PART 2

For a woman, to hope is a foolish thing. Yet sometimes, it's the best she can do.

Ever since she was a child, her every attempt to be a good son was a hope in vain. She was born unknown, in the hopes of a boy - in fact, her father was confident that he had crafted a boy. He'd already spread the word, acting like a wildfire himself. The evening her mother went into labor, every servant, relatives (elderly) had gathered in their veranda to witness one of the most astounding (disappointing) moments of their lives.

"It's a.... It's a... gir..rl?"

Loud gasps, murmurs, disappointment, frustrated sighs filled the room. One of the (supposedly) brightest moments of their life, suddenly cloned the room with darkness. It felt like ashes flying around. She was born at sunset. The murkiness was real.

She was named Anita, against Amit - a namesake of the expected boy - the difference of just two alphabets, somehow set her two steps behind.

Anita was always made aware about what she was - a girl, dowry, burden, a fixed deposit to be spent entirely one day - an expense.

She was six when she heard one of her grandmothers say, "Why send her to school? It's not like she's going to run the house one day." From that day onwards, even though Anita didn't realize it then - Grandma became a whore.

Even though, she was taught to be a girl, to always be contained into an invisible receptacle, to be unheard : don't laugh too loudly, don't speak too much, wear extra clothes, sit like a girl; she never wanted to be one completely. Because deep down she thought that if she became a complete woman, her father would love her even lesser. She wanted to be the son he never had. And the more she tried to accept herself that way, it created a huge spur of debate in the family.

"When I was your age, a tutor would be called home to teach us sisters. He taught us to sing, play the sitar, do kathak," Anita's mother once told her, lost in a blank space, a memory perhaps, yet looking into her child's eyes. She giggled then, "We'd run and hide around the house sometimes."

But Anita was the only daughter. The failure of the first child was so traumatic, her father never wanted to gamble again.

When Anita grew a little more, she formed two beautiful, hanging honeycombs on her chest. Her body had become thinner, slender. The hair from her scalp fell through her back and stopped at her hip, black and thinly soft. But with all the physicality that she had gained, she'd lost her conversations with her father. Her mother would at times console her, but would never confront her husband. It was just the way things were.

Anita went to college only on the condition that she'd get married soon. It was her father's condition, not directly conveyed - the mother was the owl here.

She had agreed to this disgraceful pact, for it meant freedom - even though temporary - to get out of the house, spend time outside, and blame it on studies. But no-one really cared to ask her about her studies, or about the time she'd spend outside the house. No-one would ask her whether she ate during lunchtime or not. (She had to pack her own lunchbox.)

After Anita's birth, her mother became devoted to apologise and please her father for bringing the wrong child into the world. She was made to believe that it was indeed her fault. Her mother-in-law, Anita's grandmother made her do things like sitting only on her right leg, or make the male children in the family sit on her lap to make sure it would be a boy. She went along with all of it, even though her feet would be swollen, her thighs would hurt and her body would be tired, she did everything she could to avoid Anita to come to this world.

Anita was very aware of this. She knew she was ignored, she knew she was unwanted, she knew that she was just a loan, or treated as such, that her parents will one day have to pay off. It came to the point that one day, she stopped being a son. She always wanted to walk out on a clear sunny day, knowing that she was loved. She loved the nature, how the seasons changed, and how along with it, so would the flowers and fruits. She loved to watch the rebirth of trees during the spring, the koel singing, the clouds hovering, the rain - cold.

She supposed that all her life she had loved people who didn't give it back, but the nature, heedless of it's own beauty had given her more love than she'd given it back.

But it was love at first sight. She saw him in the staffroom the first time, talking to other teachers. His shirt was folded upto his elbows, the muslin dhoti intricate, the hair on his chest slightly visible, a thin moustache and thicker eyebrows with honey like brown eyes. It was a moment the world around her first time seized to exist. He only taught the primary students, and was about her age - slightly older. She asked a young boy in the corridor for his name - Adrith.

He was the first person who'd made her laugh like a maniac, something only monkeys did to her before. She'd bring him her own lunchbox, preparing extra chapatis. She dressed up for him, wore earings, plastic bangles, a bindi, and a garland - all outside the house, in the lady's room at college. She had started skipping periods of mathematics, general science, and then eventually never returned to college after lunch break.

He'd once taken her out of town, half an hour away from the city, on a bicycle rickshaw near the graveyard he spent his childhood in. He took her to the edge of a peak, where he'd only taken his brother once before.

She looked at him. "I love you," is all he said. She blushed.