by Durjoy Datta
But soon it started to feel like an invasion of privacy. True, the eyes were theirs but these were my boobs—the results of my prayers.
Just stop looking, will you!
With the sprouting of the twins, my popularity rose. Rumour mills worked overtime.
‘She has sex all the time. That’s why the big boobs!’ the girls would say in hushed tones.
Sometimes it made me want to take my prayers back and just be a normal size again. But that never happens, does it?
‘You’re like an Indian Beyonce,’ my mother used to say.
‘Easy for you to say! You’re so fair and cute!’
I’d got my complexion, my height, my thick thighs and muscular calves from my father, and absolutely nothing from my mother who was a little, plump, aged-out brunette Barbie.
To distract people from my breasts and my face, the hemline of my skirt kept riding up.
I was popular but also hated, I used to be stared at (strictly below my face though) and ignored, talked politely to but also often subjected to vicious rumours about my sex life—which didn’t exist. I had friends to talk to but never really had friends who I could talk to.
I slowly learned to enjoy the attention, and weed out the bad parts.
Though the questions still haunted me.
Am I my boobs? Am I my pimples? Am I my unfertilized eggs? Why am I even thinking about this?
I checked online if I were insane and found nothing.
After I got my period, the uneasiness returned. Like where do I go from here as a woman? Like where was the manual for that?
Life was much easier before the incident that changed everything. Before the incident all I wanted to be was to magically turn into my mother some day but then everything changed. Now all I wanted was to find and be my own woman.
I grappled with the questions for days on end . . . And then it struck me. I knew the first step.
I had to lose my virginity.
Later that night, standing in front of a mirror, naked and inspecting my body, I called up Megha. ‘What do you think about sex? Like do you think it makes you into a different person?’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘If I’m sexually wanted by a man, wouldn’t that be like the final frontier for my womanhood?’
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ asked Megha, her voice suddenly gleeful.
‘No.’
‘Then, why are you asking? And moreover, sex is not the last step in womanhood. The last step is getting married and having kids. That’s what defines you finally. That’s what being a woman is about. Like our mothers.’
‘That doesn’t sound exciting at all,’ I said. I disconnected the phone soon after. Regardless of what Megha had said, I decided to go ahead with my plan of ticking off sex from my checklist.
But what if not being a virgin any more didn’t make me a woman, too? I knew of a few girls who had supposedly had sex with their boyfriends and they didn’t quite look or behave any different. Maybe it was more of an internalized change, something only the girl could feel herself. But, of course, I wouldn’t know that for certain till the time I actually lost my virginity to a man who deserved it.
So I started compiling a checklist of qualities I would want in the man (it had to be a man not a boy from my class who would gloat about having sex with me) who I would want to lose it to, and since I wanted to gloat about it, the list started with the words rich and successful.
4
Danish Roy
Two years ago, my brother had personally overseen the civil work of the duplex we now live in. The two of us had the entire first floor to ourselves, complete with a separate entry from the main gate and a floor thick enough to block out the din of a jackhammer. That night my parents slept soundly on the ground floor after knocking themselves out on Panadol Night while my brother engaged in a rather loud late-night cardio session on the first floor.
My brother was sleeping with the younger of the Khannas’ daughters and I could tell from the noises that he was pretty good at it. (Unless screaming, ‘Call me a bitch!’ periodically is a sign of bad sex.) Also we are brothers and I was used to seeing him walking around naked in the house till he was about eleven and it didn’t become the most awkward thing ever, so I know he’s hung like a horse. Again, the dice of fate had rolled in his favour.
I wouldn’t know at the time if size mattered; of course, I know now it does because I was still a virgin at twenty-three and I was sufficiently ashamed of it. My brother didn’t know that, because I never told him. I think he thought of me as more of an arrogant snob who was picky about his sexual encounters.
In the party the night before, the elder of the Khanna sisters got bored after the first five minutes of my unsuccessful attempts to be charming, and she stared intently into her phone for the rest of the party to avoid any conversation with me. Truth be told, I was quite relieved. The elder sister was hot (by my standards, which you know by now didn’t exist) and if the conversation led to sex I wouldn’t know what to do, except maybe prematurely ejaculate.
Worse still, my brother would know I had underperformed in bed. Being the brother with a smaller dick was enough humiliation for a lifetime. I had to make sure the venn diagram of the women I would sleep with and the women who could tell my brother how bad I was in bed never intersected.
But being small, sexless and foreseeably bad in bed were the least of my issues. What troubled me that morning were the impending final exam results of my course, while my parents were actually looking forward, as well as terribly scared, to their son being a graduate and hence employable.
‘Aren’t the results available online?’ asked my mother when she was leaving for college that morning.
‘The website is down,’ I answered, hiding myself behind my Kindle. I was re-reading The Lord of the Rings. If only textbooks were as interesting.
My mother wasn’t a fool. She knew I was a compulsive liar and a pro at hiding exam results, so she tried to check the website of my college in her phone. Good thing she was also stingy and relied on Wi-fi and never bought a 3G plan.
