Sorry

The sounds outside were getting to her. She wasn't able to think. Maybe a good thing, Anjana thought. Her thoughts were ruining the serenity that she didn't have, anyway. She felt the usual few million caterpillars running around inside her head with a couple of slugs sucking on the inside of her stomach this time. She felt herself swallowing down her sobs and screams, with a look of feigned dignity on her pale face. She sighed. When had going home become such an unbearable experience? For Anjana, it got worse with each visit.

She was staring outside the window; they were passing through T. Nagar now.  The bus was obviously stuck in the permanent traffic jam that this place seemed to harbour. It had been almost a year since she had come by this route. A year since she had gone home. Feeling fortunate that she had got a window seat in that crammed bus, she continued to stare at the million people buzzing around the place selling, buying, driving, getting to places, getting parking spaces, working on the streets, begging, stealing, flirting, groping, staring and some, like her, passing through; going home . Her mind brought to her the earliest memory of this place that she had.

Her eighth birthday. It was the first birthday she was to spend at home and she had decided she would wear a pattu pavadai for it. And so they came here, to buy her the perfect red. She remembered staring with awe at all the shops and colours. She remembered trying to differentiate the women who used Gokul Santol from the ones who used Ponds. She remembered her mother instructing her to hold her hand at all times and telling her she would look beautiful in the red silk they had picked out. But most of all, she remembered her mother smiling when Anjana jumped up and down with excitement when she was given pineapple slices with masala gingerly sprinkled on top.

When had it all changed? Anjana wondered. Her pattu pavadais had been given away and dhavanis and saris began to fill her closet. She had switched to differentiating those who wore Dove (cucumber) and those who wore Spinz (or Fa or Nike or Eva). Usman Road was no longer threatening. Her mother no longer took her hand or asked her to keep safe. She sat in a corner while Anjana shopped and paid for the clothes in the end. Anjana was never called beautiful or told that she looked like "Mahalakshmi". Her mother had stopped smiling at her or with her and the pineapple was but a sticky-sweet memory lodged with the other sticky-sweet memories of her once-upon-a-time childhood. When had it all changed?

An itch in her hair began to bother her and Anjana scratched her head till relief was felt. She brought her hand down and the henna that she had had "put" on her hands yesterday caught her attention. An intricate design that her friend had thought up. It went all the way from her elbows to her nails. And this time, it had come out beautifully red. A dark, Indian red that adorned her long, pale hands perfectly. She loved that red on her hands. It was a familiar colour; that red.

Red-the colour of her bindi that she had almost forgotten to keep. Red. The colour of love and the colour of danger. Red. The colour of her blood that was once her mother's. Red. The colour of her father's paan-stained smile. Red. The colour of her favourite tomato chutney. Red. The colour of her eighth birthday's pattu pavadai. Red. The colour of her eyes on her eighteenth birthday.

A tiny sniffle escaped her restraint. She quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Seeing that no one else other than the guy in the Ferrari shirt was looking at her, she began to stare out of the window again. She thought of home. Home; the very word seemed strange to her. It had, after all, been a year since she had visited. She wasn't even sure if she missed home. Maybe the home of five years ago, where dosas were made with equal portions of love and batter. But she didn't know if she missed the place she was going to; a place where she felt like a foul-smelling intruder barging into what-once-could-have-been-hers. A mole that tarnished an otherwise beautiful face. A sore thumb that reeked of a different scent.

So when had it all changed? Was it when she vehemently refused to choose a career of their choice? Or was it when they vehemently refused to pay for her choice of life? Sometimes, she thinks it's because she hugged a boy in front of them. Other times she thought it was because of her constant frustration with her way of life. But she knew, however hard she tried to repress the memory, what had caused this emotional chasm in her life. An old Britney Spears song came into her head –

"I tell them what I like, what I want, what I don't
And every time I do, I stand corrected..."

And so she dreamt on. They were half-way over the flyover by now. The smoke and the dust, the honks and the cries had ceased to bother her a long time ago. She was used to it. Even though a year had passed, she sat there as if she went through the horror some call T. Nagar everyday - calm, bored and a look of familiarity on her face. Inside her mind, she dared herself to think of the day she moved away to hostel. The day she had completely ceased to believe in the ideology of 'home' and more so that of 'family'. What was family, anyway? A bunch of people, that's all. Anjana found no reason why she ought to love a person she had met once in her life. Or why she should, in any way, feel obliged to that person or feel bonded to that person or trust that person? She might as well love and trust the guy that had been staring at her all this while. And even he has paid more attention to her than the people she was supposed to acknowledge as 'family'. A sort of rage encroached upon her thoughts. She quickly dismissed it and her thoughts found their way back to that day.

A pledge of love and two good night kisses later, she had lay her head on a pillow and closed her eyes and thought of him, with a faint smile playing on her lips. Everything had been going really well for a couple of weeks. A stray argument here and there had caught her off guard and got a bit ugly but nothing faith-shaking had happened. Yet. Her phone rang. It was him. She quickly scampered outside to talk. He'd called to say good night. Even whilst she spoke, she could feel herself blush and smile just like she had the day they first met. He'd promised to call the next day.

She disconnected, gave her heart enough time to do its flip-flops and walked in. With a slightly difficult-to-maintain straight face, she walked in. And in she walked to two pairs of inquisitive eyes. In she walked, to meet her father's stare (or was it a glare?). She saw a look in there, that she had seldom seen; that of defeat. Over the years she had felt the look in his eyes change; from love and compassion and forgiveness, to arrogance, false appreciation and faked respect. Or was it her perspective that changed? Whichever it may be, she knew that she had never seen this odd look of defeat and wondered. Even then her instinct knew. They knew. In she had walked into the beginning of many ends.

