Milk Teeth

by Amrita Mahale

Rage and bloodlust thrived here, casually disguised as order, as eccentricity, as sport and hobby.

Each beam was a skinny brown Atlas holding up the sky.

It was easy to believe that a mother’s love was unconditional, which made it alright to challenge her, correct her, laugh at her. Fathers were more complicated. Their love, once earned, had to be sustained. It had to be sheltered from the glare of truth.

It was a gentle assault that chiselled at your will, and chip by chip, your resistance fell away, sculpting a new you. When you acquiesced, you were left wondering why you had ever resisted. In some moments you were even convinced that it was your decision, that you were acting of your own free will—that mirage of a notion—because after all, any pressure on you had only been mild, albeit persistent.

a beautiful description of conditioning and subject formation.

But middle-class in this country was a state of mind, as one of Kaiz’s unbearable friends had once declared. Not the filthy-rich of masala movies, not the dirt-poor of arthouse films, but everything in between. For some it was shorthand for middle-access, a separation from the corridors of power. For others it was middle-culture, a separation from the world of ideas.

She had believed that the heart was like a house and when you let someone in, they were only a guest. You could entertain them in the living room while keeping the bedrooms shut. You could limit their footprint to a minimum. But she had not suspected that Kaiz was a shameless, over-familiar guest who took a tour of the house on his own, opening doors and walking in unescorted, uninvited.

Passion was the opposite of power. Passion was the forsaking of power. In passion, she had offered herself as a canvas for somebody else’s pen, mutely receiving his designs on her skin. In passion, she had allowed herself to dream of a new name, adding his name to her own, chopping off a part of herself as an offering.