Dr. Seema finally took her daughter for an ultrasound when her periods showed no inclination of ever happening again. Those days, Shweta had quit exercising following Shruti's return and had put on a bit of weight again. This weight gain had been drastic enough for her to increase two jean-sizes and during a shopping trip to the mall; the worry had returned all over again. Shweta couldn't possibly be pregnant, could she? The HCG levels in Shweta's urine had been tested and Dr. Seema had found absolutely no indication of pregnancy. And there had been the two pregnancy tests that they had purchased; both of which had been negative. It couldn't possibly be that all three manners of testing had failed them.
Seema had grilled her daughter about if she had met Vaibhav again and Shweta had vehemently denied it. There was no point in telling her mother the truth; they hadn't had sex again and Shweta had no reason to worry about the second visit. The only time she got worried was when her mother had looked at her as she got out of the changing room in the mall, wearing a stone-washed denim two sizes larger than what she previously wore and had told her grimly, "We are going to the hospital."
At first, Shweta had thought it was another emergency that her mother had been summoned for. This wasn't a rare occurrence and Shweta was used to it by now having grown around a mother who would be playing dolls with her one second and the next would be grabbing her coat as she headed out of the door, an apologetic kiss on her daughter's forehead.
"Emergency duty?" She'd asked her mother sympathetically and Seema had nodded. "Get the jeans and meet me at the car. I'll get it out of the parking and I'll be waiting at the exit."
It was only when Shweta had entered the car, her new pair of jeans in a paper-bag near her that she asked her mother, "Who is it?"
"What?" Seema had asked her distractedly as she steered the car in and out of the traffic.
"The emergency." Shweta had said, looking at her mother dubiously.
"You." Seema had replied. "You are the emergency and we are going to get you an ultrasound."
"An ultrasound?" Shweta had asked, having heard her mother use the term enough to know that it was something pregnant women did. "Do you think I'm pregnant?" She'd asked, her heart racing faster with every passing second.
"No, I don't. But it's still wise to get an ultrasound to know exactly what is going on in your body." Seema had remarked calmly.
"You mean I have cancer?" Shweta had wailed and her mother had thrown her an annoyed look.
"Don't be silly. Of course not, there could be some other benign growths in your uterus; now don't panic. Benign meaning non-cancerous. At any rate, it's better to get things checked." Seema had remarked.
"What am I supposed to do?" Shweta had said and having no time for Shweta's theatrics, her mother had waved a hand, "Keep calm while I ask Shalini to get the ultrasound done. It's going to be evident the very minute she rubs the gel on your lower abdomen and scans it."
The ultrasound had felt like an oddly soothing process; it felt orderly and calm. There was a sense of direction about the entire process: drink a lot of water, inflate your urinary bladder, get into scrubs while you were desperate to pee, allow the doctor to rub the gel on the lower part of your belly and use her scanner-thingy to press the cool gel against the surface of your belly while you control your urge to urinate via gritted teeth. In between the various hm and oh sounds that her mother and Dr. Shalini made while they looked at the screen; deducing what was going on in her uterus.
Shweta hadn't cared enough to know what was going on the moment her mother said, "It's okay. You can get up now." She bolted for the bathroom.
It was only when she had emerged from the bathroom, having relieved herself and gotten herself out of the loose scrubs and into her proper clothes, did her mother explain what was going on.
"Sit down for a while." Dr. Shalini had said, sliding the stool towards her and Shweta had slid onto it; looking at her mother and the other doctor's large kohl-rimmed eyes; trying to understand what was going on.
"You have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome." Dr. Shalini had said, her words sounding foreign to Shweta.
"It means that there are multiple tiny cysts in your ovaries that are blocking the release of the egg. And without an egg releasing, you will not get your period." Her mother had clarified.
"Well, is it bad?" Shweta had asked. "I mean, I know it's not good. But is it dangerous or something?"
"No, it's not." Dr. Shalini had clarified. "It's a very common phenomenon that affects a lot of young women. It's not immediately terminal but it is what we commonly call a lifestyle disorder."
"You mean like diabetes?" Shweta had asked and both her mother and Dr. Shalini had nodded.
"Yes. Exactly like that. PCOS happens because of insulin resistance; causing an increase in the male hormones in your body. You might have noticed increased hair growth and the outbreak of acne on your face and chest is also a result of this." Dr. Shalini had said.
