-Aᴠᴏɪᴅ ᴛʏᴘᴏs ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀᴀᴍᴍᴀᴛɪᴄᴀʟ ᴇʀʀᴏʀs-
After a strenuous day at the medical camp, she was done and dusted for the day. Being a medical intern wasn't an easy job. It was gruelling in ways one cannot even explain, and it is when your life oscillates like a pendulum between books and hospitals, and books and hospitals, and you have no life beyond them, that you regret that one damned decision that your class tenth board results made you take. Because after getting into the science stream, it was a two way road for most of the homo sapiens - and it would be either engineering or the solemnly worshipped medical terrain where you get to actually do pretty cool stuff to save people's lives. It was a tough nut, but, eventually, like they often say, 'all's well that ends well' and in the end when you are actually saving lives and you see a smile on the face of the person who just got a second life, then the pain that it has costed - it is all worth it. You are seen as a messiah, a protector sent by the god, or perhaps even the god himself. And that was enough a motivation for her to not get married and "settle down" as they say in Indian matrimonial terms, when her grandmother brought an affluent match for her in her fourth year and she chose for her medical seat to not go wasted. She feels wistful about not having anyone to talk her heart out, sometimes, though, but she believes, everything has a day.
She ambles on the footpath peering at the road for an auto rickshaw totally forgetting about the strike that was announced two nights ago in big bold headlines on some random news channel that her father had been watching. She tries to walk straight in an erect posture but her back hurts profusely after all the running that she had done in the hospital on her two-inch heels that her grandmother had forced her to wear this morning.
"You are not girly at all."
And she had to wear those heels and strut on them just to escape the tormenting sexist remarks that her grandmother so easily makes at her with a contorted face. She did not have any specific enmity with her granddaughter and basically shoots a comment each time she just stands in front of her, doing nothing. Her granddaughter didn't have to do anything; her being a girl and doing nothing about being a girl was enough for her to earn those remarks. And the problem with her grandmother or any senile folk in this country is that they are fundamentally old enough to not even be able to fathom the voguish terms like "sexism" or "toxicity" that their next-in-line have birthed.
She waves down on an auto rickshaw that she finally sees but the autowalah shakes his head in denial, as he passes ahead. In this city, a strike means a strike and no one has the capacity to broach a question on that aspect. She continues walking ahead with her sore back, when she almost trips to the ground as her shoe's heel breaks off but she holds herself somehow.
"Bhenchod."
She rages like any other Delhiwaalah at the innocent shoe heel and almost feels like getting it off and throwing it into the nearest public trash can that her eyes could find. She growls and mutters profanity like a mad woman holding her shoe in her hand, making the passing eyes turn towards her. Her ankle had perhaps sprained too; it aches as she hops at her spot on one leg, and it makes her even more irritable. And at the same time, her stomach rumbles loudly in public, leaving her done, dusted, irritable, angry, and awkward, all at the same time. She plucks off the dangling heel of her footwear mercilessly and throws it to the cemented ground. Hunger and irritation makes her take the extreme step and she forcefully breaks off her other heel as well, banging it to the lamppost beside her. She dons the sandals and gets going.
