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Let's run away?

 Our lives had brutally changed in the past three weeks. We had been posted to a God forsaken place in the East. It had all been painstaking to travel, then locate our new haven but setting up our house was a dream come true. We had been married for three months and 17 days to be exact and placing the “Mannat Amteshwar Sandhu” board on the entrance proved everything worth the effort. My green apple sanitizer’s fragrance desperately tried to mask the stench of our freshly whitewashed MES accommodation. We spent the whole day dealing with his trophies, cut glass crockery, curtains, kitchen counter repairs and tracking his beloved Apache. The night was dark and the moon was the only light when I went for the assemblage of my library.  I couldn’t help but marvel at the biblical books of medicine and my astounding  collection of novels, that I had hoarded all my life, look like relics in the museum. Amteshwar called out for me and I peeked at him with pride and contentment thr...
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Are you Sure?


“Are you sure you want to permanently delete this folder?”

I stared at the prompt for a long time, still deciding if I was ready. In a labyrinth of folders, I hid a part of my life that I couldn’t let go of. 2,386,080 minutes since our last conversation, and here I am, staring at the screen of my work-station, trying to decide if I was ready to let go. All those Ted talks. All those Instagram quotes. All those movies. All those soundtracks. Every time I got to delete the folder, I would close my eyes for a moment, and there we were. There I was. There she was. Sitting across from each other at the coffee house talking about life and whatnot. The way she looked at me, the way she made me feel; I couldn’t describe it then, I can’t do it now.

I was in class 2 when I changed school. It was a different city, a different culture. Initially, it was hard for me to make friends because I was overweight. I never understood why being fat was something to make fun of. I was bad at sports, so naturally, I was mostly the goalkeeper, when there were fewer players. No one spoke about mental health back then, and bullying was one of the few modes of entertainment at disposal of students at that time. There are two kind of fat kids – one who knew they can beat the shit out of anyone, and the ones who think it’s a disability.

I was the second kind. For a long part of my school life, I thought being overweight was a disability. I was made to realise that it was. I usually sat in the corner, listening to everyone laughing at me. It was a difficult concept to explain why a bunch of kids hated me for being fat. So, I never spoke about it to anyone. I never hung out with anyone, never spoke to anyone about how bad it felt when all your school life you are just looking for acceptance, and how I overate because of all the things happening around me. I sat on my bench day after day for 365 weeks keeping myself together, trying not to crack. Boys don’t cry still prevailed during those times.

I evolved into a weird adult, the non-social, non-conversationalist human who had social anxiety and trouble speaking to anyone. College was a great time. So, when finally, someone accepted me for who I was, it was a first. I couldn’t let go. I still cannot. And maybe, the folder still exists as a reminder of acceptance, or maybe it’s just a void space that I do not want to vacate.

I’ll let you know the day when I finally click on “Yes”.

“Are you sure you want to permanently delete this folder?”

“No”.

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