It is awful when you are stuck at home because a classmate is supposed to come for a visit and the only book you have in your hand is the most boring book you have ever read.
The worst part is that the library closes on public holidays. There is no where else I can go and borrow a book.

My mother was still sulking in her room and my sister hadn’t come back home yet. I checked the clock. 5.30.
Almost 5 hours!
Probably with Arjun.
I shook my head vigorously, so I could stop thinking.
I felt stupid for thinking like that.
She is my sister for heaven’s sake.
He isn’t my boyfriend for pity’s sake.
But still, there was an ache some where deep in my heart.
An ache with no name.
An ache of not owning anything in my life.
I never had anything that is my own(possession) except my deafness. Did I?
I had to wear Chechy’s old clothes. use my neighbour’s text books and even had
to wear other people’s shoes.
My sisterly responsibility ensured that I had to share the pen Appa gave to me, even buy clothes for my sisters using the money given to me so I could have spend for myself.
I didn’t mind sharing.
I didn’t mind giving.
But I was tired of sharing and giving.
I wanted something for myself.
I wanted to be selfish and possess something that is my own, that I don’t have to share with my sisters.
Something to hold on.
Like how the mighty ship needs its tiny anchor.
Arjun was my anchor.
I needed him for a variety of reasons.
He was the only guy in the college who wasn’t afraid of taking to a ‘flirt/wanton/unchaste/slut’ woman like me and spoiling his reputation.
The only reason Rupesh and the rest of the North Indian gang guys talk to me is because I was Arjun’s friend..
I survive the alienation meted out to me by all the students only because Arjun talks to me.
I couldn’t afford to lose him.
I didn’t want to lose him to my own sister.
There were so many other boys in the world she could find.
Not Arjun.
I needed him.
I knew I didn’t love him. But that was not a problem. I could always be the woman he liked. I could always learn to love him.
I could. I knew I could.
Wearing long skirts, covering my head with duppatta, going to the temple, fasting before navaratri, making perfect round rotis … ..
I closed my eyes. so I won’t have to see any more images of the person I would be.
‘No Nina, you can’t do it. You will not survive losing your own identity’ Sensible one spoke
‘Shut up will you! What do you know? I can be a perfect Marwari girl’
‘You can. But you won’t be happy’
She didn’t know how it is to live a life with no one to love you.
She didn’t know how it feels does she?
If it involved that I have to wear a skirt and make perfect round rotis so I could be loved. So be it.
All I wanted was to be loved and I was willing to be that someone even I myself wouldn’t recognize, just so I could feel how it feels to be loved.