What Do You See When You Look in the Mirror?

by Nikita Singh

  To Nick, for holding me together.

  The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.’

  – Jawaharlal Nehru

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Together Forever

  Sellout

  The Watering Can

  Made for Each Other

  How Would They Know?

  M A M A B E A R

  NATASHA

  Talking to Strangers

  Circle

  Self-Care Day

  ANYTHING

  Good for Nothing

  Real

  Living My Best Life

  Guru

  Mirror Mirror

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Nikita Singh

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  One of the earliest lessons we are taught in our lives is that of pretence. Because if we don’t pretend, if we dare to be ourselves, then log kya kahenge? This what-will-people-say question is ingrained in each of our brains to different extents. We all suffer from it. As individuals coexisting in a society, it’s inevitable, even natural, to wonder what others think of us. It’s when that wonder becomes worry that we begin to sand down our rough edges to fit the perfectly round mould everyone else seems to inhabit quite effortlessly.

  Here’s the truth: they don’t. It may seem like they do, but no one person is like another. No one person has the exact same emotional, physical or spiritual journey, baggage and struggles as another. And yet, doesn’t it always seem like everyone else has their life together? It’s because we all want to appear round, like we belong, because rough edges make others uncomfortable.

  With this collection, I set out to write stories about people with wildly different perspectives and circumstances, who lead inner lives that would astonish those who presume to know them. My attempt to explore what the inside of these characters’ heads looks like is documented in the stories that make up What Do You See When You Look in the Mirror?

  ‘Hell is other people,’ French philosopher Sartre famously said in his 1944 existentialist play Huis Clos. When asked to clarify, he explained, ‘If [our] relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell.’

  As if the human condition isn’t hard enough, as if it isn’t already challenging to love ourselves the way we are, the expectation of others makes it nearly impossible to exist as our truest self. Hell is other people because, in a way, we are trapped within other people and the way they view us. We expend precious time trying to change how we are seen, and, in the process, either become masters of pretence or indeed morph into the person we portray.

  I have participated in this betrayal. The sides of me you will see if our paths ever crossed – at an airport, or a book tour, or a grocery store, or on social media – those parts don’t make a whole. I find it incredibly, debilitatingly challenging to share my grief with others, especially when I’m in the eye of the storm. It’s far easier for me to talk about it in retrospect. (This comes from a deep-seated voice buried in my psyche that tells me that secretly, silently, everyone is rooting against me, waiting for me to fail. So, I endure quietly, not giving anyone a chance to relish watching me struggle.)

  For instance, 2018 was a terrible year for me. I lost a lot that year: people, places and things. My life was turned upside down. On social media, this translated as inactivity. Apart from sharing information regarding a book tour I went on, I didn’t share any other aspect of my life. And 2020, a terrible year for all of us, saw the opposite response from me; I clung to and shared every good moment I experienced. Less frequently, I also shared a digestible version of my struggles. Neither of those years, as presented on social media, provide a complete image of the inside of my head.

  This is why I write – to reveal those parts of me I feel secure revealing when it’s just you and me. Just some words on paper, and a moment of your devoted attention.

  My characters allow me room for honesty, without fear of shame or judgement. In this collection, I am sharing with you the true inner lives of characters who aren’t expected to be sensible, to always do the right thing, to spend their lives colouring inside the lines. Because I let them make mistakes, act erratically, do hurtful things, be bad. I allow them terrible thoughts, selfish actions and consequences that can be considered fair or unfair, depending on who you ask.

  Apart from the primary theme of secret inner lives, a secondary concept that appears frequently in this collection is the idea that we can’t know the impact our words or actions may have on someone else, because we can’t know who they are. Even the smallest gesture can hold the biggest meaning for someone. The most insignificant words can shape someone’s world, even save someone’s life. Perhaps it’s worthwhile not to be so careless in our interactions with others. A little kindness can make all the difference (as you’ll see in Talking to Strangers and Guru).

