What Do You See When You Look in the Mirror?

by Nikita Singh

  It was unfair of him to compare a real person, his bride-to-be, to his fantasy, Ravi knew that. He couldn’t help it. Avani could lock him up, monitor all his actions, like she had done for years, since she found out about his other exploits. But she couldn’t govern his thoughts. They were his own. They could be as wild as his heart desired.

  Ravi looked up at Avani. In her magenta bridal clothes, she was a sight to behold. It was sure to make a splash on social media. Watching him watch her, she smiled at him. He smiled back. At least five cameras were trained on them. Everyone was watching them. There was a sudden rise in the incessant chatter around them. It was time for the varmala, the garland exchange.

  All their friends climbed up on the stage and surrounded them. Ravi was thumped on his back, something his cousins loved to do as a sign of celebration. They weren’t so much with the words. He was handed a garland, and so was Avani. He looked up at her. What he saw next made him catch his breath.

  Pink hair. Green eyes. The fairy. She was real. She was standing next to Avani. He stood frozen to the spot. She met his eyes unabashedly, clearly sensing his anxiety. Her face stretched into a big smile. She was still every bit as stunning as she had been the night before, but … in a more human sort of way. Without the purple and pink flashing lights, without the candle light reflecting on her lip gloss, without the curtain of loud music, the whisky.

  Ravi gulped. He went through the motions, doing as was instructed. He exchanged garlands with Avani, smiled for the camera. He shook hands, hugged, touched feet. All the while replaying everything that had happened the previous night. How much of it was a dream? What had really happened? Had he really cheated on his bride the night before their wedding? Was her friend going to tell Avani what had happened? If so, wouldn’t she have done it before the varmala exchange? What was she doing here? He had to put all the questions on hold and put on a show for the hundreds of guests who had collected to watch them. He felt like an animal, trapped behind bars in a zoo. Everyone wanted his attention.

  Later, much later, he spotted pink hair in the crowd. He disengaged from his group as unsuspiciously as he could and sneaked up to her. ‘What … who?’ he blabbered. For some reason, he could never seem to form full sentences when he was around her.

  She smiled. There was no sweetness to it. It was a smirk, bitter and victorious. ‘I couldn’t find a room,’ she stated simply. ‘I got time-off at the last minute, and didn’t want to miss Avani’s wedding. I flew in, but the resort was fully booked. And I knew you had one of the best rooms. So, I took it from you. Embarrassing how easy it was.’

  Ravi’s expression betrayed the hurt he felt.

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, come on! I don’t feel bad for you one bit. I told myself that if I flirted with you and you didn’t stop me, the night before marrying my friend, you deserved your room to be stolen. I must admit, though, I had expected you to come knocking on the door. I was looking forward to turning you away. It’s not like you could’ve told anyone. What would you have said? That you willingly gave your key to a girl you were going to sleep with the night before your wedding? But you never came. What happened? Did you, like, pass out at the bar?’

  Ravi looked down shamefacedly.

  She burst out laughing, a vile, spiteful sound. ‘You did? I can’t believe it. This keeps getting better and better. A story for a lifetime.’

  With that, she sashayed away.

  Ravi reeled with the impact of the new revelations. This explained why he hadn’t been able to find his key card in the morning and had to get a new one from the reception. His dreams, his fantasies, were a result not only of the whisky, but also her targeted flirtation. He was furious to have been toyed with, deceived like this. But she was right. Who could he tell? What would they say?

  He rejoined his bride on the stage. Now that he thought of it, didn’t Avani say that her flight attendant friend, the one with the Swiss father and Brazilian mother, might make it to the wedding last minute? She had told him about the green eyes, but the pink hair was a surprise. And he had taken her ethnically ambiguous appearance to mean that she was … a fairy. This was humiliating.

