I opened my window and stared at the eerie darkness of a sultry summer night. It was the October of 2003, but as everybody knows, Chennai has four summers.
He was sound asleep. A sudden suffocation had woken me up. I had stared helplessly at the ceiling fan for quite some time before getting up to open the windows.
I had recently got married and moved to the new city. We had fought quite a few battles at home past few years just for this. Everything was going to fall into place when we finally get married. I was going to manage everything 'perfectly'. Everything was going to be just perfect.
Actually it was perfect in a way, my in laws treated me alright , somehow I hadn't expected that, we did get a comfortable 2 bedroom apartment in Chennai, and I did manage to get a job in the company where my husband worked.
But my body was behaving mysteriously. I had lived a perfectly healthy 24 years before moving to Chennai, but as soon as I stepped into the new life, I started having health issues I never had before. I ached, shivered, coughed and bled in ways unknown to me until then. The doctor had to put me under some strong medication and I had gained a lot of weight because of that. Being overweight was something I had never foreseen in my pre-marriage life. I had to fold a cupboard full of clothes and set them aside for some indefinite time in the future when I would I lose all the weight.
My husband, young and clueless himself, had no idea how to cheer me up. He bought sweet boxes almost everyday, he knew that I was an incurable sweet-tooth. He tried to overlook the fact that I was overweight. Anyways, I wouldn't join a gym or go jogging with him, my body actually refused to move unnecessarily.
I was typically a child-woman, I would get excited for small things and feel bad for almost everything. With my cooking experiments, I had burnt many vessels and the pressure cooker had to replaced twice. I was yet to master the art of cooking, the art of planning, the art of not throwing half the vegetables I bought.
Still, our flimsy young brains planned out future. The first thing we had to do was to buy a house! Why? I would like to ask my 24 year old self, and she would probably say that that's what you do when you are married. We would go and see apartments every week, we would work out the EMI and stare desperately at the sky!
Staring at the sky! yes! That was what I was doing that night, though the giant apartment buildings on the other side obstructed the supreme limitlessness of it.
I took deep breaths, I pressed my face on the grill and felt the heartless coldness of the metal. My eyes desperately, searched the sky for a lonely star.
I felt strange, like I was part of something big, something I could not understand. I felt like I was in a song, trapped eternally in its nuances, looking for my way out through the notes. I felt like this was what I had been doing all my life, staring into the night sky, gazing at a star. Or perhaps my whole life was channelled for this moment. I had to wake up with cold sweats and open the window and stare at the sky. And strangely I felt that my life was going to change. It was going to change forever, though I had no idea how.
I believed in signs, undeniably so! Was my body, with its aches and pains, trying to tell me something? Was something going to happen to me? What ever it was I was going to succumb to it. I made a mental note to tell my husband that he should remarry if I die.
I had no control over it, what ever it was. And with that knowledge I felt completely at peace. I was part of a plan!
We do sometimes misinterpret signs. And of course I didn't die. But I often find myself going back to that sultry Chennai night, and wonder what it was all about. I Try to trace out the origins of that strange, volatile feeling.
This hopelessness that some of us feel at the beginning of the year could also be a volatile thing. May be things would start falling into place right from this day!
Happy New Year!
He was sound asleep. A sudden suffocation had woken me up. I had stared helplessly at the ceiling fan for quite some time before getting up to open the windows.
I had recently got married and moved to the new city. We had fought quite a few battles at home past few years just for this. Everything was going to fall into place when we finally get married. I was going to manage everything 'perfectly'. Everything was going to be just perfect.
Actually it was perfect in a way, my in laws treated me alright , somehow I hadn't expected that, we did get a comfortable 2 bedroom apartment in Chennai, and I did manage to get a job in the company where my husband worked.
But my body was behaving mysteriously. I had lived a perfectly healthy 24 years before moving to Chennai, but as soon as I stepped into the new life, I started having health issues I never had before. I ached, shivered, coughed and bled in ways unknown to me until then. The doctor had to put me under some strong medication and I had gained a lot of weight because of that. Being overweight was something I had never foreseen in my pre-marriage life. I had to fold a cupboard full of clothes and set them aside for some indefinite time in the future when I would I lose all the weight.
My husband, young and clueless himself, had no idea how to cheer me up. He bought sweet boxes almost everyday, he knew that I was an incurable sweet-tooth. He tried to overlook the fact that I was overweight. Anyways, I wouldn't join a gym or go jogging with him, my body actually refused to move unnecessarily.
I was typically a child-woman, I would get excited for small things and feel bad for almost everything. With my cooking experiments, I had burnt many vessels and the pressure cooker had to replaced twice. I was yet to master the art of cooking, the art of planning, the art of not throwing half the vegetables I bought.
Still, our flimsy young brains planned out future. The first thing we had to do was to buy a house! Why? I would like to ask my 24 year old self, and she would probably say that that's what you do when you are married. We would go and see apartments every week, we would work out the EMI and stare desperately at the sky!
Staring at the sky! yes! That was what I was doing that night, though the giant apartment buildings on the other side obstructed the supreme limitlessness of it.
I took deep breaths, I pressed my face on the grill and felt the heartless coldness of the metal. My eyes desperately, searched the sky for a lonely star.
I felt strange, like I was part of something big, something I could not understand. I felt like I was in a song, trapped eternally in its nuances, looking for my way out through the notes. I felt like this was what I had been doing all my life, staring into the night sky, gazing at a star. Or perhaps my whole life was channelled for this moment. I had to wake up with cold sweats and open the window and stare at the sky. And strangely I felt that my life was going to change. It was going to change forever, though I had no idea how.
I believed in signs, undeniably so! Was my body, with its aches and pains, trying to tell me something? Was something going to happen to me? What ever it was I was going to succumb to it. I made a mental note to tell my husband that he should remarry if I die.
I had no control over it, what ever it was. And with that knowledge I felt completely at peace. I was part of a plan!
We do sometimes misinterpret signs. And of course I didn't die. But I often find myself going back to that sultry Chennai night, and wonder what it was all about. I Try to trace out the origins of that strange, volatile feeling.
This hopelessness that some of us feel at the beginning of the year could also be a volatile thing. May be things would start falling into place right from this day!
Happy New Year!
