads that stood in front of them? Or should those that stood at the other end be scolded for destroying the rebellious, off-shoots by nipping their queer desires in the bud? Or the ones who laid down the bitumen of dogma?
Maya lay in bed with the lights off. The day of historic judgement was now nearing its end and here she was tossing and turning in bed. For once, she considered running to her mother and spilling out what was on her mind. But she reconsidered the thought, out of habit. It was, after all, a tragedy of habit.
