‘Babe, I gotta leave!’, he said, getting up from the bed and putting on a grey Pink Floyd t-shirt on his perfectly chiseled body. 

‘Can’t you stay? It’ll be morning in another 2 hours. We could have breakfast together,’ she almost pleaded. 

‘Really can’t. I have to run some chores before my 11 o’clock shift in the mall.’ He finished tying his shoes and got up to leave. There’s always an excuse. Always!

‘Alright, call me!’, she said from under the duvet where she was still very comfortably tucked. He walked straight to the door and it banged shut signalling he was gone. 

She tried falling asleep for a while. But even the constant turns and twists and repeated attempts to reach the correct posture couldn’t put her to sleep. Last night kept flashing back in front of her eyes. 

She worked the midnight shift as a waitress in a cheap countryside bar on the turn at the Hillpin Road. So although the timings were not ideal and the crowd was a little problematic most times, she bore sexist comments and lecherous remarks from her manager because the meagre salary helped her pay the house rent and kept her going till she could find something better.

But last night, she couldn’t keep her calm when a drunken truck driver tried to take a pass at her and dropped the tray full of beer mugs onto him. She was immediately fired, on the spot. No dues cleared!

She had frantically walked home and knowing nothing better to do, she gave a call to one of her lovers. As she was emotionally drained from the squabble, she allowed herself to be a little vulnerable and hoped that he would stay back and spend some time listening to her talk. But she was wrong, yet again. She had been told once, ‘You are meant to be fucked not to be wifed.’ Oh! How right. 

The ensuing thoughts wouldn’t stop so she started thinking of ways to distract herself. It was too early to call anyone- friends or family. Family was anyway out of the picture. Over the years, her parents and her had grown apart. Thanks to her career choices, lifestyle or toeing the ‘good woman’ line. 

Once she was watching a show on BravoTV and one of the characters said, ‘You're so far past the line that you can't even see the line! The line is a dot to you!’ In that moment she realized the irony of the statement. She had laughed it off then but it kept coming back to her even years later. 

They had managed to stay in touch, would religiously call each other on birthdays, festivals and special occasions but that was pretty much it. She would help them if they needed anything at all and vice versa but that was that. A friend had asked her once, ‘Why don’t you try to amend the relationship with your family?’

‘Because I don’t like them. I love them because they are my family. But I don’t like them,’ she had said as a matter of fact.

She tried thinking of friends who she could speak to and share an iota of what was going through her. But it was really early in the morning. Besides they all had things going on in their lives. So not like she was the only one. Also, 29 is not really an age where you can call people to share the ‘small inconveniences’ in your lives. It’s too immature. After all, isn’t adulthood all about getting your shit together.

Once she was sure that she wouldn't be able to fall asleep, she got up from the bed, cleaned herself and went into the kitchen to make breakfast. Isn’t this what adulthood is all about. To keep going. She thought of her childhood. It wasn’t critically normal but there were moments, moments that made her happy.

She remembered that every two years, her parents and her took a trip in the summer vacations. This particular time they had gone to the famous Vaishno Devi in India. She has a faint memory of it as she was only 4 years young but from what her mother used to tell her that it was a hard trek on a very sunny day. She had to be held as she couldn’t walk so much and she was continuously crying from the exertion, heat and religious crowd chants of ‘Jai Mata Di’ from the Indian devotees. 

There was no water and the sun was right overhead making the trek all the more difficult. Luckily her mother found a tangerine in the folds of her bag to cheer her up. But in a moment of frenzy, as she was peeling it, the fruit slipped, rolled down the hill and landed on a cake of cow poop. There were a lot of tears and wailing. Nothing could calm the baby- she wanted that tangerine. In that moment, an elderly stranger from the crowd offered a couple slices from the ones that he was eating. Only then, she was calmed.

The breakfast of two toasts and a sunny side egg was ready. But something had clicked in her mind, she needed to keep looking till she found the perfect job for her. So she put on a hoodie on top of her weary sweater, left the breakfast on the kitchen sill to stand and rushed to the newspaper vendor to check the new listings in the Editorial section. On her way back, she saw a fruit vendor selling tangerines. She bought a dozen!