  Similarly, stories aren’t received the way they are written. I wrote these stories from where I was in my life, and you’ll receive them where you are in yours. For me, they range from heart-warming to bizarre. There are themes of love, loss, grief, family, mental health and, of course, society, because those are the kinds of thoughts that have occupied my mind in the past year.

  As you read this book, you might have some questions for the person in your mirror. After all of this conditioning, learning and unlearning, what is left of you? Where have you arrived? How much of the person in the mirror is truly you?

  Nikita Singh

  7 April 2021

  Together Forever

  ‘Are you okay?’ Sher’s worried voice calls from behind her. Preeti moves slightly to the side, revealing the reflection of her husband in the mirror in front of her.

  ‘More than okay. I’m sexy,’ she says. She’s not lying; she feels sexy. She hasn’t felt this way in a long time. She has spent longer than usual in front of the mirror this morning, surveying herself. Her fifty years of life on this planet show in the crevices around her eyes, the wrinkles on the back of her hand, the softness under her skin. While getting dressed this special morning, Preeti had gravitated towards her laciest, most uncomfortable bra. She hadn’t worn it in several years, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it still fit perfectly, cupping her breasts in a flattering way. She counted that as a perk of having cancer – the shrinking.

  She could now fit into many of her clothes from some time ago, and yet, she didn’t have the time, energy or occasion to dress that way. The lehenga choli from Sher’s brother’s wedding, decades ago, was hardly appropriate for her oncologist appointments.

  ‘Can you be serious for a second?’ Sher is especially irritable today. Preeti doesn’t take it personally. She senses the worry in his tone, understands the reason behind it. ‘You’ve been … looking at them for a long time. Is everything okay?’ he checks.

  ‘Hey bhagwan! You can say the word “breasts”. You’re fifty-five years old! This is the second time your wife has been struck by breast cancer. How are you still uncomfortable saying breasts?’

  ‘Not everything has to be mazaak, okay? I’m just asking you to be serious for one minute. Please?’ Sher looks positively pained, and his crumpled face finally wipes the smile off of Preeti’s.

  ‘Okay, baba, fine! I’m serious now. Tell me.’ She finishes buttoning her silk kurti and turns around to look at him with full attention.

  ‘Come, sit with me.’

  Preeti knows what is coming. She takes calculated steps towards him, revising her strategy in her head. She has been expecting this moment, and has a perfect little speech prepare
d for the occasion. But she’ll let him start. She sits down next to him on the bed and places her palm gently on his knee.

  ‘Like Facebook would ask: what’s on your mind?’ she says, in an attempt to be funny. It lands flat, getting no reaction from Sher, as expected.

  ‘Are you really not scared at all? This is … all very difficult to deal with. I know I’m having a hard time …’

  ‘Just don’t think about it,’ she suggests gently, when in fact, she feels a tide of anger bubbling inside her. They’ve gone over this already. He needs to stop talking about it, stop letting it occupy his headspace and hers. The rest of her short life cannot be governed by this stupid cancer. It has taken too much from her already. Enough is enough.

  ‘I can’t just stop thinking about it …’ Sher begins to complain.

  Preeti talks over him loudly, ‘We thought about it enough the first time! That’s all we thought about, for two whole years. I’m done. This is it. Game over. I will not let this cancer take one more moment of our time. It’s here, okay? And it’s growing fast. Get that through your thick head.’ She suddenly giggles, poking the side of his head. Lowering her voice, she adapts that silly, sweet tone they reserve for each other when no one is watching. ‘Are you having second thoughts or what? You made a promise to me, mister. You better not back out now!’

  ‘I’m not backing out.’ Sher speaks like a petulant child accused of a naughty crime he absolutely did commit.

  ‘Theek hai fir, good. Because I don’t think you’ll make it without me anyway.’ Preeti holds her chin up high in the air. ‘Jo wada kiya woh nibhana padega,’ she sings poorly under her breath, loud enough for Sher to hear, as she pulls him close to her. He has to keep his promise. He rests his head on her shoulder and chuckles.

