Hridhi Chatterjee:
Every time someone wanted me to reveal something about my new husband, I immediately remembered his hands. I must say, I had always looked at his hands.
The very first time I saw him, his chubby little hands were resting on my friend's thin ones.
There was something fascinating about it. You know, I had been watching it grow — from 10 to 11, to 13, to 14, and then all the way up to 18.
I'd recognize his hands anywhere. Even now, with strands of hair on them, tanned under the sunlight as he pretended to be good at sports.
His hands signalled danger. He'd roll his sleeves up to his elbows, like one of those self-made billionaires pretending to be effortless.
Pretending.
He was so damn good at it.
His hands held a great power to pretend. To pretend to write while his eyes actually roamed around my drafts. To pretend to cook so that I would finally cut the vegetables for him.
But still at times when I run out of topics I pretend to study, I look at his hands.
I want to know what's inside it. I want to break every bone, blood vessels, and veins and cut open its flesh just to see how it cooperates with each other.
Maybe he had done it in his medical school. But no one had taught him for sure how those hands worked like it had a mind of its own.
On a cozy Saturday morning, my frail hands resting on his strong ones, I would have asked him questions if I was a normal wife .
Advik, how do you move your hands? How do you operate with those same fingers with delicacy and still hit hard on the drums?
How do your fingers crawl around my throat, looking like you would make me breathe for the last time and still, still never hurt?
Maybe a number of how's simply cloud our marriage, like storm clouds before the rain:
How can we stay together when we can't even look at each other?
How do we stay under the same room and still bleed from wounds after fighting like wolves?
How do we pretend to be greater than each other and still fail miserably?
********
Clink
Clink.
My eyes snapped open exactly at five a.m. No clock was needed. I never used an alarm clock in my whole life. My mind was always conscious, working and working, never sparing me, never caring to pull out its gentle features. I would imagine scenes inside my head during these hours my eyes were shut down. People running, new plot threads, weaving new lies to rip my worried mum off stress. And then—
Clink
Clink
It was time to officially drift towards consciousness and this time, into the stinky damn real thing people cared to call 'world'. All these five hours my eyes were shut down, I never saw black. Fragments of images never forget to cloud into me. Inside my brain. Inside my heart. Inside my muscles.
I wouldn't call it insomnia. I would never go to the therapist like those pathetic Americans.
I simply learned to enjoy it.
I waited for nights just to start imagining things, walking back to that pathetic scene I had left out the night before, taking inspiration for my next novels, as my brain went tick-tick throughout the whole night.
My sleep was like the objects in Newton's law of motion.
I never open my eyes until an external force is applied on me. And in my case, it might be a subtle sound, a touch, or a gentle stream of light from that one hole in my old curtain.
Clink
Clink
I got out of my bed, my lips twisted in the most disgusted expression I could master,
"Ring it louder, Advik—maybe He'll finally pity you."
At that exact moment, 5:05 AM, he finally stopped playing the bell, a metallic plate landing on the topmost shelf of his room hitting hard on the concrete.
I pulled the curtains. The sun was still hidden beneath the darkness. In our surrounding apartments, people still slept, thinking that it was midnight.
The nearest apartment looked directly into my room. The curtains were half-closed.
When my eyes fell on the half-naked man in the bed, he moved. And I could almost hear his girlfriend say, We were seen. We are seen. We will be seen.
I grabbed my towel, which was technically four years old, and still called it a towel because I had never found another that felt like home, and then I staggered toward the restroom.
I don't know why I become so tipsy in the morning. It's not that I ever sleep. It's not that I was desperate to sleep in on weekends.
The bathroom door never ever felt familiar in my fingers. Even though we had been stuck here for a year, I still couldn't figure out the switches.
Would that be the 2nd one?
No…maybe the 3rd one?
Fuck.
Why are there so many switches?
I clicked on all of them until the bathroom door lit up. It felt like a hotel, I must say. I grabbed the handle but it felt ice cold under my fingers.
Even after months, I still waited for the familiar click of my old apartment.
Advik had rented a big apartment in Manhattan, with rooms which were far too big for the both of us.
The tiles screamed perfection, the walls shouted cleanliness and the furniture looked so dim under the sparkle that everything felt totally out of place.
And I knew that he, too, couldn't bear to care for them any less.
"You would dust the shelves," was his first line upon arrival.
We got into a big fight that night. It was fair, wasn't it? I must pay half the rent. But he wanted me to feel like those immature girls he fucked.
"Are you that keen on making me lose face in front of my parents, bitch?"
That night, I returned to bed with a split lip and he stormed out to grab a beer and maybe, fuck that girl after so long.
But still, at the end of the month, I always transferred half the rent in his bank account. It had been our first compromise: He had planned on making me the cook of the house in exchange for the rent. And as you can see, I can never ever let him do that to me.
It had been a tack. I catfished him under that girl's name for weeks until I got his account number. Which was, I will add, really really easy.
You just got to pull your cool-girl mode on.
Babe, I miss you…
Oi, bae, how ya doin?
All okay?
You know, I been stuck in that mall. U see, I really need this bubble tea ASAP. Can you transfer me 15 bucks or somethin'.
Love ya. XOX.
And surprisingly, when I gave him my account number, he actually transferred me 15 bucks while I casually collected his account number like a genius.
The first time I had transferred him the rent, I had added 15 bucks along with it.
You know, he kept shouting about it for three straight months, but when I pulled my pretend-to-be-dumb act more often, he finally stopped and walked briskly back to the kitchen like a dog with its tail cut.
6:00 AM.
Now, it was time to take out the trash as always.
I scooped the black polythene bag and opened the door.
Thank God, he was not home.
I took out a deep breath. Finally! I was free.
Like as free as a caged bird. Well, I wouldn't include the smell of last night's stench along with it.
I was just about to return to my floor, my hand finally empty when I noticed his hands.
They were literally his hands. Like literally. I would never lie, mind you.
I saw his hands on that girl's waist. Her waist.
I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see her face.
But his familiar hands were literally on her waist. Her hands rested on his. Just like a perfect couple.
And I felt his eyes on me, even though I didn't see his face.
Pretending to be like those shocked, hurt wives who would never accept their husbands are cheating, I ran towards the elevator.
Can't you see?
I was hurt. I was dejected. I was..i was..what else was that?
Betrayed?
When I was leaving for work, he stormed inside the living room and I noticed that his hands were now fidgety.
Perfect. Totally perfect. It was just the way I have always wanted.