Disturbia

I gaze out of the window absent mindedly thinking whether I'll reach on time.

He's going pretty fast & going by the speed he's going I should be able to catch the train on time.

As it is, I've missed the train and my only chance in joining him is to catch the same train.

As myriad thoughts fill my entire being, the auto i travel in, screeches to a grinding halt.

I get down from the auto to look around.

It's still dark and the clock in the station ticks 4 o clock.

With great difficulty, I read the name of the station....OTTA-PPAALAM...

The moment my brain comprehends what this means, the look on my face turns from relief to horror.

Darn !!! I'm supposed to be in Varkala & here I am in Ottappalam!!!!!!!!!

Damn it !! The auto guy must have gone faster than was really required and I ended up in no man's land.

Horror on my face changes into pure red anger as i turn to look at the auto driver.

And wonder of wonders he's smiling at me, as if mocking the predicament I'm in.

I'm seething with rage as I ask him, "Is this where I wanted u to drop me? Is this y I was ready to pay u triple the meter charge? Have u got no sense at all or are u challenged that u cant understand anything? Now who is gonna be responsible now that I've missed my train? R u gonna drive me all the way to Chennai????"

I utter all gibberish, totally incomprehensible until I get one tight slap across my face.

I see the stars in my head, as u see in cartoons, and I reel backwards to fall on the ground.

It hurts real bad and now I understand how it feels to be hit by a man.

My ego is hurt very badly, more so cos I cant believe that an ordinary auto driver has the audacity to slap ME. I'm too stunned to move. But still conscious.

As the stars inside my head settle down, my eyes adjust their focus to the man standing tall in front of me.

He's tall, about 6 feet at least, fair, well built,no moustache & smiling.

It is the sly smile that unnerves me... as if he's plotting something and I cant seem to understand what it is.

It's the sly, cunning & mocking smile of a fox or rather a hyena which approaches a half dead creature ready to tear it into parts and eat it while it's still alive.

I come back to reality with a jolt, amazed at how my imagination can work overtime in a situation like this.

For the first time in my life, I feel scared & vulnerable.

I have a funny feeling starting to rise up from the pit of my stomach. Fear........

I see him throwing off my bags from the auto. They land with a loud thud, on the railway tracks nearby.

My head is still groggy and I cant seem to process what is happening. My head feels extremely heavy. It must be because of the slap.

I see him take off his khaki shirt & I can see his well toned sweat glistened body in the faint light of the platform lights. Slowly, the realisation of what is going to follow dawns on me.

I've seen this scene so often in the movies.

This is how it starts off, then the girl yells "bachaoo" in her highest pitch, then the villain approaches her, tearing her clothes to bits and doing whatever it is that he intended to do.

This is where the story forks. Either the girl emerges with tattered clothes & bruises on her body, sobbing softly to herself and blaming her fate for what happened or, the hero appears out of nowhere, beats the villain to a pulp and takes off his shirt/coat/whatever to cover her up and they they live happily ever after.

I think of my hero... He must be on the train, the train I was supposed to board. He must have crossed the Kerala border & must be waiting for me, wondering what was taking me so long.

I can actually see what is going to come & I blink and blink to make it all disappear and get back home, but in vain.

I try to get up, but the fall was so severe that I can get up at all. Every part of my body groans in protest, refusing to budge.

Before I realise it, there is this shirtless man on top of me, violating everything a girl feels is her own private self.

I open my mouth to yell, only to be clamped shut by a powerful hand with bulging biceps, like that of a gym instructor. It was almost like he was squeezing life out of me as he clasped his hand on my mouth.

I struggle under his weight helplessly,but that mountain of a man doesn't seem to budge.

My bruised & tattered ego is seething with rage & I try to wriggle out from under him, like a helpless worm wriggles to and forth.

No sound comes out of my throat, but my eyes rest on that sly smile of his, ready to devour me & that fills me with rage again.

I try to push him away, I try to kick him off, I try to bite him, I try to do everything to get him off me, but I end up being more subdued, drained out of strength & unable to move.