"Yes, I have." Shweta had mused, remembering how she had been surprised by the presence of little, slightly coarse hairs on her chest and back. "How do I control it? As far as I know, diabetes has no cure, right?"
At that Seema and Shalini had both winced as they had nodded. "Yes, it has no cure. But its symptoms can be treated and you will have to work on regulating your period on your own. There is not much that science can do, other than provide you with period pills for customary bleeding if you don't get your period for about three months in a row."
"Can't I have pills regularly? I might be wrong but I'd heard that the pill helps control acne." Shweta had said, desperately not wanting the symptoms to worsen.
"No." Her mother had said firmly. "You are not going to go on the pill unnecessarily. The pill is going to have so many more side-effects that I don't want you to have to go through."
"Don't worry." Dr Shalini had added, seeing the alarmed look on Shweta's face. "A few changes in your diet, lifestyle and mental health and things will go back to normal. It might take some time but your mother is right, going on the pill is not going to give you much help. It might seem like your periods are regular but they will go back to being sporadic once you come off it."
"This means cutting out junk and processed sugar, fizzy drinks completely out of your diet. You'll also have to exercise; you've stopped your morning walks and you'll have to start that again." Seema had said and Shweta had nodded.
Then gently, Dr Shalini had added, "I take it that you're sexually active as well?"
"What?" Shweta had said, her face heating up and then had glared at her mother. "I'm not!"
"Whatever it is." Dr Shalini had said, "I say this as your doctor, I hope you are ensuring that your partner and you use protection. It might be tempting to use the pill, but the effects of the pills are far more problematic on the female body than using the condom. I hope you'll explain that to your partner as well."
Shweta had nearly exploded with embarrassment and shame, her nose flaring and not caring that she was in a professional environment had said, "It was just one time, for God's sake! I don't have a sexual partner and I don't ever want to discuss this with you."
"And I thought that this generation of Indians would be sex-positive." Dr Shalini had laughed and Seema had laughed along with her; the joke lost on Shweta who was bursting with rage.
With the diagnosis of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome stamped on her prescription and the ultrasound reports, Shweta was serious about making the lifestyle changes she had to. All of this, she wanted to do before she set out for college; because they're maintaining a strict diet and following an exercise regime would be difficult. While Shweta had learnt from a quick Google search that quitting exercise does tend to bring back the symptoms, she was still hoping that she would be able to make her body functional enough to fight back.
Armed with nuskas from either side of her grandmothers, a mother who was kindly understanding of her mood-swings and frustrations, she was ready to tackle this hormonal battle if not win it.
Shweta and Riddhi were thick as thieves again and while their twelfth board examinations loomed nearer, their days together were numbered. It was only a matter of months before Riddhi left for Kota and Shweta for college. Having spent the better parts of their childhood together, it seemed to both the girls that every day they now spent together was bittersweet. There was always the impending sense of loss and letting go that loomed around, making them aware of how much they appreciated the other. Both were convinced that they would never find a friend that they loved so much. Both would be wrong, but they would also be right. College brings with itself a new set of friends that find their own new places in our hearts; without erasing the old places held by somebody else. It is a miracle that the human heart; estimated to be the roughly the size of each one's closed fist, can hold so much love.
The girls rarely squabbled any more, often spending their weekends together, promising their mothers that they were studying as they sat discussing every little memory they shared. Conversations had begun to begin with do you remember the time; knowing full well that they were soon entering a time when that would be the only way their conversations would begin.
Seema and Yamini were both exasperated when their daughters came up with vague explanations as to why Physics and Sociology study sessions had to be held together. During one fine Saturday when Shweta and Riddhi had gone out of their houses for a quick round of panipuri, an exasperated Yamini had remarked to Seema, "I don't understand how they study together. The only thing that Newton has in common Nietzsche is that both their names start with N."
"I don't either. But in between Nietzsche and Newton, our daughters are learning life lessons." Seema had said, having learnt to look at Shweta's antics with more amusement than annoyance.
Shweta would soon be moving out and the thought wrenched Seema's heart every time she saw her daughter. It made her pause in front of the wall that held Shweta and Shrutis baby photos; a nostalgia that made her want to laugh and weep in equal measure. Laugh because she had brought her babies, her little girls in pigtails so very far and had raised them to be women that she would be proud of. Weep because her girls were women who would now soon take to smiling amusedly at her greying hair and wrinkled smile as she called them 'her girls'.
