Story without an end

I once went to a wedding as a petulant child.  It was held in the parking lot of Riviera Apartments on Mall Road in Old Delhi.  The parking lot had gotten an orange and yellow Punjabi shaadi makeover.  I was six and I kept bugging nana ji, "Why did we have to come so early!".  Something about the trials and tribulations of being on the girl's side ensued.  Gracious.  What a liability we are.  And there was definitely a "you'll know when it's your turn".  So by the time my next birthday came, I bought my first Indira Bachat Patra.  Dadu had explained to me how it worked.  This was a scheme started by Indira Gandhi at the time that would double your money in five years.  My seven-year-old self thought this was a damn good deal, and I started diverting my birthday present requests from Barbie dolls to 500 rupee bachat patras.  Needless to say, nanaji had frightened me enough to want to start saving for my wedding.  Additionally, I had papa promise me a few presents he would give me at my wedding.  He'd of course promptly asked me to write a list.  He'd even insisted on signing the contract.  It went something like this - "When I get married, papa will give me a TV, a video player, a fridge ..."  I'd also prayed for marriage to Santa Claus around the same time.  'Earning' and 'independent' were just not part of the paradigm. 

Over the next two decades, my five-hundred-rupee khazanas were reinvested multiple times.  Meanwhile, I started to stay away from those who advocated settling down at a certain age.  I hid behind feminism.  The fear of making a mistake and getting trapped made me chase guys away.  I did terrible things.  I cried.  I pretended to be overly-dependent.  I comforted egos.  I insisted on commitment.  On the surface, I succumbed to the control.  If they didn't leave, I ran.  Fear always trumped time.  None of this was conscious at first.  I was just in and out.  Smiling at the beginning.  Crying by the end.  I was so transparent through it all.  Self-introspection was a game we played with varying degrees of success.  They assumed they understood me.  I really hadn't meant to be so dismissive.  Mama reminded me one day of the many-times-over matured Indira Bachat Patras, and I flippantly had them sold.  The sum had become inconsequential.  Inflation had played with me.

It's just that I'd read Fowles at fifteen.  And ever since then, after the initial enthusiasm each reality felt like a sale to the highest bidder.  Some insisted I stop selling myself so short.  Others swung the other way and accused me of being full of myself.  They didn't understand, I'm not for sale.  I can't bear pity, nor understanding, nor reprimand.  It's all self-serving.  I didn't want those pedestals.  Perhaps now I can ask my dad, save me.  Sign it on stamp paper.  Give me the sense to preserve myself.  I live in a time that I don't fully belong to.  I can't belong to these practices; this immediacy of admiration, the flippancy of conjugal bartering, the absence of constancy.

I keep thinking of the commodities for sale at the mandi.  "Uterus for sale.  Going for 5000, five lakhs, five crores.  Going once.  Going twice.  Sold to the man in that corner."