Stars in her eyes

Had it worked?
She could see the stars beneath her eyelids. Her head hurt. She opened her eyes, slowly. White, all white.
“Hospital,” she gasped comprehendingly.
Nurses bustled around, a buzz of activity enveloping their starch uniforms.
She could smell disinfect and that sullied tang one tends to associate with old people and infants.
And crying?
She gazed out of the corner of her eye only to find her mother sobbing over her quietly.
Suddenly she could hear a commotion, men’s voices raised against the startled efficiency of the doctors.

Shut eyes. Summon those stars.

She began to remember…
It all started and ended with HIM.
They’d met at the local Dandiya Ras and the minute she laid eyes on him, she knew.
“It’s him,” she pointed out excitedly to her friends, “he’s The One.”
She was enamored by his tall lean body, chocolate skin and slow easy smile.
He, in turn, was soon infatuated but her inky black hair, hazel eyes and lust for life.
They danced together the entire night, fragments of every teenagers’ perfect dream, their bodies entwining and moving away to the frenzied fast paced beat of the sticks.
“Juhi,” she sighed when he asked her her name.
“Rang,” he gifted back, his face lighting up.
Her voice whispered his name over and over in her head, like a mantra, long after he was gone.
They met again the next day, he made sure of it.
It took them a few hours to discover the fools that love and life, in all its cruelty had made of them.
She was a Chauhan. He was a Mehta. Their fate was sealed.
They shared family history, belonging to clans that had warred and scarred each other for generations, each vying for the permanent extinction of the other.
No one remembered what had spurred it, they no longer cared. It had become ‘habit’.

But love? Love conquers all.

They faced a year of secret trysts, stolen kisses, moments engraved in the song on their skin that sang to their families that this all that mattered.
They whispered endearments, young confident passion caught in their throats, the promise of a brighter future, the oath of a ‘forever’.
They planned their family together, Jivan meaning ‘life’ for a boy and Jiah meaning ‘live’ for a girl..
And then it began.

It was the stock market that sparked it.
The Chauhans started to gain. All the time. On and on and on. Like Lady Luck had deigned to reside with them. There was no stopping the Chauhans. Their company became famous world-wide, they began to win accolades for their work in various fields, Juhi was promoted to ‘Daddy’s little Princess’…
And the Mehtas? Their favorite opponents? They began to sink. Lower and lower, faster and faster, sink into oblivion.

All this just around the time Rang started working with Daddy.

Did that make for a happy Rang?

No, it did not.

It was small things in the beginning. The name calling, the constant “You pay for it, you ugly bitch! Daddy’s little girl has come into some money, hasn’t she now? Does Daddy know what his princess is upto?”
It was like he’d forgotten her name. She was no longer his sole reason for living, his baby girl, the icing to his cake, his One, His.
Then the pinching started, it was followed by the hair pulling, the cigarette burns and his steady decline into alcohol.
She loved him.
So she let him.
She let him vent his frustration leaving her scarred and emotionally turbulent. Her self esteem plunged, her skin thickened, her eyes lost their shine.
Her penance for being a Chauhan.

He lived in his own flat now. A small one bedroom apartment. Squalid, rancid, lonely.
But she came. Everyday.
And then the violence started. He used to slap her every now and then but soon it became normal almost natural. She would be left to cover up her black eye with a gauzy dupatta, slashings of mascara, concealer, war-paint.
She would be kicked, punched, tortured, slammed against a wall and forced to her feet each and every time.
But always, each and every time, he apologized, disguising her bruises with soft butterfly kisses and contrite “sorry baby, you know I love you”’s.
And he did, in his ‘own way’.

It was the chair on her stomach that did it.
She’d kept her 9 week pregnancy a secret from him, waiting for the ‘right time’ with that foolish faith that only the very young have. She too wished for her Happy Ending, glimpsing the boy she fell in love with in the man before her and wishing that time would race back, with her whole heart and soul.
But it didn’t. And when she suffered a miscarriage, he broke her heart and her soul.
It was only then that she realized that in keeping him alive, she was slowly killing herself.
She decided to end it, for both of them, wrench them out of their misery.
One of them would have to go.

She chose a Friday. Friday the 13th. The day they’d met.

She kept everything ready. The bottle of Tylenol, sleeping pills, a note.

She told everyone she was sick, locked the door, made her bed.

She entered her pretty pink bathroom, had a long bath, washed her hair, put on her favorite outfit,

It was time.

Dear Rang,
My heart and soul,
I love you.
But I can’t take it anymore.
Jivan is dead. I wish to join him.
Love,
Juhi.

She slipped the circular white tablets into her mouth, closed her eyes.
The stars had come, her stars.
Had it worked?
She could see the stars beneath her eyelids. Her head hurt. She opened her eyes, slowly. White, all white.
“Hospital,” she gasped comprehendingly.
Nurses bustled around, a buzz of activity enveloping their starch uniforms.
She could smell disinfect and that sullied tang one tends to associate with old people and infants.
And crying?
She gazed out of the corner of her eye only to find her mother sobbing over her quietly.
Suddenly she could hear a commotion, men’s voices raised against the startled efficiency of the doctors.
A Mehta rushed into her room, she vaguely recognized him as Rangs older brother.
He was crying and screaming.
“He’s dead! Juhi! HE’S DEAD!”
He rushed to her side and attempted to shake her to life but was soon pulled off by security guards and escorted outside. She could still hear his wail of loss, the continuous “HE”S DEAD” as if to convince himself that his bright, handsome, young brother was dead. There were more of them outside.
Her mother was reading a slip of paper vacantly, in shock.

Dear Juhi,
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Forgive me.
My baby Jivan, what have I done to you?
I love you more than the stars themselves.
I’m on my way.
Love,
Rang.

