She read it and made a face. “She still talks like she is auditioning for a panel discussion.”
“She thinks she is a political concept.”
“What did she want this time?”
“To tell me that women must be free.”
Sanjana handed the phone back. “And you told her?”
“That freedom is not the same as noise.”
“She will hate that.”
“She hates breathing when it disagrees with her.”
As if summoned by the insult, Monika called next. I looked at the screen, sighed, and answered on speaker so Sanjana could hear the inevitable nonsense.
“I knew it,” Monika said without greeting. “I knew you would make a mess of this.”
“Hello to you too.”
“Do not play cute. I heard from someone in the industry that Khanna is being looked at. If you are involved, you should be careful.”
“Thank you. I was just saying that to myself in the mirror.”
“I am serious.”
“So am I.”
“You have always been too comfortable with men like him. That is your class of hypocrisy.”
I laughed. “At least I have a class.”
Sanjana covered her mouth with her hand, not to hide a smile exactly, but to keep from becoming part of the scene.
Monika went on, voice sharp. “You people pretend choice exists when the structure is rotten. Then you call women weak if they do not sell themselves the way you do.”
There was one real argument in there, I had to admit. The structure was rotten. Men like Khanna did not arise from a vacuum. But Monika always ruined her own best point by setting fire to everything around it.
“I do not need your sermon,” I said.
“It is not a sermon. It is reality.”
“Reality with a megaphone and very bad manners.”
She made a disgusted sound. “You and Sanjana both think you are above politics because you have private opinions.”
Sanjana leaned closer to the phone. “We are not above politics. We are just not impressed by your version of it.”
Monika barked a laugh. “Of course you would say that. You are both addicted to patriarchy in your own ways.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said.
“There it is,” she snapped. “Abuse when you cannot answer.”
Sanjana’s eyes narrowed. “That is always your trick, isn’t it? Raise your voice, throw labels, and call it argument.”
Monika started speaking over her. “You two are exactly the kind of women who keep the system alive—”
I cut her off. “There you go again. Typical political nonsense. If you cannot answer, you start insulting.”
“Fuck you, Nisha.”
“See?” I said to Sanjana. “The moment the logic goes missing, the abuse arrives like a family member.”
Sanjana sighed. “Monika, if you want to help, help. If not, save the lecture.”
Monika was quiet for half a second, which in her case was an emotional landslide. Then she said, “Fine. Do what you want. It is your funeral.”
“Such a warm person,” I murmured.
She hung up.
Sanjana looked at me, unimpressed. The last thing Nisha remembered was not pain but the horrible certainty that she had waited too long to become honest.
It came to me later, in fragments, as if my mind had dropped a glass and was only now gathering the shards. First there had been the silence after Monika hung up, thick and indecent. Then Sanjana’s face, set in that expression she wore when she was deciding whether to laugh at me or save me. Then the sudden heaviness in my chest, as if someone had placed a wet towel over my heart and pressed down.
“You what?” I had asked her, though I no longer remembered what she had been saying.
Sanjana stepped toward me. “Nisha? Sit down.”
“I am sitting.”
“You are standing in the middle of the room.”
“I am perfectly fine.”
That, I was told later, was the first lie.
I remember the fan turning slowly above us, the air in the room going stale, and the strange, distant feeling that my own body had become a badly managed apartment: too much noise in one corner, a leak somewhere else, and no one answering the door.
Sanjana’s voice changed. It lost its sarcasm. “Nisha, look at me.”
I did not want to. Looking at her would have made the moment real, and I was still vain enough to believe reality could be negotiated if I refused it long enough.
There was a ringing in my ears. Not a dramatic ringing, not the cinematic kind that announces a collapse. Something smaller and more humiliating. Like cutlery dropped in another room.
“You are going pale,” Sanjana said.
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“No, I am just—”
And then the sentence broke. Not in my mouth. In me.
The floor tilted with such politeness that for one absurd second I thought I might be about to sit down very elegantly. Instead, my knees gave way. Sanjana lunged forward and caught my shoulder, but I was already sliding, my hand catching the edge of the table, my fingers skimming over a glass that toppled and rolled away with a bright, idiotic chime.
“Nisha!”
Her voice sounded far off, underwater, though she was right there in front of me. I remember the shock of it most clearly: not fear, not even pain, only astonishment that I could be so suddenly and thoroughly reduced.
Then the room dissolved.