Ink And Echoes

• F O R T Y T H R E E •

It is like a small story, my household that is. Two ladies, Aphrodite and Draupadi. Aphrodite with her beauty and blades from Dushasan. My father's love is insipid. Blunt blades cutting apples, my mother's happiness. She really doesn't understand that her beauty is not a gift. She has split hearts, abusing the love of Krishna.

Draupadi is awry. She is not me. She is my heart, she is my blood, the iron in my veins and arteries. Someone who stepped on the crown of Ares and cursed anyone who touched the strings of her saree. But I only ask the Draupadi in me to love herself, not the five brothers, and stop fixing herself into dark places. My father called me philandering, hissed at Draupadi's bangles and hugged Aphrodite's milky waist.

I'm fifteen and my words don't really matter. But, today I noticed how confined my mother is. She looks so gallant and happy everytime she puts on her earrings, her favourite lipstick almost as if its her armour. And maybe it is. But unfortunately, her own family has broken the heart of a gladiatrix. She has abstained herself and somehow ended up scandalising her own system, full of raging chemicals.

Everytime there is less salt in the curry, my father would look at her with contempt. Not with a look that would say, it is completely fine.

My mother said rapists don't understand and unconsciously called me licentious. She painted herself black, calling her patriarchal parents chivalrous. But today, she can't enunciate her love for me. I think, she is a rock and I am a river. A weak river, who couldn't cut through her. Her jewellery shines everytime the sun falls on it, but deep down that gold has the blood of someone rusted. And everytime I wear them, it feels like the heartstrings of my subliminal mother is choking me.

Aphrodite and Draupadi are sisters. Daughter and mother. Cakes and pastries. Blades and swords. Tears and screams. But everytime the Gods - my father - asked them to treat their wounds after returning from war - from office, a part of them would shatter.

No one loved them. They didn't love each other. They didn't love themselves.

~Sampurna