The Awakening
Shruthi Rao
One morning, Venkatesh decided to wear his wife's
salwar-kurta.
One moment saw him sitting on the sofa, reading the
newspaper, and the next moment, he was standing in front of his wife's
cupboard, fingering her clothes.
A purple set caught his eye, the colour
of the smoky blossoms of the jacaranda across the
road. He took out the salwar, kurta and dupatta from the almirah and
laid them out on the bed, one next to another. The dupatta was
particularly pretty, like the carpet the purple flowers made on the
ground before the morning traffic crushed them into the tarmac.
Venkatesh took off his t-shirt and dhoti. He picked up the
salwar first, and put it on. This was like his drawstring pyjamas, except that
it was of a soft material that tickled his thighs. Then he slipped
the kurta over his head and looked at his own reflection in the
full-length mirror on the almirah. It was longer than his khadi
kurta. This kurta's neck was round and large. His clavicle stuck
out. And the dress hung loose on him as if from a coat
hanger. He frowned before he remembered. Of course, he had no
breasts. He picked up the dupatta and held it in front of him like he had
seen his wife do, and threw either end over each shoulder. The middle
bunched up over his chest, and he was satisfied. The lack of breasts
wasn't so obvious now. But his chest hair was visible, and he pulled the
neckline upwards, and had a flash of memory of his wife doing the same thing
when she thought her cleavage was showing.
He went back to the living room, sat on the sofa
and reached for the newspaper. The dupatta slipped off his
shoulder. He adjusted it and tried to read. But the material of
the dress distracted him. It was soft and smooth and he rubbed it
between his thumb and forefinger. He stroked his own thigh, and
noticed how bony it was compared to his wife's.
His fingers found a pink flower on the kurta, and he ran
them over it, following the lines of the thread and seeing for the
first time the delicate and intricate work that went into
embroidery. He got up and went to the mirror again, and turned this way and
that, admiring the dress, and himself in it. He felt at home in
it. No tightness at the crotch. The sleeves didn't dig into his
armpits. And the fall of the dupatta was particularly seductive.
Venkatesh toasted bread and scrambled some eggs for
breakfast, and made himself a cup of coffee. The dupatta kept slipping
off, and so he took it off and hung it on the kitchen towel stand while he
cooked. He ate breakfast looking at his reflection in the glass
door of the microwave oven.
An hour passed, and Venkatesh looked at his watch and
grimaced. It was time for him to leave for his in-laws' place for
the obligatory Sunday lunch. His wife would be there for
two more months, until the baby turned six months old, and then she would come
back home. Until then, he would have to go every week to see his wife and
son. Otherwise, eyebrows would be raised. People would ask why the
son-in-law didn't come to see his family. So he would have to go,
and hold his child. He would have to grin and bear the
gushes and the comments about how much the baby looked like the
father. And he would have to tolerate the excessive obsequiousness and
feeding from his parents-in-law.
Venkatesh went to the bedroom to
change. He chose a clean, ironed shirt and a pair of
trousers, and laid them out on the bed. He stared at them for a while, and
then put them back into the almirah. It made no sense to him,
changing out of those comfortable clothes.
He picked up his wallet and the keys of his bike, and
automatically felt for a pocket in the kurta. There was none. He
opened his wife's almirah again and found a handbag. He put the
wallet and key into the handbag, and just because there was more space in
it, he put in a handkerchief too.
As he bent to put on his shoes, he saw how incongruous they
looked with the salwar-kurta, and considered wearing his
sandals. They were marginally better, but since he had already gone this
far ... he chose a pair of his wife's open-toed
sandals and squeezed his feet into them. His toes touched the
floor in the front, but he didn't mind. They felt right.
Venkatesh walked out of the house, slightly self-conscious, and
he half-wished, half-feared that somebody would see him. But there was nobody
around. He hung the handbag on the bike handle and put the helmet on his
head. He straddled the motorbike, started it, and cruised out of the
gate.
The roads were comparatively empty. The wind caught the
dupatta, and it fluttered behind him in the wind. He laughed loudly,
wildly. What a glorious feeling! He surged forward, the wind ruffling
his loose clothes, the dupatta like Superman's cape.
As he parked the motorbike outside the gate of his in-laws'
home, he felt the first twinge of hesitation. But only for a moment.
He went in and remembered to knock at the door and not ring
the bell, in case the baby was sleeping. There was a bustle inside in
response to his knock, voices raised in expectation. He adjusted his
dupatta, and straightened his shoulders.
