Confessions of an Imperfect Daughter

6 - ANECDOTES

ANECDOTES

The consequential small

I'm not done yet. If I am to call out to the other life that I've been leading without your knowledge it will take some time. There are a lot of lies to unravel, a lot of truths to face and relationships, smoking, drinking and all are only at the tip of the iceberg. Most people think that little lies are okay, but those are the ones that hurt me the most. When I hang up the video call early and go to drown myself in booze I don't tell you because I know you will never approve. That's not because you're my parents but because you are normal parents. When I tell you I'm too tired to talk, but I've gotten back to the university after the concert, I know you'll panic and lecture me about it if I tell you that I was still in the middle of it all. That's because you're concerned for my safety in a new town because let's face it, India is not the safest place for women to walk around alone, even in broad daylight. These are lies that I can't help but utter because the other option would be to live my life as a good obedient daughter. To me, that's not living, that's not a life I can come to terms with.

The clothes I wear, the intimacy between my friends, the money I spend on satisfying my vanity are all lies that prick me more. Some parents might be okay with their child wearing a t shirt and jeans to go out but you tell me that the top is too short and the jeans are too tight. The skirt is too short and the cut is too deep. The sleeves are too short and the makeup is too much. "Are you wearing lipstick? I'm not asking that to make you conscious but because it's very unlike you. Also, I won't tell you that it's too flashy but if you look into my eyes and glean the secrets of my soul, you'll get it."

You are not some parents, you are the others. I'm not some child, I'm your daughter.

It's the slight probability that irks me. You are not among the some yet but you could be persuaded to be. I could convince you, lecture you back about choice, individual expression and all of it but my success rates aren't that high. Worst case scenario (I'm really good at these), you decide that you can change me by manipulating me time and time again. You'll lock me in my room, restrict my access to anything that makes me happy and I will hug my knees in the corner resting my head on them to not let the tears stain my cheeks. I gave up on slight probability when you saw a picture of me in a sleeveless on my friend's Instagram. Mom, you came to me and told me how dad showed the picture to you and asked you to talk to me about it. You told me how mad he had gotten when he saw it a few days ago and how mad it made you, but you were ready for a compromise as long as she deleted the picture. Now, that might have been a sign of progress but the picture was taken inside a room and all my intuitions point to 'inside the room' being the key source for their reduced rage. Truthfully, the photo was one we took when we snuck into the boy's hostel but that was definitely not the time to tell you that I had bigger crimes for you to punish. Instead I texted my friend to delete the picture, asked all my other friends to block both of you on Instagram and alerted you to the absence of the picture coupled with the sincerest apology I could muster. 

I was not in a sane state during this situation (let's call it incident number I don't really know 2). We had surpassed airport security and I performed the idiotic act of carrying a knife in the hand baggage. It was a karambit that my friend had gifted me and in the ruckus caused by your arrival and intrusion into my hidden college life I had forgotten that it was in such a dangerous location. Furthermore, when you somehow resolved the situation without us getting arrested or the knife getting confiscated, you got called to the office again due to a lighter, another one of my friend's gifts. We joked about this after but you treated me like a kid when you told me that I was not getting the knife back. You talked about self-harm but no amount of external pain could amount to the one I was putting myself through as I consciously entered back into the prison cell I like to call home.

I think I missed you, at least for the first week of college but it faded away. I was excited about coming back home because I had come to accept that such a place existed for me. But, after two days of covering my legs and trying hard to re-clean my dirty mind I was ready to go back to the easy living that was college. Besides it's not like you missed anything important.

You know, I sang for an open mic. I always thought those things were free, like you'd go to a place and you could just go up and sing but it turns out that you have to pay for them. There's an audience ticket and a performer ticket that you have to take. It was quite a bit for a college student's allowance but I still registered. I had no idea what I was going to sing and I couldn't ask you, mom because that meant that I would have to dress appropriately. I thought about the event for a long time before I started creating a medly of songs. It started with the idea your middle child gave me of mixing Cold water by Justin Bieber with Story of my Life by One Direction. I built upon that as the base and added a few more songs that I thought would go with it. Karaoke is not my strong suit, as you know so I did the whole thing acapella with just my fingers snapping to the beat. It went so great, but I regretted the fact that you would never be able to see it (I was wearing a turtleneck tucked into jeans, an outfit you wouldn't approve of).

You missed the Valentine's Day flash mob where I looked pretty in a black dress that my friend gave me. It belonged to his sister but it didn't fit her properly so he gave it to me. It was so much fun dancing to the beats in the football ground, surrounded by people on all sides. I wanted you to see what a great job I'd done but I would only get reprimanded for the dress and the makeup.

You don't seem to mind the occasional straight hair, inventive eyeliner tricks and impulsive fringes so those I wear proudly in front of you while I hide my painted nails behind the phone screen.

It was good to have you on my side, mom, when granddad asked me about saying my prayers. You answered for me and smiled through the screen and I almost broke down in tears of joy. I never thought it would feel that good to have you support my decisions. That's why its harder to keep things from you than from dad.

Even after psychoanalyzing you for more than two years, I still don't know you. That's why you don't know me yet. For all the time in my life with you when I thought 'gay' meant 'happy', you never corrected me. You didn't consider it a big deal when I asked you to explain methods of contraception to me for my 10th grade seminar. The latter was probably because it was part of my Biology class.

We always skipped the intimate scenes in a movie and because my siblings were still young but ever after I became old enough to watch them, the skipping continued. That explanation you gave me, mom, in tenth grade was the first time I learnt about the process. Of course, I'd watched the parts you made us skip separately but those scenes never outright mentioned the act of sexual intercourse so discovering porn was weird for me.

Dad, you had the habit of hiding movies that we'd watched once from us so that we wouldn't watch it again. But, I had the patience to go through every one of those folders to find what I was looking for. I found 50 shades of grey that way. I found Friends with Benefits that way. I could tell that there was a reason why you hid them from us the moment I let them wash over my mind but the movies you hid were sometimes better than the ones we explored as a family. It had violence, love, and an introduction to a culture I would grow to hate at its core, but love in comparison to my own. Your phone was locked with passwords upon passwords but when you transferred the media to the computer to save space, you didn't bother with the hiding and I saw the photos that you stored on them, the memorable ones and the ones I wanted to get out of my memory. When I sought a connection with you, I didn't expect it to be one of masturbating to the same things but ofttimes you don't have the luxury to pick and chose.