Shweta and Riddhi were learning life lessons, Seema was right. The span of a few months between school and college is in itself an act of letting go. It was only when they'd reached the very end, that both the girls realized that perhaps they had begun letting go when their friendship had been forged for the very first time. Shweta has learnt how to be kinder and to listen more often. Her relationship with Vaibhav is blooming and in the Spring of their young love, both of them are revelling. Shweta had never been underconfident but had her moments of arrogance that while it went unseen for Vaibhav, hadn't managed to escape the glance of her classmates and teachers.
Following the fight with Riddhi and it's resolution, Shweta has learnt how to be kinder. She has learnt how to listen respectfully, understand that being loud wasn't the same thing as being confident. She was by no means an introvert; that was something she never would be, but she had genuinely made an effort to learn from Riddhi.
Riddhi had become sweeter and gentler; if that was possible. There wasn't a bone in her body that was genuinely mean. And so, she went around winning laurels even when she wasn't trying to. The school loved her, her teachers adored her and when the award-giving function arrived, they showered the girl with more certificates and trophies than she could carry home. Riddhi was universally loved and adored; she went around winning hearts. Gentle as she was, she didn't dwell much on it except for allowing herself to feel a twinge of pride every now and then but the feeling never bordering on arrogance. She had her moments of desperation and exhaustion still; they were never far away. While she studied religiously for her board examinations and prepared herself for another dedicated year of poring over NCERT textbooks for her medical entrance; between prayers of good grades and pleasing parents, she still managed to sneak in a soft prayer. One that if the Gods listened to, they would sigh at the tenderness of it all.
Shweta, amidst all of the bitter-sweetness, was never without the excitement she felt at finally being afforded the chance to go and explore the world on her own. College to her was not a terrifying thought with possible hazing and ragging. She knew she was boisterous enough to sail through all of it. She made plans with Vaibhav, every night as they both spoke in hushed whispers to not wake their parents. There were numerous plans; that if written down would demand a book of its own.
There were promises of studying in the same college, there were promises of studying at least in colleges under the same goddamn universities. There were plans for dates and picnics worthy enough to grace the aesthetic pages of Pinterest, the plans to attend poetry sessions of their favourite urban slam poets. There was an excitement to learn more about the world so that they didn't appear silly and childish in front of their peers.
Shweta wasn't aware of her mother's amusement at all her little plans that she had assumed were secrets.
But late night as Seema leaned against the balcony, sipping her red wine thinking of mothers, daughters, husbands that never returned and a divorced doctor who smiled at her charmingly after a successful surgery; she would hear Shweta making her little plans. Following her conversation with her own mother, she had felt much better about Shweta's problems and sometimes she laughed as she heard her daughter's plans. Shweta's voice would be muffled through the windowpane; but not muffled enough for Seema to make out we can have pasta but not more than once a week, you know I'm not supposed to eat junk. It made Seema reminisce her own days with Sanjay, his dimpled smile when he looked at her on the cheap dates, they had at the tea stall not far from their campus.
His hair would have begun greying now, and she wondered if he kept it long. He had always joked with her that he would. Was he alive? If he was, did he think of her on nights like that?
He did. He did think of her on more nights than one; wondered if she had begun wearing spectacles or not. And if she had, did the brown- almost black, in her eyes dance as merrily as it did then?
Seema didn't dwell on him for long. She would often find her thoughts going to the charming doctor with a salt and pepper beard who often had patients lining up feigning minor injuries. She didn't dwell on him for long either and when she entered her bedroom, it was difficult to deduce why her cheeks were red. Was it the winter wind, the wine or a woman with a crush?
There was somebody else in the family who didn't dwell on Sanjay for long and that was Shruti. Smart, sassy Shruti was leaning towards reading John Green. And there were two statements that had stood out to her from all the books that she read. She had plastered it on the walls of her hostel bedroom while her roommate had looked on with amusement at the short girl balancing a chair on her bed and three pillows on top of the chair.
"For the aesthetic." Shruti had replied when asked why she couldn't paste it on a more convenient part of the wall.
It indeed looked aesthetically pleasing as the glow in dark alphabet stickers shone at night; forming a protective word circle around her as it read, It is possible to live with pain. And a little below it, That's the thing about pain; it demands to be felt.
