Glasshouse of My Dreams
I am a human being. I need to prove it day and night. As a human being I have to caricature the values of the people around me. To be human is to be a part of a tribe. A tribe with norms and positions with a role. I did not choose a lot of things in life. My mother, my father, my brother, my sister. Even my wife wasn’t chosen by me. I am a passive person true to Shakespearean quote, “ we are but actors in a play, acting the roles”. I have thought sometimes, who is the playright ? My mother told me it was the god who made the stage, wrote the script and directed us all. As long as we did good to our loved ones, played by the rules of the society and did good karma I will one day get off the stage and sit peacefully at the end of my life.
I had accepted all of it with humility. It is a hereditary trait in my tribe. My ilk and kith rely on the buttons that are programmed since ages. To listen and do no evil. Yes sir, no sir, jee huzoor, hanji maalik, in my mouth rings all these monikers. I was trained since childhood to be a bazaar girl and pick up things. To find my destiny in committed service of the men around me. First the man who used to be my father, then the father-like figure who used my mother for evening to peddle herself. I have seen it upclose every night. Lying on the bed beside my mother’s in the same room, innocence escaped through the glass of her windows on the road in the front. It was a red brick room with pasted safedi that stuck to my dress while playing hide and seek. I wanted to hide when that man laid up onto my mother with his fingers on her cheeks. I learnt I could stay silent when my heart pumped twice its speed with anger. I would stare at that man’s bare back and distract myself with the room around.
Lilac sofa, a painting with a rocky boat in high tides with dark clouds on the wall, remained tilted as far as I can remember. This is the promise of an image, it remains embedded still. There was a mantlepiece on the side of the sofa for candelabra for lighting up the nights when lights went out. The show must go on, one man after the other, snaking up the white ladders from the ground floor. Many men a night, would spend hours overnight, one at a time. This was regular business, lal dera, red light- without rules and without stoppages, it worked and made my mom work all the time.
Nobody knows what goes on inside of me. It is the idea that we don’t exist, that eats me up. When no one sees me, I die when I sleep and am usually asleep when I work. Eating food feels like work and earning for food is a numbing process. If respectable men came to my ‘dunia’ then they would know my respectable mother. The men who come are not respectable, they leave scratches behind, on her skin and on her cheeks and on her being. I help her with a warm cloth to soothe and claim her sleep from the spirits. The room brick walls are very thick, no one can watch us. The sofa must cry, the painting loses color, time goes on and fades everything, even my pains, the room and I with my mother are the same.
It has been twice the age whence I began writing this story. My hair is longer, I have youth blooming and I have hit puberty. I now realise that I miss my mother that spends her nights in the bed unseen and spent by others. Katkatha helps me to school myself in a shabby room, I am a human she tells me. I believe her. I do not know the answer. They stare when I ask, she is not able to understand and look blankly at me. She wants to ask my name, I say I am mother’s bacchi. She asks my dreams and to chart on a map. I draw a bed on the floor. I show my mother on the floor. Standing up, she and I are dancing together, with no sofa or that painting. I exhibit my moves to my mother, she claps while wearing her saree. Her shoulders are covered with blouses, and her hair is not disheveled. She looks into my eyes. I stare at her cheeks. There is a glimmer of happiness instead of teeth. I know she is with me now. I see her as transparent now. She can see me and I can see her. I cover this distance on paper with a pen, with straight lines, and awkward tangents. I am sorry I do not know how to draw I say to Katkatha. She is smiling anyways. Too kind for an invisible girl, I wonder why?
I go back to my mother’s brick house. How is she? I don't know. She is the one, the only one in my life whom I’ve known for comfort. I go and lie with her tired from school. Katkatha ‘s classes are really tiring, and I wish I could show my mother my dreams. She is tired after serving multiple men. Her brick house is taking care of her. I wish I could know what she dreamed of when she hit puberty. Did she have long hair and asked for schooling ? I wish I could know which stage she chose, which role she dreamed of. My dunia and her dunia are not on talking terms due to some reasons. Is her blood color red just like mine ? I see the clot on her skin as black when I nurse her after men leave. Is she a human or angel ? What if she is the angel that God wanted to rest under men because she is the strongest ?
Never mind, I don’t like it. I don’t want to be an angel like her. I want to be the demon in my house and rule it. I also want to set my own stage, my own walls, my own sofa and canvas my own painting. I’ll ask Katkatha for help. I love her beautiful smile and her eyes. I want to smile like her all the time and teach my mother as well. I’ll be my mother’s eyes and paint them with the kajal that Katkatha puts up. I’ll find a girl to live with me, I have had enough men in my mother’s life. I’ll choose my own ilk and kith and kin. No one will lie on me, I will not be on anyone's bed mattress. My skin is rich and I will have no funny business with finger nails. I like red not black, and I will decide what happens.
Mr. Shakespeare will have to rearrange his stage or carry on without me. I’ll call it my glass house.
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