An indoor badminton court. A menace.

The four of us are playing. Tak tak tak…. Thak. It’s a doubles game. And we’re losing. That sound, that was me dropping the ball. Not a literal ball of course, but the shuttlecock. They told me playing a sport would help. Exercise, movement, the mythical endorphins rushing in to slow down the satanic verse sung by the neuro-synaptic choir of my brain. But here I am, standing on the court, gasping for breath, underplaying how much this defeat is bothering me.

We are losing by four points. We are four people and the two of us are losing by four points. Two. An even number. Four. An even number. I am the only odd one out here. I wish I had the forearm strength to reverse this loss. I don’t. Not enough protein intake, I guess. My partner is giving it their all. Mapping the whole side of the court, but it isn’t enough. I wish I had the foresight to carry my own weight. I don’t. Too much baggage, I guess. I can’t depend on them to carry me through this debacle. I can hope that they will. But I can’t demand it. No. No, I can’t. The walls are closing in. I can’t do this.

The court is a sweat factory. Everybody is sweating. Even the people on the stands. It’s 7 a.m. Delhi summers are not for the weak. I am wearing my brother’s vest on top of a sturdy sports bra, and the shorts that I cut on a whim from one of the two skinny jeans gathering dust in my cupboard. I am sweating profusely. Some people sweat elegantly. I am not one of those people. My face is burning red. I can’t stand the greasy, summery smell of my hair, and I feel too seen.

Do you know what it feels like to be seen? I also don’t know what it feels like to be properly heard, but that’s a question for another time. Being seen could be a positive, affirming experience. It could give you wings. But it could also take away your ability to see yourself. It’s almost as if you can’t see beyond being seen. It’s all passive now. I gave away the activity on the hockey field in the eighth standard. Did someone force it out of me, the active and the activity?

I lie here curled up on the court. It’s nice here, it’s comforting. The ground is not as hot lying down as it is standing up. The court is painted red. Is it a premonition? Red is a curious colour. Its genealogy, and the things that it represents, are extreme. Sometimes violence, sometimes love, sometimes liberation. There’s no grass here. It’s going to rain. Acid Rain. I am just happy that I am not wearing a skirt.

I used to be terrified of my skirt. It wasn’t necessarily a scary skirt in the sense of pop culture, but it terrified me. It was a divider skirt. There was a piece of fabric between the folds of the skirt to prevent it from doing the Marilyn Monroe routine. It was the safe word in the skirt world. I was still afraid. What if… I’m not sure I was aware as to what I was afraid of at that point. I have always been afraid of extra fabric. A dupatta that can be used to strangle you, a flowy skirt that can get caught in the metro door, a saree that can throw you into an alternate dimension where you’re Draupadi waiting to be rescued.

Here’s the thing – I am lying. I love sarees. They make me feel like a heroine straight from a nineteenth century novel. I love a cottony dupatta on a printed kurta, with jutis. And skirts! I’ve often felt the joy of wearing a flowy one, cinched with a jewelled waistband. So, what else am I lying about? To you, to myself? Perhaps everything and nothing. If my memory serves me right, which it categorically doesn’t, I am less of a human being, and more of a distorted fact. I have lost chunks of memory that could’ve helped me tie together the fabrics of my being.

I forget things. Rather, I make them into something they are not. I see memories as tie-dye projects where I can internalise the palimpsestic narrative of my being. Many instances needed to be forgotten, but I have conveniently rewritten them in my existential chronology. I don’t like loopholes in the strings of my memory bracelet. They remind me of the gaps that I needed to fill but couldn’t. They make me feel inadequate. Just like this game. The person who depends on me is stranded in the sea of lost points, and I am trying to catch the shuttle as if it’s the remnants of my memories in erosion, and then ducking it just so it doesn’t actually latch on to my skin and make me aware of the horrific, self-inflicted inconsistencies.

We’ve lost. The gaze has intensified. Right now, I am not being seen by the tender gaze of a friend, or a lover perhaps, but the debilitating burden of my own memory. Its weight is crushing me. This badminton court is a universe in microcosm. I am remembering things that I had long forgotten. I can’t accept defeat in a game that I have tried to reclaim. Every stroke of the racket hitting the shuttle reminds me of something. Something stored in my body. It’s buried in the crevices in my bone marrow. It’s cancer. And it’s malignant. Seeping into my blood as we speak. Can I drain it out of my body, store it in a refrigerator and come back to it when I feel a little better? Can I kill the mosquitoes biting into my skin and feasting on the bloody memories? I don’t think this racket would work. I’m going to get an electric racket.

Cover Image: Photo by Saif71.com on Unsplash