  No matter how he tried to spin it, see it in a positive light, it failed to make him feel better. The only positive was that at least he didn’t start his married life by cheating on his wife the night before the wedding. That didn’t really make him feel better, because they had been married secretly for two years; this wedding was just for show. Their relationship was a sham, barely held together by the weakest of threads.

  Most of all, he was furious that his fantasy had been taken away from him, without which, he had an eternity of only his real, miserable life to look forward to.

  M A M A B E A R

  I don’t want to be like this. No one wants to be like this. But I don’t have a choice. Uptight, scared, paranoid. I know the names they call me behind my back. My entire family and all my friends. Even my husband.

  Maybe not my husband, actually (but I can never be sure what he talks about with his mother and sister; every time one of them calls, he always walks away for a few minutes). He was there with me. He knows what it was like. How terrifying it was to give birth to our first child during the peak of a pandemic. The word everyone uses for these difficult times is ‘unprecedented’. Our experience warrants that overused, domesticated word. When I think back to the week I gave birth, I shiver. Even now, it feels surreal.

  To have survived something like that feels like a miracle in itself. I don’t consider myself much of a religious, or even spiritual, person. And yet, experiences like these have the power to change you, make you want to believe … in something. A higher power of sorts. Someone competent in charge. I’ve been the type of Hindu who only feels Hindu during festivals. Celebrating Holi, Diwali and Durga Puja every year with my family has brought me a joy I’ve always taken for granted. This year, we’ve skipped all the festivals, along with everything else.

  Coronavirus crept into our country in March. I had seen it coming, because I had been reading the news diligently. Emphasis on reading. Not watching poorly produced video clips forwarded via WhatsApp groups or shared by long-lost acquaintances on Facebook. With the arrival of this novel virus, denial, conspiracy theories and natural remedies ran rampant throughout the nation. My own father ordered Arsenic Album 30 on Amazon and had it delivered to my doorstep. I was nine months pregnant then, and he expected me to take a foreign substance I knew nothing about, backed by no scientific research or evidence, and run the risk of poisoning my unborn baby! Pratham, ever the dutiful son-in-law, decided to try out the three-day course of Papa’s homoeopathic prescription just to placate him. A little too eager to please, in my opinion. I, however, was in open rebellion. Ever since Google first became a household necessity, I have had the superpower to challenge every single one of my father’s baseless claims about things he knows very little about but professes to know a lot about. Our heated but friendly arguments have been the backbone of our loving relationship. On this particular issue, in the end, we agreed to disagree. I had no interest in continuing the conversation. I was a little distracted by my contractions.

  Like I was saying, I don’t care if my family and friends think I am uptight, scared or paranoid. They weren’t there. They don’t understand where I’m coming from. The week I delivered Alia defines and validates how seriously we take the coronavirus. When I tell you, you’ll understand too.

  Day 1:

  I was still in bed, sipping the Darjeeling chai Pratham had made for us when I went into labour. I was watching my caffeine intake, allowing myself a cup of chai in the morning for the sake of sanity. It was mid-April, the entire country was under lockdown. The first twenty-one-day lockdown period was about to end, but the Maharashtra government had already announced a second phase. This, for us, meant that neither my parents nor Pratham’s could be with us for the delivery of their first grandchild. We had made our peace with that, a bit unhealthily, by pushing it under the rug
and not thinking about it. There was nothing we could do about it anyway.

  For a few days there, right before I went into labour, it seemed like our hospital wouldn’t even allow Pratham to be with me during delivery. Fortunately, that didn’t end up happening. Both of us had to take the COVID-19 test upon arrival at the hospital. Both our tests were fast-tracked, but only I was cleared to go in immediately, given that I was in labour. While the results were awaited, Pratham wasn’t allowed to accompany me inside. He waited in the parking lot, in the April heat, with the sun beating down on our car, for eight hours.

