by Mridula A M
Every woman in the reproductive age is aware of this uneasy feeling that clouds the mind every now and then. A strange sense of irritability, a deep resentment and an unidentified anxiety creeps into our psyche from nowhere, a week before the red days, leaving both us and our families listless. This is how it dramatically unfolds in my life…
It is a usual working day. I wake up late, only to realise that the alarm has been set for 6 pm instead of 6 am. There begins my grumpiness. I get off the bed grumbling. Slowly, my breathing becomes laboured and an irritation waiting to explode silently builds up within.
I rush through the morning chores. I need to dish out breakfast and lunch and pack four boxes for three of us. The man prefers rice for lunch while the kid wants snacks and I eat anything left over after packing for them. While lunch is not much of a problem, planning breakfast for seven days a week is a pain.
Thankfully I have the idli batter ground a good twelve hours ago. Fully fermented batter often looks like a blooming flower. Fresh, fragrant and fluffy, rising up in ecstasy. A lovely sight to witness, mainly because it assures that the idlis will be edible. But doomed day that it is, I open the lid to find the batter unchanged. It is damp and down just like my mood. I realise that it has not fermented well.
I am angry at the batter. Unable to shout at it, I hit the coffee cup a little harder on the table as I offer it to my husband. The poor man senses that something is wrong with my mood but struggles to figure out the exact reason for it. He silently gulps down the coffee, not bothering to read till the sports section of the newspaper. The breaking news of the day is my fast dwindling mood.
He helps the kid bathe and dress up and in no time, both stand before me spick and span, offering extra smiles to calm me down. I have in the meantime boiled idlis with the same unfermented batter as I could not come up with any other emergency ideas for breakfast. The idlis no doubt appear like idlis but they feel like cork balls. Alright, maybe rubber balls.
I serve four of those to my husband. He slowly drops one back and stammers, ‘Three are enough.’
I give him a sharp look and he quickly picks it back. The daughter meanwhile is fiddling with her cup of milk. I glance at her and sigh, a little happy at having found a vent for my smouldering anger.
‘How long do you need to finish that milk? Do you want to get late to school?’
When I shout, I sound a little louder than the orchestras of Ganesha festival revellers. Sometimes a flying spoon or a tight slap would accompany my yelling, but today the kid is cautious and stays a good distance away from me.
Meanwhile, the man is working hard on his breakfast. The chutney is a little less on salt and a lot more on chilli. The sambar is tangy and thicker than it should be, but the idlis are the show-stoppers. It’s an arduous task to break off pieces, but he manages it and continues to crush them in his mouth without complaining. I struggle with an idli too, trying to mix the pieces with sambar in an attempt to soften it for the kid to gulp down. Finally, we are done with the grinding ritual and they leave earlier than usual, playing it safe.
Through the rest of the day, I get angry at my maid for ringing the doorbell twice. I stare at the traffic police for keeping the red light longer. I give a stern look to my patients for coughing on my face and I fight with the vegetable vendor for not selling perfectly round tomatoes. Other trivial matters like Nirav Modi cheating the bank, Rajdeep Sardesai talking nonsense on prime time, and Trump curbing the US visa anger me beyond limits. I curse the world for what it is.
On my way home from work, the heap of garbage lying at the end of my road looks dirtier than usual and even the emaciated street dog with the shrivelled tail, hogging on it, appears monstrous. ‘Why isn’t anyone segregating the waste?’ I question the lonely crow perched on my compound wall.
’Is there anything that is happening right in this world?’ I bark. When at home, I throw my bag on the table and crash on the bed.
A sharp piercing pain emerges in my loins. Slowly it engulfs the lower back. I feel as though little elephants are walking over me, slowly breaking my bones. I wince in pain and holding my back, turn around. The pain shifts to my lower abdomen and it feels like there is a concrete mixer rotating within it. I lie in bed exhausted, only wishing that the creator was a woman.
My family arrives in the evening to find me peevish and pale. They gently tip-toe around me, trying to make sure they do not make things tougher for me.
I remain reasonably upset until one day my period arrives. Its arrival only escalates my irritability. I resent having born a woman.
‘Why did God think of shedding the uterine lining every month? Couldn’t he just make us lay eggs instead?’
I curse evolution. The creator sure doesn’t understand the pain of walking on two legs with winged or wingless pads stuck in between. I crib and complain for five long days to finally come out dry.
Life comes back to normal and my family gets a breather till the next month when the story replays.
Now, I secretly wait for menopause when I can possibly not have these cyclic changes and rather remain a moody menopausal woman all through the year.
Wonderfully captured! I am sure most women will relate!