When nobody is watching you

You are what you are, When you do what you do, When nobody is watching you

I had read these lines years back and have written these as a slogan many times for others! Was just thinking what am I? What do I do when nobody is watching me? Other than the daily chores?


When I was a little girl, I was often left in my own world, where I used to talk to myself rubbing ice on my arms, copying the commercial beauties I saw on our black and white Keltron TV Box. It had shutters from the sides, wooden ones and we watched Lucy Show, Barbapappa and Salma Sultana’s samachar without fail. And of course the Saturday movies. There was a mosantha tree spreading its branches into our balcony, I used to collect the tiny yellow flowers which come in the centre of the light pink mosantha petals. It smells strange. While walking to school through the District Court premises, I had spent time collecting the hair like pink flowers which fall off those huge trees. Alone I would sit on a stone bench in the large and lonely lands. I would dream of me with princess frocks and admired by all, pampered by all.

On holidays, alone again in a big three storied building (we had lived on one side of it, the other half was lawyers’ chambers), I would squander here and there, often on the terrace never minding the sun. I really don’t know why I spat on people’s heads from above and amused myself when they were searching for the source of the ‘bird droppings’. I even extended my survey to others’ garden; there was an unoccupied house opposite to ours, and a pomegranate tree at the far end of it, spotted with chirping sparrows, and a tuition centre window closed against that tree. It is my fortune that I wasn’t subject to child abuse those days, considering my lone wanderings at secluded spots. Sometimes I used to open my coin box, take out a 20 paisa coin and run to the panshop near by to get a pink coloured bubble gum (double bubble, I think), it was theft in a way, as I did it quietly and knowing it was ‘wrong’.

At the age of 11, I used to earnestly pray that my jasmine and rose blooms. Every morning I expected a miracle, but the flowers never did come. I guess that was the last memory I have of innocence in me.

As a teenager, of course I was inquisitive about matters of sex, wanted always to watch an adult movie or magazine atleast, but never came across one, till date. In school I had serious discussions with close friends, as to how pregnancy takes place, I am surprised now that I didn’t know about it even at 12. We thought of different possibilities of how the sperm enters a woman’s body. In my mind I imagined sexual pleasures without even knowing the intricacies of the final act. For me it was nudity, kissing and mostly centered on a woman’s breast.

Finally I could get a ‘dirty book’ from my brother’s shelf, which I took out and read and kept it back without him knowing. Unfortunately the book had no pictures; it was a novel containing sexual descriptions and intercourse. This was of course a leap from the regular Mills and Boons. I explored my own body imagining a lot many things which could happen to it, all pleasurable and thrilling. Later on in my early twenties, at night in my locked room, I had worn mom’s saree and put on some jewellery and vermillion and imagined myself as a bride and had terrific imagination of loving and making love in the sacredness of wedlock. 

What do I do now, as an adult. When I am alone?

I waste time, I still dream the impossible, I fall in love, I romance, at times I get addicted to virtual world and fail to look at the sky and feel the breeze and trade all of those with a window which opens the world to me. I live sometimes in a fake world. And zoooooooom I come out of that hibernation, spread out my wings, soar in the high skies, I laugh, merry and spread fun and still remain alone… I am always that little girl who sits alone in that stone bench in the majestic grounds, dreaming of achievements and love.