by Prashila Naik
Sharon must have spent a good deal of money on her haircuts, she had one almost every single month. I liked her hair though, it was the just the kind I had spent many a night dreaming after – silky, straight and with a sheen that seemed to match her stride. She was always dressed in salwaar suits, all colorful and classy. One afternoon, on my friend’s insistence, I had asked her where she picked them up from, not disclosing that I had been interested in that particular piece of information too. She told me they were purchased from one of those new designer stores that had been mushrooming throughout the city, the kind that my friend and I could barely afford on our monthly salary of 10,000 rupees . We had bitched about her then, like we always did, like everyone did.
Sharon had everything that a woman her age would aspire to have, or so we thought. At 31, she was considered to be one of the coveted ‘rising’ performers in our Business Unit, one who could easily get back-to-back, out-of-turn promotions, one who had a more-than-effortless transition from Civil engineering to Information Technology. Her husband worked as the sales head of a huge multinational company and drew a yearly salary of a staggering 20 lakhs. I knew the exact amount because I had once overheard her casually mention this to someone while on a phone call. She had a 3-year-old son, and was bold enough to go to movie theaters all on her own. Had I known her from a distance, I’d probably have been in awe of how she did that, went to movies on her own I mean. But of course, I worked with her, she was my first proper boss, and I knew her more than enough to understand how she could do that. I’d be surprised if she didn’t.
We shared a common birth month, June, and our birthdays were a few days and a decade apart. There were times when this commonality bound us into a kinship that I was forced to acknowledge. She told me about getting married at 21, and her motivations for doing the same. I remember her explanations on how she waited for seven years to have a child, because it was only then that she had come into contact with her ‘maternal instincts,’ as she liked to call them. I doubt if she had shared such intimate details of her life with another person, and I often wondered as to why she would do that with me. It weighed me down, this very idea that I was made a recipient to someone’s past, someone I did not quite understand. What was I supposed to do with that information?
And yet, I had played the game along with her. I smiled and provided her coy answers every time she asked me when I was planning to get married or how I needed to wear long earrings and set my hair free to look pretty in photographs. I even asked her to pay a visit to my parents’ house when she had gone to Goa on a short vacation. Had we actually become friends?
We hadn’t and it became very evident to me from the way she conducted my appraisal session, out in the open, refusing to let me complete my sentences, even as everyone around us listened to her demolishing my arguments on how I was clearly not the big deal I thought I was.
If I had ever come close to feeling humiliated, it must have been then, and the humiliation wasn’t on her account, but on how my own perceptions of my own self weren’t quite how I thought they were. For the longest time, I remember being overtly conscious of the people sitting in my neighboring cubicles, wondering whether they still remembered that dialogue and my helpless attempts at trying to make myself seem a little less pathetic.
The consciousness dissipated though, like it always does when you are all of 21. But the doubt continued to persist, especially when many of my peers moved on in spectacular directions, their lives at least at that point of time turning into miniature tales of starry success, en-route to becoming young achievers who would have no time to look back. I was still stuck with my dull computer monitor and a mouse that demanded periodical cleaning, as well as that barrage of senseless responsibilities that no one really cared for. And yet I never quite gave up on it all, even if that meant wallowing in layers of self-doubt and self-pity, or worrying that if I couldn’t convince even a moderately smart woman like Sharon, I clearly did not deserve that high opinion I ascribed to myself.
Sharon moved on too, into a newer role, with a newer set of aspirations. Her salwaar suits gave way to various fruit colored shirts and black trousers. Her hair grew shorter. Her interactions were to-the-point. We no longer discussed my marriage or her maternal instincts. I should have been relieved that the forced connection was almost snapped. In fact, I was almost certain there never had been a connection. I was just a prop to her, an attentive listener to what I knew were her long suppressed stories of self-assertion. Or else who in their right minds would go to a movie theater on their own? Who in their right minds would talk about her child being more attached to a father he sees only on the weekends than a mother he sees every night?
I wasn’t done yet, I decided then; a Sharon or two could not judge what I could do out of my life. I began to laugh more and cry less, I became hopeful about all the good things that would eventually come my way and God knew they would, they had to. No one’s life ends at 22. That is when it all begins. And how stupid had I been to think otherwise.
I did not see Sharon for a long time after she moved into a different campus. A few months after the move, she was being considered for an engagement that would need her to be in Germany for a period of two years. We all collectively gasped when we heard that she had no qualms in leaving her son with her parents for that long duration. What kind of a mother would do that and how heartless would she be to do it?
It made me feel strangely superior to think of how I would never do something like that if I were in her place, even though I was not in her place and would possibly never be. The wonders one sudden stroke of superiority can do to your flailing ego.
When I next saw Sharon, almost five years had passed. My sharp cheekbones had given way to slightly pudgy cheeks and I had developed an unhealthy obsession for long willowy skirts. Sharon probably had altogether abandoned those classy salwaar suits, and her skin was patchy in most parts. Her hair was still shiny, but it left me with no sense of longing. She had stared at me for a long time, before I had smiled at her. It took me a while to realize that she was avoiding me, avoiding that once very much existent time we had shared. We could have been strangers, for all I knew.
I called my friend that evening and bitched about Sharon, the relief of that once regular activity almost therapeutic, but barely five minutes into the conversation our wonder was waning. Neither of us was interested in the three-inch heels I had seen Sharon wear, rather uncomfortably. My friend had a date set for the evening and her mind was still set on what she would be wearing. I hung up after wishing her a good evening, and pulled out my monster copy of War and Peace, rewinding back to the first page for the sixth consecutive time, determined to make it to the book’s end this time.
Prashila Naik dreams of retiring into the idyllic landscapes of Ladakh and longs for a day when every child in India will have two full meals to eat and a permanent school to attend to. When not dreaming or longing, she continues to extend her repertoire as a veteran IT professional who loves to dabble with words and discover new genres of music.
Pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/