From there it went. Went all the way down. First they told her had 'discovered about her boyfriend'. Then they'd told her they knew what she'd done with him. Inside these four walls, that too. Disgusting! They forbade her. And then, forbade her again. They spoke words that stung her skin; nay, pierced through her skin and stung her heart. They spoke of false truths. They spoke of consequences. They spoke of hurt and disappointment. She, of course, denied everything. She cried. She apologised. She tried over and over again to win their forgiveness. In vain. They would never forgive her again.
She ran to her room.
She cried.
She cried till she slept.
Two hours later, she turned eighteen.
Two months later, he broke up with her, again.

And then it came, one by one. Her life fell apart (or at least that's how it seemed) piece by piece. Dreams and hopes taken away, her life crumbled down like a moldy, grand old building; from magnificence to specks of dust. They refused to pay for Journalism courses. They refused to pay for Psychology as well. Of course, she had always had that pseudo-freedom that she could never use. But she had to do what they told her to do. Ironically, they told her to study only from a hostel (and maybe, that was their biggest mistake). Obviously, she didn't refute that. Nor could she if she wanted to. For her mother assured her that Anjana's life would be quite unpleasant if she chose to go against their will. The audacity she'd had to have one of those 'boyfriends' and behave in a manner completely unbecoming a daughter of hers! And still entertain thoughts of freedom of choice? She must be mad.

So she moved. Far away. To the other end of town, in fact. And studied. And played. And, in that isolation, she found ways to fill the gaping void that had appeared within her.

And then on Anjana had become the black sheep of her family. (Every family has one, right?)Victimized by wagging tongues and pointing fingers. What was hers would never again be hers. She was the mole; the stench; the wicked vibe; the stray cow; the sore thumb; the after-taste of vomit. She was the sour curd on her father's tongue.

A sudden vibration almost jolted her out of her seat. Anjana quickly took out her phone and looked at the text. It was Raghu, asking how her father was now, two weeks after his sudden heart stroke. To be honest, she had no clue. But she couldn't tell him that. So she lied. "He's alright now. The doctors say there are not much chances of another one. Thanks for asking, though." And she put the phone back in her pocket.

She really didn't know what had happened. Her mother had just mentioned it fleetingly in one of their cursory, once-a-week phone calls. "Your father's in the hospital. The doctors think he might have had a heart attack." "Oh." Anjana was stumped for a minute. Was this really her father they were talking about? "But he's alright now. Nothing life-threatening. He should be discharged in a couple of days." "Okay" had been Anjana's reply. Matter-of-fact. Nothing more. No concern was voiced, no care shown.

Neither had they expected her to voice any concern. At least that's what Anjana thought. Why would they? Ever since she'd moved, the physical distance added to the emotional chasm that had erupted between them and she was virtually a stranger save the tag 'daughter'. They no longer knew what she liked and disliked. They didn't know where she went and who she met. They didn't know that she'd broken her arm twice. They hadn't known when she fell sick with Malaria. They didn't know of that night she had cried so hard she wanted to run into her mother's arms. And then that she cried harder for she knew she wouldn't be welcome there. Her parents had become a photograph. One that she didn't look at very often.  

They were almost at the end of the flyover now. A flyover's length closer to home. She was scared. She knew that all those things that had furthered this distance between them would surface again when she crossed the threshold into her house. Her father's forced hug, her mother's disappointment worn brazenly on her sleeve, her ever reproachful aunts and her adoring little brother who had been told never to become like her. She knew she would cringe at the pain of being thought of as "disgusting" by her own father. She would tear up her insides at the thought of looking at a loving mother who no longer loved her. But worst of all, was the guilt that she didn't care about all that. The guilt that would lick at her conscience like a scathing flame; burning to ashes all emotional attachment.

Perhaps, she was over-dramatizing. Perhaps, she wasn't. But the "change" couldn't be denied. The truth that was her life couldn't be denied. When she went home, all she knew that all that would happen-will happen. She couldn't take it any longer. She wouldn't take it. She looked out. The bus was at a signal. Again, it was that red that told her the way. The red that had once held them together, now told her to move away. She quickly got out, crossed the road and boarded a bus back to her hostel. A wave of relief. A tiny pang of guilt. She took out her phone and typed out a text to her mother– "Won't be coming. Urgent work came up."

She looked at the text. As an afterthought, she typed in – "Sorry." And hit send. Sorry, she thought. A word you used when you step on your friend's foot. A word that was used when an assignment was given in late. A word uttered when you accidentally ran into strangers on the road. Anjana felt that word snapping the little thread of attachment, thin, taut, and weak that existed between her parents and her.

Formality had made its way into what she once thought was the impregnable fort called 'family'. 'Sorry's and 'Thank you's. 'Would you?'s and 'Could you?'s. Invitations acknowledged that would never be accepted. Politeness and fake smiles. Superficial conversations. Awkward silences. Pregnant pauses with aborted words. They would all now become a part of her life; felt in every conversation, every visit, every mail and every text.

Unfamiliar emotions seeped into her thoughts the way the first rivulets of an overflowing Cooum seeped into its banks. Black, dirty and unsettling. All of a sudden, Anjana felt afraid; afraid of everything. She felt detached.
Orphaned.
Alone.