“Rang! You have robbed them of their color,” sighed Juhi’s mother, “Why beti, why?”

Juhi smiled sadly to herself.

Guilt does wonderful things to a person.

One of them had to go.

In a pretty pink bathroom, a bottle of Tylenol lay unopened.

Cheater

“So what’s it like?” I ask nonchalantly, careful not to push it, aware that you love playing hard to get.

“What’s what like?” You grunt, shoveling food into your mouth, your eyes never wavering from the TV.

“You know, acting”

“Why do you care?”

“Okay fine. You might as well get this straight. I don’t ‘care’, it’s just that you don’t want to fuck up your interviews now, do you? DO YOU!?”

“Wha..?”

Hah! I’ve got your attention now.

“Oh c’mon, child star, Hollywood movie and all that jazz. They’ll be hounding you with ‘Beta give us a behind the scenes peak’ and ‘what was it like working with Danny’ in their half baked accents and that patronizing tone. If you’re not careful you’ll become a mini Taare Zameen Par kid minus the buck teeth and the inherent retardedness”

You groan.

“What do you want?” you ask, defeated.

“If you had to describe the whole ‘acting in a movie’ experience in one word, what would you say”?

You’ve clamped up now, your eyes riveted to a figure in black biting someone’s head off as blood drips down his mouth.

I’m disgusted but enamored.

I wait.

I’d just about given up on you when out of the blue you murmur “Cheating”.

“What is?” I say, intrigued.

“A movie. You cheat the camera, you cheat the sound and you cheat yourself”

I sit back, amused.

But then again, you are MY brother.

“Like how?” I’m interested.

You smirk. You can see that.

You pause to examine your food, play with the fork, fiddle with the remote.
You clear your throat.

Divine intervention would come in handy at this point. With God on My side. I can just picture this bolt of lightening striking...

“There was this one scene, where I had to shoot a guy,” you start slowly, “and I all I did was hold a gun and point it, the guy wasn’t even there. They added the blood and gore and noise later. I was left standing. Still”

Haha I can just imagine you, this ganster kid, in your ugly floral print shirt and gunji positioning your gun into nothingness.

Even though we knew this already, being on the other side does kinda hamper your fantasies and let you down. Now you know for a fact that The Empire doesn’t strike back and the Mean Girls aren’t mean and the Power Rangers are just teenagers in boiler suits and make up.

I feel cheated.

You continue to eat, like you don’t care, feet on the table, spiked hair defying gravity and arrogance borne from ‘been there, done that’.

“How are you cheating yourself?” I question, “It’s just ‘acting’, right?”

“When you play someone else, you tend to lose yourself in your character. Which is why you have boundaries and draw lines but sometimes, to find the character, you need to become him. And all that make up..”

You turn to face raised eyebrows.

You roll your eyes and kick me.

I scream like I’m being murdered.

No one bats an eyelid.

They’re used to this.

“So anyway,” I say, getting back, “does this mean you’re going to roam around dangerously calling everyone chut and tormenting innocent girls”

..hmm..sounds like someone I know. Oh right. You.

You laugh.

Acting is all about pretending, isn't it?

Someone once told me, if you pretend long enough, you might just fool yourself into thinking it's true.

Dangerous territory.

And you?

Naahh..you got me to watch over you.

Your big sister, your secret keeper.

And you're the one who taught me how to lie...

Comes in handy, doesn't it?

Don't read this

If heaven were your perfect age, how old would you be?

I’d be 16.

So would almost everyone else I know, give or take a few years.

What if someone decided to stay 70, reaches heaven, goes insearch of his wife and lo and behold finds a beautiful lithe 17 year old instead of her aged experienced 64 year old body?

Shock horror

Compatible much?

Paradise, isn’t it?

Might as well smile for Lucifer

Give him your best shot, you could seduce him into teaching you how to feed on fire..

Among other things.

Turn

She walked into the room.

He was standing by the bar, surrounded by Pretty Blank faces,

And he saw her.

Only she could recognize that flicker in his hazel eyes

He turned to the window, spiked his hair, rolled up his sleeves, grinned at his reflection,
tightened his hold around one of the Pretty Blank faces,

She smiled.
He hadn’t changed a bit.

She sashayed past him, watching him out of the corner of her eye,

Watching him watch her.

He turned to the Pretty blank faces, let them run their hands over his ‘shirt’, kissed them, tipped booze down their lipsticked pouts, threw back his head and laughed,

She smiled.
He hadn’t changed a bit.

He sauntered past her, murmuring something about a refill to the Pretty Blank face closest to him.

She knew he was curious.

She also knew that she would be ignored, he would swagger right past her like ‘they’ had never happened.

And he did.

His tall lithe form pausing to fold a sleeve, something she used to love doing for him, as if to show off his tanned muscular form, to show her what she was missing out on.

She smiled.
He hadn’t changed a bit.

She gazed at the back of his shirt, blue and gold stripes, he didn’t look back,

Like the last time he walked away from her,

As if to show he didn’t care,

She didn’t matter anymore.

He didn’t look back.

She smiled.
He hadnt changed a bit.

If she smiled at him, would he come over and ‘talk’ to her?
If she touched him, would he burn?
If she kissed him now, would he kiss back?
If she fell, would he run?
If she died, would he cry?


She could counter his every move, evoke a reaction, rouse a response

She smiled.
He hadn’t changed a bit.

She had.

Let's play 'Love'

Would you die for me? he asks

Would you live without me? she says


Some questions just aren't meant to be answered.

Boo you whore

What if.....

I were glass

Brittle transparent plastic

I will crack eventually, won’t I?

And then the ugliness will shine through

And no one will say

“It doesn’t matter, you’re beautiful on the inside”

Because I’m not.

Gotcha