Periods, Pyaar And Patriarchy

Chapter Two

It had been over a week since she had met up with her friends and Vaibhav and two days since Sanskriti had left. She'd gotten a summer internship that she would be starting in a months' time in the same city. But for now, she was headed back to her family in Bangalore. There were so many cousins' weddings that Sanskriti had missed out on during her graduation years and she simply wanted to catch up on all of her family's shenanigans. Their little soiree at the café had been disrupted when Aditya had announced that he would be catching a flight the next morning. Then, there had been many protests, a bit of tears, and a grudging farewell to a sorry Aditya.

Within two days of Aditya vacating his room, Vaibhav had come with an announcement of his own as well. Words like the end of college, boys' trip, and hiking factored into the conversation. Shweta hadn't registered much of the conversation because she'd taken it for granted that he would be around and perhaps when they returned home, they would be able to go around the old places once again. She'd said nothing but smile along and act excited although, she felt very differently. They'd both acknowledged the need to have separate lives but never had Shweta understood it so well. He had managed to have a life away from hers, one that didn't feature much of her existence. But did she? Vaibhav had managed to find a way into her college friendships as well and until now she hadn't seen much of a problem with it.

Four days after Aditya left, Vaibhav packed his bags, placed one last kiss on Shweta's forehead, and headed towards the bus station with some boys Shweta had never seen before. She was left with an absent-minded Sanskriti and an uncomfortable feeling that somehow, he was moving on while still with her and she hadn't. And when Sanskriti however absent-minded she was had left as well, the empty hostel walls seemed to be asking her- could she move on from him were the need to arise?

Until only now, when she looked at the car pulling up in front of her hostel did she feel any sense of relief.

The familiarity of the beat-up silver car was something that was always welcome in the hullabaloo of the unfamiliar city she had tried to make her way in the past three years. For a moment, Shweta simply pauses by the window; this had always been her favorite part. While she was very sad about having to leave college, the sight of her mother dressed in a crisp cotton kurta, looking no-nonsense and beautiful as she locked the car, eases her.

Shweta's mother Seema was a tight-lipped gynecologist with worry lines firmly imprinted on her forehead. On these worry lines, she rubbed coconut oil every single night. With the onset of her fifty years, she had lost one-fourth of her cynicism and turned her nose up at homemade remedies a little less frequently. All those years of practicing medicine had taught her about the effectiveness of the chemicals but at the same time made her extremely aware of the smaller side effects. Thus, she stopped her vitamin supplements and pill-popping tendencies; only turning to them for actual diseases and not minor inconveniences.

Seema for her part was fairly nervous. For a seasoned gynecologist who had stood next to hundreds of screaming women in agony, there were only two women on Earth who seemed to have problems for every single one of her solutions. Seema was nervous because of what had happened the last time she had arrived in front of a hostel building to pick up a graduated daughter. Her eldest daughter Shruti had walked out of the building her hair dyed a flamboyant pink. And it wasn't even a single strand or a few highlights, Lord knows Seema could have lived with that. But Shruti had dyed her entire head pink; her dark eyebrows standing out which Seema secretly thought was ridiculous. 

When she had asked Shruti what led to it, she had simply replied that she was 'going through something'. Seema had, of course, kept quiet. What was she to do? Her girls were extremely sensitive and always seemed to be 'going through something' and by now Seema had learned the best thing to do was pay the delivery man when he appeared at their door with a Domino's pizza with extra cheese slathered on top. Even though she wanted to talk to them about the fattening effects of such food items, she remained silent.