little needs

“I ask for very little, you know. I mean…”

“Little? LITTLE?” he spat.

“I am NOT done!!”

“No, you are. I am. We’re done. Bloody done.” He threw the pillow at the bed and stormed out of our bedroom.

He was joking. Had to be. It was over something stupid.. incredibly stupid. And it always was. I think this time it was over him not telling me that he wouldn’t be home for dinner.

I held back a flood of tears and crept out to see if the baby had woken up. She hadn’t. I was amazed. By her beauty and fragility, yet some unnerving invisible strength which allowed her to sleep through our worst fights. I had a feeling she was going to be just like her father. My baby. The only thing I could ever call my own.

I ran out of the room before the sobbing began, not wanting to wake her. After all, I would have to rock her back to sleep. Her father had left. God knows for how long.
I make him sound like a monster. He’s not. He’s just… insensitive? And I wondered if he was right, if I expected too much from him, as a man, as a husband, as a father. Most of all as a husband. Because he was a good enough father.

A little time, a little love, maybe a compliment here and there. He wasn’t like some other husbands who constantly compare the wife to his beloved mother, or a cheating, disease-carrying bastard. He wasn’t hiding a second family behind closed doors, he wasn’t a miser or a workaholic. But he was insensitive. Like he never saw me. Never noticed the extra talcum powder I put just before he was due home, or the trouble I took over getting back into shape after having Tina. He never noticed how glad I was to see him when he came home, or how all I wanted when I was sick, was just to be held. By him.

I wondered how long it would take before he figured it out. I lifetime felt too long. It felt like all I could see in my future was a black cloud, with bright multi-coloured toys here and there, where Tina would be lying.

I sighed and went to wash my face. I needed to get some sleep before facing the black cloud of the next day, and the villain in my stories – an insensitive husband. Sounds downright evil, doesn’t it?

--

I looked at the picture of my parents on their 5th wedding anniversary. There was tissue all around me, my nose was stuffed, my eyes were so puffy that I could barely see. I was exhausted. It felt like my whole world was a lie. Which was ridiculous. I was 22 and an adult and so many of my friends’ parents had split up or were living lies.

But for my mother to suddenly walk out after 24 years of marriage, a few months shy of their fucking 25th anniversary.. I was trying to wrap my brains around it. My aunt, her younger sister, halped put a few things in perspective. Which left me wondering why she didn’t leave when I was a baby. Why she put up with it at all. My boring clod of a father who never noticed her beauty, how she adored him.

I tried putting myself in her shoes. They seemed painful. I wondered how I never noticed in all those years. And how he never noticed. My stupid father. And my poor mother, for wasting 25 of her most beautiful years.

I started crying again.

breathe

how many times do i have to tell them -- don't dress up for a boy, dress up for yourself!
especially if that boy isn't even worth your time.

humans are confounding. running after sex when you're young, shifting to thoughts of marriage when you're older, then it becomes trying to find a long-term partner plus good sex; not to forget people you aren't romantically linked with... friends. friends who stop talking to you, friends who accuse you of stealing, friends who claim you stop spending time with them when you're interested in a member of the opposite sex, and then there's family -- aging parents, siblings who go away and you miss, or siblings who are at home and you cannot stop fighting with.

it sounds exhausting, doesn't it? dealing with all these people and not going completely bonkers. and then handling them and wondering if you handled them the right way...? which is why i love my Labrador. it's so simple with her. it's just unadulterated love. no expectations. which is impossible from humans.

it's my "alone" phase again, apparently.

when you're around too many people, too much of the time, and you lose sight of yourself... well, it's a little scary. i've been ridiculously social the last few weeks. and i think i know why -- it wasn't a very good reason. it wasn't even for myself. it's as if i am jumping from the frying pan to another hot, steaming vessel, or even right into the fire.

so when i am handing out well-meaning advice to the girlfriends i love, it smarts a bit, it is tiresome. because i know what we go through as women -- over-analysis, expectations, standards [yes, we're picky about people we want to date or take off our clothes for], heart over mind, then mind trying to win over heart, careful weighing, talking, crying, waxing, texting, indulging... it's bloody exhausting when i see what we put ourselves through.

relationships are bloody tiring. i wish everyone was my Labrador. or bluepapercranes. who is like a human Labrador with almost non-existent expectations.