As I lie tired & suffocated under the weight of his body, I see my dupatta flying off somewhere into the oblivion.

I can feel my salwar being ripped open, my new salwar.

Suddenly, I can feel the bitterness of the cold morning air just as cloth leaves my body.

And then, there is this intense piercing pain, like a 100 daggers are thrust into you.

It increases & increases until i cant bear it anymore & I feel as if i'm going to burst.

Then, I open my eyes.

My gaze falls on the stand beside my bed, full of umpteen creams, lotions & hair bands.

To my greatest relief, I recognise my room in the apartment I live in.

I feel very tired and mentally drained out. I sit up in bed, trying to recollect what I saw in my dream.

I just saw myself being raped.

And the thought itself fills me with so much anguish that I say Oh God! how could I see something so painful as this?

It's earlier than my usual time; the clock has just struck 8 & I have enough time to make breakfast.

I had my bath only last night so then I don't usually bathe in the morning. But, given the circumstances I woke up in, I felt violated, dirty & in need of a thorough cleansing.

I switch on the geyser to take my bath, make myself my cuppa horlicks and sit in front of the TV watching a gyrating Jyothika on sun music.

Once I finish my horlicks, I take my clothes & rest of my paraphrenelia and proceed to take my bath.

I pour the first mug of hot water on my face and as I close my eyes, I go back to visuals of my dream in a flash.

The feeling of being dirty dominates all other feelings that I had. I don't know y but that's how I felt.

Considering that I had only a dream , I know that this is not a big thing. But, such an incident in just a dream affected me so much that I shudder to think about the hapless women who have been through all this and more. I wonder what they might have felt. Their souls must tattered and bruised beyond any possible recovery. I can now at least relate to how they must have felt.

My dreams are always in 70 mm colour. It is very descriptive & detailed as I see it, but I cant seem to remember the faces of people involved. However, I can remember the settings, 4 eg in this case that the scene was beside a railway station. I cant remember the man's face no matter how hard I try. I think 4 me, he signifies only bad in people which is omnipresent. I still cant remember his face, though i can clearly see his physique.

I'm always struggling in my dreams, for something/someone, to get away from someone/ something so on and so forth.

I woke up painfully disturbed, scarred, feeling dirty and dead. Bathing today was cleansing to me. As if I was trying to wash away whatever was the dirt on me. If I could draw i think i would have drawn the scene, but since I can only write I know that it is a better release 4 me to write it out. I cant really put across my emotions when I woke up & I couldn't believe I was so affected by just a dream.

I think the Ottappalam setting was from my ex-room mate who was 4m that place. I cant figure out how i got this sort of an eloping idea from. I would never have done that in real life. Nor could I understand y the auto guy slapped me cos I didn't say anything bad. I was just angry. I don't think i saw any rape scenes in any of my recent movies & so i cant seem to figure out how the idea evolved. People say that things that haunt ur sub conscious mind translates into dreams. Things/people you yearn for, things left unsaid all this and more can translate into dreams. Small things come together to evolve into a totally different experience.

Phew !! This has been one tiring experience.

Me signing off.

Dress Rehearsal

Scene

The door of the fitting room opened wide to reveal a pair of medium sized bare feet, a pair of well rounded calves which would put the fattest chicken drumsticks to shame, hip rounder than those of females you would see in old ravi varma paintings, waist as slim as a housewife's, well endowed bust further bettered by the deep and wide neckline and a spectacled round face with a questioning look.

A : So what do you think?

N : hmmmmmmm (long one) It's really nice, accentuates your features, a bit on the shorter side. Only problem is you remind me of the girls in c grade mallu skin flicks & I will get you this dress only for bathroom and bedroom wear. You get out of that dress immediately !!!!

A : (deep sigh)

The rotund figure slinks back into the fitting room. Door slams shut.