‘I think the Wi-fi isn’t working,’ she said.
Of course it wasn’t. I had switched it off. ‘Let me know whenever the results are out?’ I nodded. ‘And ask Ankit to have his breakfast before he leaves.’
As if on cue, my brother walked out into the living room and hugged my mother before she left. She pointed out the little dark circles he had going on underneath his eyes and asked him to stop straining himself so much. If only he wasn’t a god in bed, he would have got some sleep and would be blessed with as smooth under-eye skin as mine.
‘So, a graduate today, haan?’ my brother said, piling bananas, apples and oranges on his plate. The girl must be starving after the extensive cardio session my brother had put her through.
‘Keeping my fingers crossed,’ I said.
‘You will make it,’ he said and squeezed my shoulder. So naïve of him despite his intelligence! A little later, I could hear the girl screaming again while I took my shower. It was sex like that which gives women quintuplets, I guessed. His Forbes article had made him quite desirable and I’m sure my parents knew he sometimes got girls home but I was never too sure about it.
I left the house, nervous, and trying not to feel bad about myself.
*
I would have been surprised had I passed the exams but fate has a funny way of not surprising me ever. I wasn’t the only one who had failed, thank God for that, but I had failed quite miserably, even by my standards.
‘How did it happen?’ asked Raman. ‘You read so many books!’
‘Fiction doesn’t count,’ I said, surprised that he had got through.
‘So what will you do now?’ asked Raman.
‘It’s a toss-up between hanging myself and drowning. And you don’t have to sit here. It’s your day. You should go dance,’ I said, pointing to our classmates who were celebrating their success. Yes, I had friends. I wasn’t som
e lonely sociopath who just wallowed in his inferiorities all day long. But how valuable a friend I was to any one of them was a different matter. There’s always this guy in a group who’s not funny or resourceful or kind or good-looking or rich but still is a part of the group for no understandable reason. The guy who only sits and listens and hopes some day they will talk about their favourite authors and he will be the one who will have the most to say.
They could have done without me.
I left the party without informing any of them and no one bothered to text me to ask where I was. I wouldn’t hang out with me as well—I was a bit of a drag.
I sat on the pavement scrolling through my social media timeline, liking all the statuses, ‘Finally a graduate’, ‘64 per cent, yay!’ and the like when my phone rang.
‘Hello, baba!’ said my mother. ‘Where are you? Come home right now!’
‘In college, why? What happened? Why are you so frantic?’ I asked, fearing that she knew about my college results and wanted me back home so that she could slap me and ground me for three weeks. But that hadn’t happened in like seven years now. And she actually sounded sprightly and happy. Had she lost her mind because her son had failed yet again? Was this the final straw before her dementia set in?
‘TIME is interviewing your brother today. They want a picture with the entire family! I’m so happy! I will be home by 3.30. I have to pick up something to wear from Nalli. I hope your suit still fits.’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘Okay, go home right now. Don’t be late! And please shave. It’s a big day for Ankit. He has made all of us so proud!’ She would cry any moment.
‘I will be there on time.’
‘And oh? I just forgot. How were your results?’
‘I passed. 49 per cent,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ her voice trailed. ‘Never mind, you can still get a few jobs. Your father will put in a good word.’ She disconnected the call.
5
Aisha Paul
Women’s magazines are expensive and depressing.
I always assumed they were written by women for women to guide them, like self-help books. Quite the contrary.
‘How to impress your man in ten ways’
‘How to drive your guy crazy’
‘How to save your relationship’
‘How to find out if he’s satisfied in bed’
‘How to make him lust for you again’
After reading about twenty of them, I had a rough idea that sex was about understanding the man’s needs and making him happy. Also that virginity was a big deal and is to be only lost to a worthy man. The boys’ virginity didn’t really seem to matter. In fact these magazines encouraged you to sleep with someone with experience!
Armed with all the knowledge about what’s expected of a woman, I was sure to knock sex out of the park. But, of course, I had to get into shape first. I stood naked in front of the mirror, and used my two fingers to poke and flick the fat beneath my arms and on my thighs just as they had instructed. ‘If it jiggles, it’s fat,’ they said, and ‘Why be fat when you can be skinny and fabulous?’
For the next few days, I was depressed.
Megha and I went jogging every day at five in the morning and then at six in the evening. She mostly sat on a bench and Snapchatted risqué pictures to her not really my boyfriend who didn’t think she was fat at all. He must be blind. He should have seen the last three cover models of Vogue, all of whom could have passed through the eye of a needle.
‘You can’t match up to them,’ said Megha, foolishly. ‘And moreover, it’s all Photoshopping and airbrushing.’
‘Of course I know it’s airbrushing. I’m not a fool. But that’s how we are supposed to look, otherwise why would they shrink their waists in the first place?’
Megha had no answer to that, instead she asked me something else. ‘So have you decided who you want to have sex with?’
