Sitting in an autorickshaw on a rainy day, travelling on the roads of Gurugram. It is not a very soothing experience, when it is 7 in the evening. The potholes making the ride jumpy, and the creepy looking driver is not making it any easier. He signals to take a left, entering the path I never prefer to travel on my way back to my place. I ask him to stop and take the normal route. He argues, saying it’s a short-cut, but I offer to pay him an extra 20 bucks and he agrees.
I am now sitting in the balcony, with the leaves of my plants touching my feet, as if consoling, cajoling me, saying, “you are fine my dear, take a sip of that tea, read something and go to sleep.”
I try to take my mind away, but all the thoughts and memories come rushing back like water entering a town after the dam has given up. I read a piece on Instagram in the afternoon, in which a girl shared an experience of the trauma she went through when she was a child. I feel as if my stomach has 100 knots inside it, and I turn off the lights of my room, turning on the tortoise lamp gifted by a dear friend. It projects a million stars on the roof of my room, it’s soothing, and generally helps me fall asleep. But today, even the stars are not helping.
I twist and turn in my bed, thinking of the times when I or any of my friends got inappropriately touched while returning from coaching, or got a slap on the butt when we wore tight jeans. Now things have taken a step forward, evil has spread its hands a little more. Now kids get their throats slit after they are abused. Thank god we were left alive to relive the nightmare again and again and again, every time we read or see or hear something similar.
Or to know what it means when your heart skips a beat, when the autorickshaw takes a wrong turn, intentionally or unintentionally, or when you find someone staring at you, or when your fellow-passenger in the bus tries to get a feel of your body, cleverly hiding his hand under his arms folded across his chest. You become that nine-year-old girl, standing in a dark corner, scared, frozen.
There is this blotch on our souls that has remained, and will remain forever. A blotch caused by tea spilled by someone else, because we were too young to drink any or hold a cup.
These days the souls are killed, leaving a blotch is just a small drop in the ocean of dirty thoughts and evil intentions that people carry in their hearts.
I don’t know what this world has come to, I cannot fathom how someone can colour a canvas so white or colourful or sanguine in pure black colour. I won’t give an opinion or a solution, because I don’t have any, maybe because I believe we have run out of those.
We can only provide water to wash off the dirt on someone’s hands, we cannot ask them or make their hands clean or get rid of the blotches they have on their souls and mind.
harsha.mishra1@gmail.com