  ‘What a twisted sense of humour you have, no?’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  Today is going to be a good day.

  Later in the day, they make their way to Chelsea, the posh neighbourhood in London where their son Ratan lives with his rapidly growing family. First came Angela, three years ago. They married one year later, had Leo a year after that, and now they’re expecting their second baby.

  Secretly, Preeti used to wish her sons would be just a little bit on the wild side. Break some rules, stir things up. They didn’t move from India to come here, struggle and go on living pretty much the same sheltered, by-the-book lives they would’ve lived back at home, did they?

  Much to her dismay, both her sons were straight arrows. Ratan would have a whole picture-perfect family of four before he turned twenty-eight, later this year. Ronnie, five years younger, was probably on the same beaten path. Preeti prided herself on being a rule-breaker, a cool mom. She never felt part of the tight-knit, talking-behind-each-other’s-backs community they had belonged to in India. Being different was important to her. It made her feel special, better than the rest. Just the thought of being one in 7 billion gave her anxiety. She had no other option but to cling to the things about her that were out of the ordinary.

  Preeti had lived the first twenty-five years of her life in India and the next twenty-five years in London. During her life in London, she had done everything she wasn’t allowed to do back home, followed every instinct, broken every rule that made her unhappy. Even as a twenty-five-year-old small-town Indian woman, flying abroad for the very first time in her life, clutching her three-year-old son’s hand, she had felt more thrilled than terrified. It really was a shame that her sons, who received every privilege, every liberty to aim as high as they could, to do whatever in the world their hearts desired, had only ever wanted simple, straightforward lives.

  Preeti shakes her thoughts aside and pays attention to little Leo. Angela really did give birth to a perfectly angelic boy. Preeti feels a stab in her chest, not from the cancer, but the knowledge that she would never get to meet the angel Angela currently carried in her swollen belly.

  ‘Gwamma, look!’ Leo cries, spotting a waiter carrying a giant cake on a round tray. Preeti spins around to watch. The waiter sets the cake in the middle of the table next to theirs, and lights one of those obnoxious firecracker candles.

  ‘Pwetty,’ Leo coos.

  ‘Do you want some ice cream, Leo?’ Preeti asks to distract him. The last thing they needed was for the girls on the cake table to offer a toxic residue–covered slice to Leo. ‘Ooh, look, Leo, they have chocolate ice cream on the menu. Your favourite! Would you like a scoop of chocolate ice cream?’

  Leo is instantly distracted. Angela gives Preeti a grateful look. They both know that if the girls did offer Leo a slice, Ratan probably wouldn’t even question the toxins on the cake. His parenting philosophy was rooted in one primary rule: no coddling, which tended to become problematic when he pushed it to an unreasonably dangerous extreme.

  ‘What kind of toppings do you want?’ Angela asks Leo in the sweet voice she always reserves for him. Her tone for adults is crisp, sharp, even rude on occasions. Which is why Preeti loves her hot-shot lawyer daughter-in-law so much. Zero times has she seen Angela fake smile to diffuse a situation. Preeti would never say it out loud to her sensitive family, but Angela had earned Preeti’s respect in a way her boring sons’ attitudes or actions seldom could. Sher would be horrified to hear this truth. He was too sweet, too devoted to their family to ever think of such a thing. It wasn’t that Preeti’s love for her family wasn’t unconditional. It was. But her respect wasn’t free.

  Preeti elbows Sher’s arm for attention. He looks sad. He spins towards her and gives her a wide, fake smile. Was he capable of surviving her death? She wouldn’t bet on it. But she had to take action. Her time was here. She couldn’t delay it any longer.

  She hides it well, but she is in constant pain. Every moment she is awake, every moment she is asleep, she is in pain. Nine days ago, she stopped taking the strong drugs her doctor had prescribed her. Those drugs pushed her deep underwater, leaving her to swim through an impossible pressure pulling her down, trying to drown her. She would cling to familiar bits and pieces, moments of clarity, but before she could save herself, another tide would rise up and swallow her. She didn’t want to spend the last days of her life in a state of numbness and disorientation. She wanted to close the book of her life on her own terms.

