A disturbed sleep

This Women's Day let's talk about a serious issue, they all said. Lets celebrate feminism, they all said. She was there, seeing them, taking it all in, walking faster. This was like the window to a life she couldn't have, a life she didn't believe she deserved. Her job had never been more ensnaring, yet never less satisfactory. How could she be satisfied, bound as she was under a thousand threads of the same color and seeing the smile and satisfaction it brought to people's faces, knowing she could never have that joy?

Swarna was just finishing up a day's work when the owner came to her, and told her to come early the next day. Two new customers there were. She agreed. Up the next day, swept up at the crack of dawn, she went ahead to complete her chores and got Lily ready to school. Then, draped the same old olive green saree, said hello to Durga Ma in the temple, from the outside, and set off to do her duty. Braced herself to see more of loud, gaudy make-up, smothered feelings and ignored emotions. To be thrown back into that galli everyday, seemed a very masochistic thing to do. But not going there gave her nightmares of occupying the same room, locked from the inside, the feeling of being bundled in a corner, getting company everyday, yet utterly alone. The nightmares were filled with scrapes on the door accompanied by muffled, convincing but staged cries of pleasure. Today was a special day. She was going to her old home, where it had all begun.

In the afternoon she got back home, and quickly washed her face clean of all the emotions that she was getting accustomed to hiding. Lily was back by three and had her milk and was off to sleep. The innocence on the face of a sleeping child was the most beautiful thing to her. This innocence was something she was proud to give her daughter. At 4 o'clock sharp, she was off to her 'job' and after making the dreams of two young people true, she returned by 11 o'clock. Her daughter had left her a half roti and curry. Gulping them down, she lay down to sleep, once again wiping off all the memories of faces, happy, sad or ruined from her day.

She dreamt of Rekha, the young girl she talked to today. She had had a smile, an animated one on her face, just as convincing as it was unreal. She talked about her ignorant family back in the village, the one which fed itself on the money she sent. A tear betrayed her usually emotionless face, and she confessed how she missed her mom yet could never go back to that safe haven of home again. How she thought now she was no longer a person who 'belonged' anywhere. This is why Swarna went there, day after day, camouflaged like one of them who decked themselves up with glittering jewels to hide the charred and burnt person inside. She talked to them and prevented them from embarking on the journey she had suffered through, helping them recover, for a disease it was. She risked discovery for the joy of having helped everyday, trying to make them see the thin line between living and existing. Today, thanks to the kindness of her boss, she had a job, a job where she stitched the dreams of young girls, girls who were on the brink of matrimony. The pristine white of the cloth she stitched reminded her of the purity childhood should hold, and how Rekha was lucky to have a mother she loved enough to miss. Her dream now took her to that fateful day when the number of women in her house reduced by one, as they received a week's ration in return.

She hugged Lily tight to her breast and went off to a disturbed, yet well-earned sleep.