*big bloody sigh*

slim

children don't see what their parents see:
the same mistakes, made by half of the same blood
cells that they helped make and want to perfect

what they don't know is, they were also young
that everyone makes mistakes so they have regrets when old
children bring misery to *all* parents, not just you

cells combine, make a person, a freak accident mixture of two people
what could possibly go right with that?
what are the odds you'll have a great kid?

they're slim, i'll tell you.
real.
slim.

i'd know. i'm one of these kids.

mr sweet

Sitara was having the worst day in the world.

Once a lawyer, she had thought life going over endless reams of legal documents could not be worse than *not* getting a story and being yelled at. So she switched over to the media. Newspapers, to be precise. Her written test was excellent, she charmed the heck out of her future editor at her interview and even managed to talk her way out of getting a beginner’s salary.

Which is why, when she *did* make mistakes, he got really mad. Forget red cheeks. The man had a round face, he was short and plump, but refused to accept it. So he wore t-shirts that were too small for him. When he was angry, these t-shirts seemed to expand around his tummy and shrink around the chest because he would inhale that much. And then he would explode. The man’s voice could carry across the ground floor of our editorial building. Besides that, his extremely long, grey ear hair almost curled up like Malayali cinema villain’s curly moustaches.

So the day that Sitara screwed up for the third time in two days, his ear hair really got curly.

“How, how, HOW can you miss environment day?! We had a fucking supplement out today? The Indian Times printed a GREEN NEWSPAPER!!!”

Sitara shuddered remembering the force of the man’s temper against the already-heavy load she was carrying. Although she couldn’t blame him. What so-called environmental reporter didn’t plan ahead for these things? Especially because she was busy planning a romantic evening for her one-year anniversary with her boyfriend. Now, she would forever remember that the day coincided with World Environment Day.

“Shame on me,” she muttered, while packing up her things.

The boss came in at that moment. She froze. His eyes were bulging out of his face as he stared at her, he was not blinking.

“Y-Yes, sir?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” His voice was very quiet.

“Packing my things, sir……?” She was almost whispering.

Then she saw it. He inhaled.

And then he exhaled.

“What the HELL are you? You goddamn lawyer people never give up! And now.. now you mess up and think you can just LEAVE?! FUCK no! I want a page one story for tomorrow! Give it to me in time for the city edition!”

She swallowed. “Sir, it’s already 3.30.”

“Well, you’d better work fast then.”

Sitara never worked harder and faster on her one-year anniversary. It also helped that her boyfriend left her her favourite flower, an orchid, on her desk when he left. [This was one of the few times she appreciated having a boyfriend in the same building.]

So at 9.47 pm that night, when she finally got home to the elaborate dinner she had planned, she gave him an anniversary he would probably never forget.

As they were falling asleep, she muttered, “You are the sweetest. I don’t even know where you got an orchid from. Our goddamn office is in that hellhole of an industrial area.”

“Uhm. Truth? You’ve been talking about that flower a lot, so…”

“Huh?”

“Well, the truth is........ a boyfriend would look for a place where he could get it no?” And Sitara melted into his dimpled chin as he grinned down at her.

There was a collective roar from Paul’s friends when he got to that part of the story about their anniversary.

“Dude! Nicely played!”

“What the fuck, man, how come these things don’t happen to me!”

Among all that, “Wait, wait, wait, wait!!”

The decibel level dropped slightly. “Yes?”

“So if it wasn’t you, who left that flower for her, Mr Sweet?”

“No idea, dude. If I ever find out, I’ll thank the dude, though. The sex has never been better!” And he dimpled at his dudes.