  Meanwhile, I went from counter to counter, filling out mandatory forms. I was in so much pain that I could neither sit nor stand. No nurse was willing to help me. They maintained distance from me, in their PPE, stepping backwards if I approached them. I was shown to a room where I was promptly abandoned. Hours later, when my test came back negative, a nurse finally took pity on me and helped me tie my gown; my hands couldn’t reach that far back, so before this kind nurse’s intervention, I had been pacing around my room like a whale in agony, my gown slipping off my naked body every few minutes. Every time that happened, it took me immense effort to crouch down and pick it up, poke my arms through the holes, attempt to tie the strings behind my back, fail, repeat.

  Day 2:

  It was clear to my gynaecologist, after twenty-nine hours of labour, that I couldn’t give birth naturally. Pratham was with me, in PPE, his arm snaked around my shoulders to help me sit up on the hospital bed, when we were told that a Caesarean section was in order.

  Moments later, I was wheeled away from my husband. In that instant, I felt so inadequate; I had failed to perform a simple task that was expected of my body, and I had wasted twenty-nine hours trying. The nurses had made it abundantly clear during those twenty-nine hours, every time I had pressed the button on my bedside, terrified that something was wrong, that they were needed elsewhere, that there was a pandemic, that I was behaving like a spoiled brat.

  All that, just to ultimately be taken to the operation theatre, where more of their precious time was demanded, when there were women around the world, even in fully developed countries, giving birth in their own homes, without seeking so much unwarranted attention from important people who had other matters to attend to.

  Most of all, my heart broke at the look on Pratham’s face, watching me getting wheeled away to an operation theatre, once again left alone, on the outside, when we had always dreamed of bringing our baby into this world together.

  ‘Come back …’ he had whispered desperately, squeezing my hand in both of his. We had approached the door. He couldn’t go any further. His eyes were wild.

  ‘I’m not … I’m not dying or anything.’ I forced a chuckle. It didn’t work. My throat was dry; every atom of my being filled with fear. For my baby, for my husband, for me, for our family.

  The nurses, once again, didn’t care about our family drama. ‘We have to go,’ one of them said curtly.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ I said quickly to Pratham.

  ‘I love you so much. So, so much.’ And then, he let go of my hand. He was crying. He was broken, helpless. I was taken away. I forgot all about my pain, about the existence of my body. Please don’t let me die, I prayed to the competent, higher power in charge.

  Day 3:

  The hospital kept me and Alia for twenty-four hours after her birth, for observation. Only, there was hardly anyone observing us. The nurses hadn’t even cleaned me after the surgery. They had cleaned the incisions immediately after the C-section, of course, but hadn’t returned to check on them since. No one helped me breastfeed Alia for the very first time. The hospital kicked Pratham out two hours after the delivery. Once again, he stood on the outside of his family, completely incapable of contributing. He returned home alone, leaving his family to fend for themselves. I kept my phone plugged in, call connected to Pratham. We had him there in the cold hospital bed, in a small but immensely comforting way.

  I didn’t sleep a wink that first night, didn’t look away from Alia’s small, pink face even once. Something had changed in me the moment she was born. I stopped being timid, apologetic. This was my baby, and she needed me to be her advocate. She was helpless without me, and her only hope for survival was my vigilance. So, I made noise.

  When, two hours before my discharge, the gynaecologist still hadn’t checked in on us, I called the nurses till they gave in. When they told me that I was free to go, I made them roll me and Alia out to the front – in my wheelchair and Alia’s stroller – where Pratham was waiting for us. Despite the popular opinion in that hospital, I wasn’t being a spoiled brat. I was terrified. Of my stitched-up belly bursting open, of my trembling hands dropping my baby. Of how slippery the floors looked, how wobbly my insides felt.

  Nothing felt safe. I had my baby to protect now. Overnight, I had fully transformed into a mama bear.

