Shubho NabaBorsho- Happy new year
The waters lapped softly under the boat as I lay on the boat, the boatman rowing and holding the boat steady amidst the Hooghly. The sun was still hidden on the horizon and I had run from home from the storms in my life. The slow rock of the boat was like my mother rocking me after a night of tempest in my life. And 24 years on I still sought out that rock to calm me. Life has been pathetic for me for the last few months. Profession or person nothing has been working out for me. The water seems a nice welcoming shroud. It is calling me beckoning me with its promise of relief and of freedom, its certainty of closure as also the eternal rocking that I so desire as a relief from the crumbling pressure that is threatening to break everything in me.
I am Mishti a closet lesbian from India, working in an IT firm in Kolkata. I have been in a relationship with Radha, my senior from engineering college. For the past 5 years 2 years in college and 3 years since. I came to Kolkata from Delhi to be with her and God knows she loves me. But for all the talk of a liberal India, of laws changing, India is a well and we are frogs stuck in it. For all the low profile that I have kept in my life, one pic on Instagram with Radha in goa was all it took to turn my life upside down professionally. They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but in my case what happened in Goa didn’t stay there. It was an anniversary for me and Radha and we celebrated it on calangute, nothing much just a few kisses of passion over wine, and a crazy pic of us together. And in our drunken high of being together had put it up on insta. My super boss at work a lech who would eye me used to stalk me and checked it out. By the time I removed it the next morning, it was too late. Once I came to work I was branded a lesbo whore. Over the next few weeks, I was systematically removed from all my projects till one fine day I was sitting in front of the lecherous super boss with an indecent proposal to become his mistress in return for getting my work back. I thought of Visakha, I thought of women’s commission, I went to them. Everyone laughed at the dyke. Laws were for normal women, not freaks. I had to quit my job.
That was just the beginning of my troubles. In today world of connectivity, Radha was soon discovered and her family got to know about her immoral relationship with me. She was berated, beaten stuck in her room for weeks. I couldn’t reach out to her. I couldn’t kiss her tears away. I wanted to settle her in my lap and hug every broken piece of her into place. I wanted to tell her that everything would be all right, that I would take care of her. But jobless, under the burden of an educational loan and branded a freak I didn’t know what to do. My words that wanted to soothe her ended up hurting her. Most nights I wanted to scream my lungs out at the unfairness of the situation. After a few weeks of wondering what’s happening, she whatsapped me. We were back in touch. Officially broken apart, unofficially holding on to each other. Over the next few months, we stole a few moments here and there, trying to assure each other. But we started fighting more, as the comfort of being together was broken up by more spaces off being apart. A few hours of together in between weeks of apart, yet in the same city was poor recompense against the hours together spent after work every day.
She was on a flight yesterday, from Sydney back to Kolkata after an offsite. We had fought the entire week she was in Sydney, me getting up 4 and a half hours early every day to steal some time when she was still in bed and talk before she went to work. The days would change into bitterness as we spoke about her family and how they were pressurising her to get married and cleanse herself of the illness of being a homosexual. The day would peter out into a fight and after she slept off I would stay awake long hours thinking of ways to make up one she would be back in India, at the same time hurt by her fingers pointing at me. Wasn’t I as much in shit because of all this? Didn’t I suffer as much from being apart? Yes, I didn’t answer to anyone as she did to her family being an orphan, but this solitude, this brand it hurt me as much. She had told me that her family had decided to look for a groom from Poila Baishakh (the first day of the Bengali new year). For the first time in years, she took a light not telling me when, which airlines, her layovers anything. I was miserable, looking up the web for all the combinations possible. The Qantas that her company usually booked was supposed to go through Singapore, and there was a crash in Singapore the web told me. The world was almost at a stop. The message to her WhatsApp was a single tick. I wanted to shout at her, ask her did you not inform your dad who till date doesn’t know you are scared to fly and not me who sends you kisses every time you fly and don’t do anything till you land. Did you not inform your mother who asks you to fast for a husband not caring that your pressure dips from it, and not me who pumps electral into you so that you don’t faint. They mattered and I did not?
Somehow I asked someone who asked someone in your house and I found out that the flight was due at 1. The single tick of the WhatsApp was stubborn. Your dp winked away at me telling me I wasn’t blocked. After a few hours, I couldn’t stay back at home. I made my way to the ghat and hailed out my regular majhi-my boatman. As the water lapped under me and the waters beckoned me to take refuge in her cool shroud there was a sense of betrayal in me. Was I really supposed to live by her heated Tujhe kya? Tu Kaun? What does it mean to you? Who are you? As the sun threatened to break through, my phone beeped a WhatsApp. The stubborn single tick had changed to blue double ticks with a “Shubho NaboBarsho and I am fighting” to tow. Shubho NabaBarsho-Happy new year indeed. The sun broke free turning the water golden even as it beckoned to me more.