Well, that was one of my many dress rehearsals. It was a beautiful cream n white satin dress, but the judge clearly said what it reminded him of and no contest. The second was a grey dress which didnt actually do anything for me, but did wonders for his pocket. So we finally bought it because we couldnt find anything else that would fit my hips and his pocket equally well. I was a size large in most brands in India & here sometimes my chest fits but my hips dont and sometimes the other way round. Here I fall in the petite category & fit in most medium sized tops and bottoms. I wasnt quite happy with the the dress or may be i didnt know there were other dresses which could make me happier. So we continued hunting, thanks to my patient half. I found a Calvin Klein Shirt dress which was really smart, but only problem was that i couldnt sit down while i was in it, the buttons would pop open under the stress of my layered fat. In addition the judge said no ways. He sure wasnt a great fan of peeping body parts, specially his emotional half's. And we did find something that made me happier. It was red all over, with black vertical lines which made me look taller than i was. The cloth was thicker than those of most other dresses i had seen, because they didnt openly advertise my intimate wear. And it had this little black lace which could be tied into a bow at the waist. Most importantly, it fitted my hips & his pocket & it didnt remind him of anyone sleazy. So like the cat who got the cream, we took it home. I wore the dress when we went to Balharbour shops, Miami. I've been to a lot of malls, in India and abroad, upscale , downscale, medium scale, all scales, but this was out of this world. The shops housed there reminded me of the fashion week in FTV. Versace, Gucci,YSL,Chanel,De Beers, Armani,Cartier,D&G,Dior,Escada,Fendi,Jimmmy Choo,LAcoste,Louis Vuitton,Prada,Tiffany and what not. I gawked wide mouthed at their exhibits and peered wide eyed into their shops. We didnt muster enough courage to even get into any of those shops. The shoppers who came there looked like they were imported from some ramp in Paris, dressed to the hilt, in fur coats, leather and boots. However, there were a few like us who came there for the sole purpose of proving a point which is that we have gone there & for a photo shoot. If there's one place unfit even for window shopping i guess this was it. The opulence and indulgence of the glitterati who came there was so intimidating that i felt like i was out of place.

Role Play

Well, for a long time i didnt know what to feel when i think of my better half & now i doubt if i feel anything at all. I cook for him, clean his house, wait on him & sleep with him, but does that make me a wife? May be it makes me a glorified maid servant with extra privileges and some perks free. I dont know. I still am emotionally attached to a lot more people than him. If i have a problem or if something is upsetting me, i think of others before i think of him. I get more consolation from people thousands of miles apart than the person who sleeps right next to me. I wonder why. Is it time, is it the circumstances or is it plain magnetism which draw people closer. When u r girlfriend boyfriend why do you buy chocolates/flowers for your gf? Is it because it is the done thing or because you know that she likes flowers and that it will make her happy or is it because people around you tell you that it is the way it is or is it because you love her being happy? Why is it that people celebrate anniversaries? Is it because they cherish the day they married each other or is it because they are doing it cos everybody else did it like it is the done thing? Everything that we do, we do either out of a sense of duty or out of love. Things that you do out of a sense of duty has no emotion attached to it, like doing a job, totally mechanical. Things you do out of love has a lot of care, planning & effort into it. Like I read somewhere, you realise what you had only after you lose it & it is too late to get it back. I still remember my birthday this year. I was quite lonely because i was living alone at that point of time. But, i didnt want a boring birthday , so i bought cake & candles for myself, treated myself to a private dinner & dessert & watched a good movie on tv, all alone. 2 of my very dear friends surprised me with birthday gifts at midnight, something i did not quite expect. Perhaps that was the last birthday i would ever celebrate with friends, with cake cutting at midnight & gifts. If you have a strong desire to relive the past, then it means that you dont love the present as much. I still love my brother a lot, perhaps the only man who can console me at bad times & knock some good sense into me. One bear hug is all it takes to wash away all my sorrow. I still lean on him for support, though we are physically thousands of miles apart. Doesnt it feel great to hear "I'll be there for you" from someone? Sometimes it helps to say it out loud and sometimes it does a lot more to do something equally nice, like a bear hug.