  Day 4:

  If you thought the worst was behind us, you were wrong. No, we didn’t get COVID-19, but the day after we brought Alia home, I got a fever. My temperature went up as high as 105° Fahrenheit. While I insisted that I was fine, Pratham was terrified. I was more terrified of going back to the hospital. He begged me to let him take me to the doctor. His tactics were terrible; he tried to convince me by building horrifying hypothetical scenarios where he’s left alone with Alia. He painted a heart-wrenching picture of father and daughter going through life together, without me.

  In the end, I agreed to have someone from the hospital come over to examine me and take a COVID test. There was no way I was going back to the hospital. I don’t know how Pratham managed to pull it off, with the shortage of medical professionals all across the city, but, a few hours later, a nurse appeared at our door.

  That night, I still had a fever, I still hadn’t slept since I gave birth, but I was home with my family. I had taken the over-the-counter medication the nurse had prescribed, and while my body was still warm, it was nowhere as hot as earlier that day. We video called our parents on WhatsApp, and, for an instant, I could see things going back to normal from that moment forward. It was when I picked up Alia for her bedtime feed that I realized her body was burning hotter than mine.

  Day 5:

  After another sleepless night of staring at my daughter’s face in a cold hospital bed, I was told that we were free to go. Only, I didn’t want to. My baby had jaundice. Yes, her fever was gone, but that was only because of the doctor’s attention and phototherapy. At home, we didn’t have those things. I wanted to scream at them, shake them into understanding that this baby’s parents were not equipped for this. That we had no help, and we couldn’t be trusted to keep our baby alive.

  I did exactly that. I broke down completely and created a scene, peered into every face hidden behind N-95 masks, forcing them to see me, understand me. That stunt got me a few more hours in the hospital. By the time we were discharged, Alia looked healthier, but my fever was raging.

  That night, despite myself, my body took over, putting my mind under. I slept for the first time in seventy-two hours.

  Day 6:

  When I woke up, Pratham had Alia ready for her feed. He had bathed her, clothed her and swaddled her in the furry green blanket my mother had sent us. In the morning light, our baby looked so precious. Pratham handled her with such care, laying her carefully in my arms, the way he had been doing in the middle of the night, when I was asleep and Alia needed to eat. He had held her in position the entire time, letting me sleep.

  Now, as I fed her again, cradling her in my arms, emotions welled up in my chest.

  ‘You are my whole world,’ Pratham said with such sincerity, looking at me and our daughter, that my body jerked with tears. Having a baby felt like our armour had been taken away. We became naked now, soft and defenceless.

  All I could do was nod, as I touched his cheek, thanking God for my family. I still didn’t quite understand religion, didn’t believe in God, and my fever still wasn’t gone, but some
how, in that moment, I needed to have faith in something … faith that we would be okay.

  Now, when our families joke – light-heartedly, but with intention – about us being too strict, too precious with our baby, I don’t let it get to me. I’m her mother, her advocate. I have had to go to the hospital several times in the six months since Alia’s birth, for her vaccines and my check-ups. I have seen first-hand how bad the coronavirus can get, how overwhelmed the healthcare system is. I check the numbers of cases every single day. The graphs continue their upward curve; yet, the entire population simply ignores the scientific facts and data.

  Every day, more people die, while our cousins pressure us to let them hold our baby. It’s not like we haven’t allowed anyone near Alia. We really have done the absolute most that we can do, while still being safe. Once, we took Alia outside in her stroller to meet our friends. Yes, we told them beforehand that they had to keep their masks on and stay six-feet away from us – but those are basic precautions that we’re all supposed to take, all across the planet.

  We order our groceries online and cook our meals at home, because that way, we can wash everything beforehand. We even ordered a gentle, organic soap, especially made to wash fruits and vegetables with. Of course, every time we receive a delivery – other than perishables – we leave the packages at the entrance, by the door, for fourteen days before opening them. Then, we wipe everything with disinfectant before bringing them inside. We sanitize our shoes after we have been outside, and, in the off-chance that we order from a restaurant, we order food that can be put directly into the oven at a high temperature for five minutes, just to be safe.