His mother-in-law opened the door with a smile, and then
immediately, her jaw dropped. She stepped aside without a word, and Venkatesh
entered. His father-in-law had been in the process of getting up from the
sofa, and he froze, his bottom poised a few inches above the seat. But
his old legs couldn't balance him for long in that position and he
plonked back on the sofa.
Venkatesh sat down nonchalantly on the single-seater sofa
that was his by unsaid understanding whenever he was visiting. He placed
the handbag on the side table next to him, and adjusted his dupatta as he sat,
so that he wouldn't sit on it.
His wife came out of a room, all
smiles. She looked at him and gave a start, as if
somebody had jumped out from a corner and said ‘boo’. She gave a thin
laugh, and made a questioning gesture with her hands. When she saw no
mirth on Venkatesh's face, she froze, her face
registering puzzlement, shock and then finally, understanding.
She backed into the room, and came out clutching the
baby to her bosom, as if Venkatesh were a monster and she was protecting the
baby from him. As if everything was a dream, and she needed to hold
her baby to assure herself that he, at least, was real. As if she
knew that things would never be the same again, and she needed the support of
her baby to withstand the change.
There was no conversation. Just a vague
babbling by his in-laws, and hesitant questions about what the joke was.
Was it a prank? A dare? His father-in-law offered Venkatesh
his own clothes to change into. But Venkatesh ignored him.
Then his wife found her voice. ‘Please change,’ she
said, a steeliness in her voice that Venkatesh didn't know existed. ‘Please
change, now.’
‘No,’ said Venkatesh.
‘Change, right now,’ she repeated, but Venkatesh shook his
head. ‘If this is the welcome I get,’ he said, ‘I'm leaving.’
‘You're not going out like that again,’ said his
wife, her voice hardly audible.
Venkatesh stood up, and made as if to leave. His
father-in-law blocked his path, muttering soothing appeasements, touching
his forehead as if checking for his temperature, but Venkatesh brushed him
aside.
‘If my own wife doesn't understand my wish to wear
comfortable clothes, then I can't hope for anything else,’ he said.
‘Your pyjama-kurta is as comfortable,’ said his
wife, her chest heaving, barely able to speak. ‘Why women's clothes?’
‘If women can wear men's clothes, why not the other way
round?’
‘Oh God, he's gone crazy!’ She sank into a chair.
Venkatesh didn't answer. He went to the door, and
paused. His heart was bursting. With fear, with excitement, with
exhilaration, with the knowledge of the enormity of the moment. If he
turned and admitted to a moment of craziness, and blamed the heat for it, the
three people in the room would forgive him immediately and the matter wouldn't
be mentioned ever again. And life would go back to normal.
But if he stepped out, he would be venturing into the
unknown. He would be leaving behind life as he knew it.
His wife sensed his hesitation. She made a move towards
him, held the child out to him, as if to remind him of the stakes.
But Venkatesh knew that he couldn't go back now. He
didn't know what compelled him to do this in the first place, but the moment he
stepped out of his home dressed in his wife's clothes, the wheels had been set
in motion. He was now a part of something greater than him, something he
didn't quite understand, something inevitable. It didn't seem like he had
a choice any more.
Venkatesh opened the door, and stepped out.
Shruthi Rao is a writer
of short fiction and non-fiction. A post-graduate in Energy Engineering,
she worked in the IT industry for a few years. During a break that she
took from work to care for her child, she discovered that all she wanted to do
was write. She quit her job, and hasn't looked back since.
Several of
her stories have won awards (Sunday Herald Short Story Award (twice),
Unisun-Reliance TimeOut fiction for children contest, Tagore-O’Henry short
story contest.) An award-winning children’s story was converted into a picture
book, The Story Lady, by Unisun Publications. Her stories have
been published or are forthcoming in Open Road Review, Earthen Lamp Journal, Papercuts and eFiction
India, and have
been included in print and online anthologies such as Helter
Skelter New Writing, Two
is Company and Across the Ages. Her articles on
travel, education, lifestyle and parenting have appeared in Mint
Lounge, Deccan
Herald, The Hindu, Complete Wellbeing and Women’s
Web. She is also involved in developing content for children's books, and
translates from Kannada to English.
Shruthi
lives in Bangalore with her family, and likes books, food, and trees.
fantastic subject and wonderful the way Venkatesh starts to see things differently when he first puts his wife's clothes on and perhaps to understand his own body in a different way.
ReplyDeleteA very powerful short story. Reminded of me the bearded lady who won this years Eurovision song contest. A quiet revolution is taking place in our society and this story is a reminder of this change. Bravo
ReplyDeleteBeautifully crafted. A mind boggling read.
ReplyDelete