Silhouette

Her silken hair covers her sore eyes. Her smile hides her wrinkles. Her banter surrogates her sadness. She wipes the dust off the surface to uncover a velvet dress. She sashays into the dress and poignantly looks into the mirror. The red dress did not match her face. Where’s the other face? She looked through the mirror in search of a proxy image. She slowly pulls out her Pandora’s Box. Her fragile hands brush out some powdered rouge and stroke it around her cheek. This red matches her dress. She is reassured. She paints her eye red against a clean white canvas of her face. There is only one thing missing. Her smile. She has lost it somewhere. She looks around… finds a stray smile on an old picture frame. She slithers into the dark alley not wanting to be noticed. Anxiety is making her sweat… the air conditioner is making her freeze. She sneaks through the door into the room where pair of anxious eyes awaits her. Her eyes run through the room and nervousness spills out of it. The frown on her face turns into a smile as soon as she shuts the door behind. She has been asked to smile as soon as she enters the room. Her bag slips down from her shoulder. Her red silk scarf unfurls sensuously and curls on the floor. Those stilettos dig a dot on the carpet as she walks towards the bed. The lights go off! 

Discovery

Wrath besieges my mind. I reflect in the mirror, a person that I know not. Each day I see a different me. Today a happy face tomorrow glum. Ecstatic, another day… My mind rebuffs the reflection.

Sometimes what you become is an outcome of the surroundings you are in. Under immense pressure from your environment, your circumstances your inertia breaks and creates some inexplicable seismic changes in the core of your heart. Over the years my heart has become molten iron from inside. I wasn’t born that way. I was made to become as hard as a diamond without the bling!

I feel the pain when a hand is slit in front of me. Its only that I don’t exclaim. I feel the happiness when a baby is born, its only that I do not have maternal instincts. I feel the sadness when a heart breaks its only that I don’t shed tears. Does that mean I don’t have a heart? I have often been casually taken as a boy. Metaphorically, it means I am cold, strong or perhaps unemotional, detached and crass. And all this only because I am not the opposite of it.

Beneath the multiple layers of iron and thorns is a regular heart that not many have tried to see. I am a normal girl with desires of a regular girl. I want to be loved, I want to be made to feel special, I want to be the world to somebody, I want to be the special someone and want to be pampered too. The only difference is I don’t express it. My exterior is rough and seasoned now. Its not a choice that I made. I became like this. One’s who know me now, do not know my then. One’s who know my then… do not recognize me now. This tom boy who doesn’t wear Indian outfits also wants to dress up someday. I want to shed my jeans to wear clothes that bring my identity back, that make me feel like me. I want to look pretty too. When I look at other people looking good, I wish I could make an effort too. I don’t have any motivation since I do not have anybody to dress up for. Who do I dress up for? What’s the use? My shabby jeans and soft loose tops hide my molten heart. It’s a defense. Against the vulnerability that it carries, the responsibilities that it shoulders, the loneliness that engulfs it.

Beneath those endless layers lies a heart that yearns for love, attention, affection. I am a girl and there is nothing wrong with me. I am loud, I use swear words, I don’t wear make up… but I am a girl at heart. The heart that very few have seen. I want to feel the emotions surrounding me. I want to feel the love. I want somebody to peep within those thousand layers of cold and discover me.