  Everyone chooses how they live. What was so wrong in choosing how they die?

  The cancer would take her life anyway, if not today, then tomorrow, or two months from now, maybe three if she was lucky. Three months of getting her body cut open, pumped with poison, witnessing the suffering of every person she loved … just like she had the first time around. Only this time, they would not be able to defeat death. Unlike the first time, this time, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Unacceptable. That’s absolutely not the death she deserved. Neither did Sher’s wife, Ratan and Ronnie’s mother, Leo and the unborn baby’s grandmother. She wouldn’t force them to watch her die like that.

  ‘I love you, Goose,’ she whispers to Sher.

  ‘Love you, Goose,’ he says mechanically repeating the nickname they shared. Goose originated from the common term ‘silly goose’ and they used it when the other was being silly, or they wanted some silliness. Sher is distracted by the new arrival: Ronnie is standing in front of them, holding the hand of a man roughly the same age and same build as him. Both of them are 5’10” with meticulously groomed beards, shirts buttoned all the way up, shining eyes.

  ‘Chalo, badhiya hai! Perfect!’ Preeti cheers, clapping her hands together.

  ‘Maa …’ Ronnie looks uncertainly from her to Sher, as if his silly old parents don’t understand. ‘Kevin is my boyfriend.’

  ‘Hi, Kevin,’ Preeti says, smiling her biggest smile of the day so far. ‘How do you do?’

  ‘I’m gay!’ Ronnie cries out, frustrated by the tepid response of his family to this bomb he has just dropped.

  ‘Good for you, bro,’ Ratan says.

  ‘Adds up.’ Angela nods thoughtfully.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sher
asks meekly, but Preeti shushes him.

  ‘Oh, aap bhi na! Come on!’ She slaps his back softly and turns back to her younger son, her baby boy. ‘I’m not backward like your father. I know all about this stuff. I love you, trust you, respect your choices and I am proud of you!’ she says, sounding quite proud of herself.

  ‘Really? Are you really okay with this?’ Ronnie asks eagerly. Poor boy; he must’ve held his truth so close to his heart for so long.

  ‘Yes! It’s your life, your time on the planet. Be who makes you happy.’ Ronnie runs to her then and picks her up in a giant hug. For a moment, he feels like her little boy Ronit again, before he turned thirteen, towered over her and announced in a newly developed deep voice that he was to be referred to as Ronnie henceforth. As her younger son smothers her, Preeti holds out a hand for her older son to join them. Ratan brings Leo. Sher and Angela exchange a look, and join the group hug. Kevin stands awkwardly, watching this family drama go down.

  Preeti beams, overjoyed with the knowledge that she had the chance to give her son this gift of acceptance, and share this perfect final moment with her family before she went home and ended her life.

  Soon afterwards, they drive away from the expensive part of London their sons preferred, to their home in the Indian part of London. Preeti looks outside the window, saying goodbye to the streets, the grey sky, the hum of the city she has called home for half her life. There’s beauty in the way she has lived her life, a symmetry she appreciates.

  It’s her time to go. But not before she shares herself with her husband one last time. They make love unhurriedly, forgetting about what’s coming, their chests rising and falling in the present. All we can ever dare to ask for are moments. And this, here, is another beautiful moment they are fortunate enough to share.

  Preeti gets dressed, carefully, one last time. She will be found like this, wearing her favourite green salwar kurti. She’s ready. She has written letters to her sons, explaining, thanking them, saying goodbye. She walks around the house, peeks inside every room, takes her time. Then, she makes the bed, perfectly, every layer exactly where it should be. She stands at the foot of the bed and looks at it. This bed was one of the first things they had bought when she had moved to London. A three-year-old Ratan had slept between Sher and Preeti on nights when he was too scared to be alone in this foreign house. Some years later, Ronit had done the same.