Chapter 2
No meant so.
Photograph: Krzysztof Grech“When I look at him my ovaries start singing, please take him away from me, please,” she said to her friend Anu who was trudging alongside Simmi in the baked hot sand.
The two women were spectacularly failing the Bechdel test under a soft pink sky flush with a scent of neutrality.
Simmi was not afraid to love him but she was aware of its consequences.
Their bodies tilted sideways as they walked. Swooning was not the same as succumbing.
Simmi rolled her eyes and turned away to the blazing orange orb setting in the sea. She squinted and tried to concentrate on the green spot that appears right before it disappears.
He made her feel proud of her childbearing broad hips. She did not want to go down that road at all. She had decided long ago that motherhood was off her map.
What would have happened if she had professed her love to him? He would probably accept her proposal. They would get married. And then? For a few years she would be able to delay the good news announcement, following pressure from family, friends, peers, who all wanted the same thing out of them.
They would have decided against it in their prenup vows. No meant so.
She had to be sure that he would not succumb to the pressures. Two were a family too.
Her phone rang. It was him. Just like the movies criticised for failing the Bechdel test spectacularly.
She looked at Anu and smirked. “I have two options. To take this call or,” she pointed at the waves.
Before Anu could react, Simmi said, “Here, take the call and tell him I am drowning in my amniotic fluid. He will say what? Take a pic and send it to him.”
She began walking towards the spumy waves, lifting her white skirt, trying her best to stay dry as far up as she could, and that’s just one way of looking at it.
Anu spoke to Shahnawaz as she watched Simmi frolic.
“What did he say?” Simmi asked, returning to wear her slippers.
“He said he will get a vasectomy.”
They laughed. It had a conspiratorial ring breaking the silence of the neutral air.
They knew him so well. That charming rake.
Simi took a long deep breath and said, “How can I resist him? I think am already wet.”
They laughed again. This time it was for Simmi’s irreverent candour.
They got up to leave as the sun drowned and the birds began to scatter to their nests in a hurry.
Shahnawaz would have laughed too, Simi thought, calculating what he said when he was told she was riding the waves.
Photograph: Max Dupain