While the pain demanded that she feel it, Shruti was determined to feel things other than that as well. Like Shweta, she was learning to be kinder. Unlike Shweta, she had an icier side to her. The warmth that Shweta brought into her conversations; Shruti had always lacked. She was charming, there was no doubt about it, but beneath that charming facade had always lurked a side that wasn't very friendly. She was learning to sit with herself, with the unfriendly side of her persona and try and ask it why it was so. She wasn't doing this alone.
She had enrolled in therapy; without informing her sister or her mother. This was something that still scared her at times, but when one month she decided to keep a part of her pocket money and use it to schedule an appointment with a therapist, she knew she was taking a step towards healing. Her therapist was a young woman in her late twenties, bubbly and vivacious with curls that fell about her.
Understanding Shruti's problems, she sympathized with her and gave the solutions that made her feel happier about it. The burden that she was carrying for so long had been eating her on the inside; it was such a relief to allow somebody to be there for her, even if it was a medical professional. It actually made her feel so relieved that when she returned to her hostel after the first session, she wept.
Her relationship with Ashish, if you could call it that, was at a standstill. There had been just so much bubbling beneath the surface that she had no inclination of adding a potential romantic interest to the mixture and cause her head to explode.
Ashish had been sweet and kind about it and now, they only exchanged memes once a week. Shruti was determined that if she were to be happy, she would have to do one thing at a time and the most important thing that she could do right now was to put herself first. It had been some long and lonely years of putting everyone other than herself first and it had taken a huge emotional toll on her.
While Shruti worked towards herself, there was a new little project that would be waiting for her when she returned home for the Diwali break.
One sunny Sunday, Seema had decided that it was time for her to repaint the wall that stood empty in the living room. The wall she had waited too long to fill. Armed with what Shweta called inspo and some many small buckets of plastic paint, overalls that made her feel rather silly and a good collection of paintbrushes, Seema redid the wall. She didn't do it alone, of course. Shweta and Riddhi had been more than willing to help, excitedly covering the furniture with old bedsheets and the floor with plastic.
Late afternoon, they had painted the walls. First opening the smaller buckets and flinging its contents on the wall, watching in admiration as the fluid dribbled forming a pattern of its own. Shades of lilac, tangerine, purple, red, gold, olive and mustard yellow kissing the bland surface of the wall, mixing and dancing with each other; forming new shades in celebration of life. The textures of the multiple brushes forming new lines and swirls, the wall splattered with a mosaic of colours.
To Seema, these colours represented the mosaic of possibilities that life was; the possibilities that were her greatest sense of security. Life wasn't done with her yet, she knew. There would be comings and goings, ups and downs that would shatter her sense of the world over and over again. But in that rough sea; she could always hold onto the fact that life was filled with possibilities. Unimaginable possibilities, impossible possibilities that didn't promise to be good or bad and could be either. But even in their ambiguous nature, she was still promised that life would keep flowing, life would keep moving on.
And when it did, a new set of colours would be introduced into her life; mixing with each other forming new patterns that were things that lay beyond her wildest imagination. Life would never turn out to be as she had planned it to be and she had learned to revel in its mystery.
This was faith, this undefined sense of belief that she had within herself as she walked into the unknown over and over again. The future was a person with no face; it could be a friend or foe. But throughout her life, she had learnt, it was best to walk without fear. This was her life and even when she entered the battleground, she would do so with her head held high; a woman who lived on her own terms.
The wall wasn't done of course. There was a bucket of paint that sat untouched, left for Shruti to fling against the wall when she returned.
And with poetic irony, the colour was fittingly blue.
A/n: This is it, for now, we'll walk away and let this little family go on with their lives.
Vaishnavi, stop reading it already.
And to my other handful, absolutely precious readers, thank you for all your support. It means a lot to me, more than I can put to words.
This is my first book on Wattpad and truthfully I couldn't be more amazed. I didn't really expect myself to write this. And there's also this thing I've always wanted since I was a kid. I'd always dreamt of publishing a novel before I was twenty and here I am. Even though this is a self-published novel on a free site and not entirely complete and very short, I'm still glad I wrote it. Because in the littlest way, I didn't let my ten-year-old self down. And it feels good.
And to all my other lovely readers, I hope YOU do continue reading. Thank you for your support.
Much love,
shortgirlbigbook ❤️