‘I have given it some thought.’
‘Aren’t you scared?’
I shook my head. I was terrified. Not about how my first time would be, but about how the subsequent times will be. The magazines had made me believe that not all women come during sex.
Then what’s the point! What if I never come?
That would be a travesty.
I had to find other ways to satisfy myself in case the mystical man, who would wrest away my virginity, fails to make me orgasm. It was time to indulge in that once shameful activity—masturbation—and see if I was self-sufficient.
6
Danish Roy
There was no celebration or a casual gathering of people in my house in honour of my graduation though my parents did whip up a meal more extravagant than usual. They had bought my lie hook, line and sinker. For the first time, they were talking about my career, how I should be very careful while making my choices and playing my cards from here on.
Late one night, I saw my father working out a list of places he could get me a job in, and that’s when the possibility of my lie being caught hit me squarely on the face.
Like a true boy transitioning into a responsible man, I told my father I wouldn’t accept any job if it required his help to get it.
My father took off his spectacles, a little dramatically, and said, ‘I’m proud of you.’ Luckily, he didn’t cry or I would have felt like shit for lying to him.
‘So are you looking for opportunities?’ asked my father.
‘Yes, I am,’ I said, looking into my phone, planning my exit strategy from the room, which primarily comprised answering in monosyllables.
‘Where?’
‘Still looking.’
‘Do I get a list?’ asked my father, his kind demeanour quickly morphing into the taskmaster he always has been.
‘Soon.’
‘How soon? Date?’
‘Next Thursday.’
‘Thursday,’ he said and marked it in his organizer.
‘Do well. We have told all our relatives about your graduation. They are expecting great things out of you. Don’t disappoint us,’ he said, his words thorny but coated with a smile.
Why did they have to have any expectations from me? The only thing I share with them is a strand of DNA, which I share with another million people who don’t care.
‘I won’t.’
Satisfied, he picked up the newspaper and started reading. I slunk out of the room, the thought of the impending Thursday tightening around my neck like a noose.
It was three in the morning, my search for jobs having led me nowhere, when there was a knock on my door.
‘What?’ I asked.
The knocking persisted. I opened the door and Ankit stumbled in, drunk out of his wits, looking like shit. He stumbled across the bedroom to the bathroom where he spilt out his guts into the toilet and a fair bit outside.
‘Fuck. Why would you do that?’
He was too busy having an epileptic fit to answer. I walked outside and closed all the windows and deleted the browser history for you can never be too sure. Fifteen minutes later, he walked out and slumped on the bed like a log.
‘Social drinking will kill me some day,’ he murmured.
‘That doesn’t seem like a fair explanation for why you just wrecked my bathroom.’
‘There’s a girl in my room. I needed to keep that bathroom clean.’
‘But—’
‘Mom and Dad are too zonked out on their sleeping pills. I came through the back door,’ he said and lay flat out on the bed. Then he changed the topic. ‘What’s happening with your job search? You’d better find one before Dad does.’
I looked at him blankly.
‘C’mon. I know you failed. It’s okay.’
‘H . . . how?’
‘I had your roll number. I checked it online,’ he said.
‘You knew it all this while?’ I asked, shocked, my heart in my mouth.
‘Of course I did,’ he said getting up slightly and looking at me. ‘It’s not a big deal! Degre
es never got anyone anywhere.’ He smiled his charming smile at me. The one that gets him all the investments (of course his massive brain helps) and gets him laid all the time. ‘You will get a job, don’t worry.’ His confidence in my non-existent abilities was quite heart-breaking, like I was the only subject the brainiac couldn’t solve. I was Bella to his Edward in a parallel creepy universe.
Next morning, the bathroom was all cleaned up and my brother had left a note, ‘Sorry for the mess. Best of luck. Mailed you the contacts of a few firms that are looking for psychology grads. Go for it!’
7
Aisha Paul
I cried for two whole hours before leaving home. If it were up to me, I would crawl back into my mother’s womb and never leave.
‘I will miss you.’
‘Stop it, Aisha! School will end in another six hours and you will be back home,’ said my mother, tired of me lungeing at her and kissing her all over. In times like these I wondered if my brother was right about my adoption.
The summer vacations had ended too soon, as if the two months had rammed and packed into a neat box of day and a half. I returned to school in my little skirt and rolled down socks.
But I hadn’t wasted the time.
I had spent it carefully working on myself. Quite literally. And after spending weeks locked up in my room, learning the tricks to self-satisfaction, I wasn’t going to let my knowledge go waste. I would pass on my knowledge to other girls and I would guide them through the wondrous and dirty and fabulous world of earth-shattering, toe-curling orgasms.
It wasn’t easy to begin with.
It took me two-hour long showers for a week to find the exact rhythm to transport myself to a place that’s hot and blinding and blank and extraordinary. Now if I concentrate hard enough I can finish myself up in about three and half minutes. I was extremely good in bed with myself. Men should be able to take out three and half minutes of their time to learn to love the women they are with.