The Heart on the Table

A sliced-up heart sat on the table. Pale red sacrifice swimming in a pool of muddy white. Adele crooned in the background.

Earlier that day, at Moyenville Road, vulnerability seeped out of her heart, stained her tears and sighs. “What are you writing now? For yourself?” Latha had asked her. Preeti shifted her weight on the plastic chair. She looked up at the white laminated cupboard with its brown handles, at the blue painting. A bottle of rheumatism oil lay on a shelf in the corner. A photograph of a young woman, with short hair, whom she did not know stared back at her. An unopened suitcase stood to the side. It had probably been lugged across railway stations, bus stops and airports, chaperoning Latha. A frayed orange ribbon clung onto the suitcase.

Preeti wrung her hands and tried to take a deep breath- in vain. Tears welled up in her eyes. She felt ashamed. She felt vulnerable. She felt seen. They sat together in that room －Preeti and Latha. Familiar strangers – awkward friends －each treading the other’s boundary. Tentative, yet engaged.

Latha’s question had been too much for Preeti to bear. No one had asked her what she was doing for herself. For her soul. For her sanity. For her privacy. For her meditative practice. Even Preeti had forgotten to ask herself that. Who takes care of a mother? Who walks a mother back to her car? Who asks her to message when she reaches back home? Who treats her like a loved child?

Preeti had made herself a giver. Nurturing everyone around her, but forgetting to feed herself. When was the last time she had relished a TV show without her thoughts reeking of guilt? She had stopped making room to breathe, to wander aimlessly, to roam, to be a nomad. These were self imposed constraints – she knew.

When she had lain in bed racked with pain, the domesticity had somehow carried on. The breakfast menu had been decided without her having to juggle the permutations and combinations of what lay wilted in the fridge, what the cook could make in an hour, and what everyone would devour. Hing lemon upma was prepared and gobbled up without a fuss. Papaya was cut and put in a glass box. The tiffin was packed with mini idlis and drumstick sambar. The boys got dressed for school and put on their name badges. They filled their water bottles, and did not need a reminder to carry their jackets. No one bothered her. Only her guilt, her thoughts, her expectations continued to suffocate her. They wrung her dry. Made her barren of creativity, of impulse, of pause.

She kept finding herself repeating the pattern she had learnt in childhood and continued to see around her. She cut herself into pieces and quilted them into ideal versions of women, mothers, daughters, sisters and wives. These versions did not exist in reality. Yes, she sewed the same lines and folded herself into the embroidery. She wove the tapestry around her body and allowed her being to be bound by its threads. She could not let go of the needle.

Her husband Suresh was confused by her behaviour. He often stood at the edge of her well－holding out his hand for her. He never gave up. He remained consistent in his support. She found his stability alien and frustrating. His dependability was confusing and new. “Why are you crumpling yourself? Why are you sinking back into the hole? Why are you becoming a shadow of your potential?” He continued to plead with her, trying to steady the boat she rocked. He cast his nets to trawl her dark clouds. His attempts were persistent yet futile.

It was much more comfortable to be invisible, Preeti had argued. She felt hollowed out – as if clawed out by everyone around her. Her insides pecked out. Decades of self-doubt had chipped away at her core, and had softened her into a putty. She could and would mould herself into anyone’s expectations, except her own. She had forgotten what it was like to have expectations of herself.

She wove a cage around herself. Shininess frightened her. She caressed the thorns. She found pleasure in the crosses to bear. The weight dwarfed her, pushed her into the ground, erupted into warts on the sides of her face.

Later that evening, she sat alone. In a strange cafe, named after a goat. Through the speakers, a singer wailed about a fire starting in her heart.

It was going to be dinner for one. With only her writing to keep her company. Her writing was her home. A home with a cosy sofa that she could snuggle on. A home she had not inhabited in a while.  A home slowly overgrown with cobwebs. A home that needed some dusting. A home that could use some decorating.

She took out her pen and the little notebook she always carried, from her bag. She began to scribble frantically on a page. Her wails jittered between the blue ink and blotched the pages.

The waiter plonked down the poached pear, stained red with wine－her sacrificial heart offered on a plate. How bizarre to sit alone and order only for herself.

The notebook with a half-scribbled page lay on the table with the pen on top of it. She knew it would get written.

She looked at the white plate again. It was a cross between a plate and a bowl. The poached pear had been sliced, but not fully through, sat in the hollow. The chef had carefully fanned out the segments, leaving the stem intact. Dyed with red wine, the fruit perched atop frozen condensed milk. The milk was thawing slowly. Its melted, muddy pool made aromatic with badi elaichi, lavang and dalchini.

She greedily lapped up the milk like the cat under the lihaaf. She drank it with relish – alone. A desire to satiate herself overcame her.

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