by Meera Raja
I pile them all up, like a giant multi-coloured mountain my daughter used to make with blocks. These didn’t fit perfectly, though, much like me. There they are—a preponderance of skin coloured ones, with some blacks and whites thrown in, and one solitary red, standing atop the mountain like a danger flag.
One quick scrape of the matchstick head, and the fire starts its journey—moving from the red bra that never really saw the outside world until today, and the skin-coloured bras that were meant to hide themselves, so that everyone pretended they didn’t exist, even if they knew they did. Felt, but not seen.
I let out a scream, standing alone in the terrace of Palm Springs Apartments, M.G. Road, Cochin, watching the bras burn themselves. I then feel my mouth curve into a smile.
My mind journeys back to the day the bras made their entry into my life, or rather, the circumstances that led to it. When I was a 12-year-old who had not yet budded, as if the act were as natural as flowers and as predictable as botany. On my annual vacation to Chittappa’s house, where Paati ruled the house with an iron hand to match her iron leg, in spite of her imprisonment to the bed.
I knew what those two-cupped garments were, of course. I just hadn’t had any emotion attached to them, until that summer, when one attached itself like a parasite that wouldn’t let go, until today: shame.
That day, when I saw Mala’s bra, symmetrically divided by the clothesline, safely ensconced between her dark panties and pale pink salwar, something niggled. Mala, my cousin, was a whole year younger than me. It fluttered in the wind, mocking me in its wild dance.
My section, in comparison, looked pitiful. Maroon panties with a white chemise, and a frock, each item of clothing seeking to retain me in the world of children, while I should have rightfully flown into adulthood. Shame enveloped me like a mother’s hug should have.
‘Not yet?’ relatives asked Amma, who would just mumble something.
When Paati saw me looking at Mala’s clothesline, through her wood-framed, Netlon-filtered rectangle of freedom, she called me in. All loathing was condensed into the words she spat out: ‘What? Your mother has not bought you bras? Come here.’
Her feet and ears had failed her nearly as much as my handsome father who had fallen for a plain girl. But the rest of Paati’s senses worked overtime. On a typical day, she ranted and raved, spat and swore, heard the softest of whispers, and flung anything that did not suit her perfect palate.
Paati’s hands groped under my shirt, feeling the barely-there undulation. She squirmed and closed her eyes.
Paati only said, ‘Hmm…’ followed by ‘How old are you?’
I could only whisper, ‘Twelve.’
‘Hmm…’
‘What is it, Paati?’ I was sure there was something serious. In spite of her craziness, or perhaps because of it, I’d always thought Paati was sensitive to things others would not be, like she had special powers or something. Paati had found something under my shirt. What was it?
‘I guess you are like your mother,’ Paati cackled, before pushing me away like the plate of keerai rice that Chitti gave her nearly every day.
I ran outside, past the courtyard to the construction site, where Chittappa was building another toilet, one for Maya.
The bricks were piled up and awaiting cement, the labourers, dark and sweat-beaded, were taking a break. One of them squinted up to look at me. ‘Enna?’ he said.
I shook my head. Nothing.
He looked me up and down. I kept staring at him. I don’t know why. He ran his tongue over his lips, all the while looking at me.
‘Are you thirsty?’ I asked.
He shook his head and repeated the action with his lips.
I ran in, never to emerge freely.
And so it went, through the days I waited for them to sprout, like an eager farmer, and when they eventually did, disappointed that they were not as bountiful as I had expected.
Through the rest of my teens, where I could feel the boys’ gazes pierce through me to Anjali’s mid-region. Bosom. Breasts. Through my college years where the dupatta served not to cover but to give the illusion of doing so. Through the years of liberation where friends asked me whether I had always been a girl. Through the years of marriage where they were squeezed with his eyes shut. Through the days of pregnancy when the only silver lining I could foresee was that I might increase my bra size a couple inches. Through the days of motherhood where I wanted to ensure that my daughter did not have to suffer as I did, buying her one when she was barely ten. Through it all, the ignominy of a thirty-something-year-old buying a brand of bra called ‘Teenz.’
The Internet came into my life and all I could do was browse sites for large-breasted women. I wondered how those women even moved. Didn’t the two scrape against each other when they walked? How on earth did they get bras that size? Were they even real? How were theirs before the (to my mind, obvious) procedures?
And then, a month or so ago, Annapurni the maid changed it all. She had not been regular for a long time, but there was hardly any work at the home of a single woman like me. After all, Ranjani had left for the U.S. and it was unlikely that she would be back, her running as far away from the battlefield that was India not surprising anyone.
Annapurni’s absence basically meant that I ran out of bras and I hated washing them. With no clean bra, and the need to go to the bank, I stepped out gingerly, sans the accoutrement. Once outside, I could not help peeking at my shoulders for the non-existent bra strap, as if it were a phantom limb. It was exactly like the first time I emerged from self-imposed quarantine after he left me, when I kept looking to my side and felt him there beside me.
Of course, I was conscious of someone sighting the all-important nipple through my dress. I liked the way they felt against my dress, though, just one degree of separation between them and freedom.
Just like that, I decided to stop wearing them. They served no apparent purpose, and it was obvious they could go. I stacked them up, now clean after Annapurni finally returned, in one corner of the wardrobe. I could feel them cackling when I shut them in. Whenever I opened the wardrobe, I could hear them humming, whispering when my back was turned. Whispering the way he did on the phone, when he thought I had slept.
I waited a minute and opened the wardrobe suddenly. Caught them looking at me with those huge eyes. Like her eyes that were wide open and defiant, above her two larger, perfect hemispheres that seemed to look straight back at me, comfortably ensconced under him.
I collected them all in one fell sweep and took them upstairs. I would finally be truly free.
The fire roars, and all that eventually remains is a pile of ash and a couple of underwires defiantly sticking out.
