Glass half overlooked
4. They meet
(May 2016)
Charu
rushed to get to the office. Why is the train so late today? Bus…bus is late!! I am
standing near the bus stop. What is wrong with me today? She glanced
at her watch again and again, without actually seeing the time, thinking about what
she will do once she reaches Seva Sadan. What is the time? She finally
glanced at her watch to actually register the time. She smiled to herself
thinking she will go mad one day juggling all these chores. But whom was she
kidding? Though she was flustered, she definitely wasn't frustrated with it.
Instead, she was ecstatic. All she ever wanted was to be self-reliant and
encourage others to do the same. Now, she had it all. Her simple yet not so
simple life was bliss. She was working hard, making money on her own,
supporting her parents, and above all, helping marginalized and vulnerable
women. Being independent and helping silently suffering women was all she
wanted after…
Honking
of horn brought her out of her thoughts. She saw her bus approaching the bus-stop.
She
scanned through the seats in the ladies’ section, there was only one seat free
besides a guy. He was sitting there while 3 seats in the general section were
unoccupied. He was looking out the window, dressed in a white shirt, hair
disheveled. Could it be him? Nah... As soon as it came, that thought
passed away like a touch of a butterfly, without leaving a trace. It didn't
bother her. Huh… That thought
definitely left a trace of a smile on her face.
Buying
her ticket, she went towards the seat in the ladies’ section. The guy in the
window shifted slightly, to give her space. Their eyes met for a nanosecond.
They immediately looked in the opposite direction and tried to relax their
widened eyes a bit. How? After how many days? three months maybe...
She composed herself and looked straight with a blank expression. She was not
sure how she should handle it. He was busy pretending to look out the window.
Four long minutes passed before…
“Are…
are you happy? I mean… are you happy in your life??”, he stuttered.
She
just observed him. He looked tired, confused, and, most definitely, guilty. He
was expectantly looking into her eyes. The corner of his left eye glistened with a
held-up tear. He immediately turned away not being able to hold eye
contact. He feared her blank eyes would soon reflect accusations. She knew how
he had interpreted her silence. But she needed some time to contemplate what
she just saw.
After
a while, “I am happy”, she said with a faint assuring smile.
The
held-up tears made their way out of his eyes. He didn't look convinced at
first. But then a wave of satisfaction hit him. He gave a weak but content
smile. His smile told her, he was smiling after a long time.
Then
it hit her. While she had been working with vulnerable women, encouraging and
enabling them to fight for justice and their rights, the “she” in him had been
fighting for her existence. Now that she could understand him for the
first time, she couldn't help but feel guilty. She had unknowingly become his
gift-wrapped suffering. In the quest of finding justice for herself, he had
automatically turned into a culprit in her story. The saddest part was that he
believed her version of his story and he was the culprit in his own eyes.
That's
it! She had to help him. She had to help her.
She
was lost in her thoughts when she heard a small ‘thank u’. Clearing the cloud
of thoughts, she looked at him. He said, “don't feel guilty”. He had read her
eyes. He continued, “I was suffocating for years. Somehow this fight for
acceptance is much easier than years of suffocation even though I don’t see an
end to the fight in near future”.
“Whose
acceptance”, she asked.
“My
parents’ to begin with”, he said in ' it's so obvious' tone.
“What
about you”, she probed further.
“Me? I have accepted myself long back. That's how it all
started, didn't it? Or ended, however you want to phrase it” He was trying to
speculate where she was going with this.
She
smiled.
“We
have a lot to work on. We start this Sunday. But first, we must become friends.
We can't let our past affect us now onwards. We will meet on Sunday, at 9.00am
at...Umm...this bus stop, OK?”, without waiting for his reply, she hurried to
get down.
He
realized his hand was still in the air when he had lifted it to stop her.
Keeping it on his lap, he again turned to look out the window with a faint smile,
not before mentally noting down the name of the bus stop.
-×-
For me, it was never a question of whether I was transgender. It
was a question of whether I'd be able to handle transitioning and having to do
it in the public eye. One of the issues that was hard for me to overcome was
the fear of that.
- Chaz Bono
No comments:
Post a Comment