Hridhi Chatterjee:220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9GQqqXRjee
Every time someone wanted me to reveal something about my new husband, I immediately remembered his hands. I must say, I had always looked at his hands. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkRAFz578ae
The very first time I saw him, his chubby little hands were resting on my friend's thin ones.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr9tvbZ4Ije
There was something fascinating about it. You know, I had been watching it grow — from 10 to 11, to 13, to 14, and then all the way up to 18.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9tuQY0W887
I’d recognize his hands anywhere. Even now, with strands of hair on them, tanned under the sunlight as he pretended to be good at sports.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB4zcFUjLO7
His hands signalled danger. He’d roll his sleeves up to his elbows, like one of those self-made billionaires pretending to be effortless. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1GxjNBFui3
Pretending.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaEhBiAOhaY
He was so damn good at it. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzS2aegawNt
His hands held a great power to pretend. To pretend to write while his eyes actually roamed around my drafts. To pretend to cook so that I would finally cut the vegetables for him.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPhAjqc3dRc
But still at times when I run out of topics I pretend to study, I look at his hands. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZEhGqA4FsB
I want to know what's inside it. I want to break every bone, blood vessels, and veins and cut open its flesh just to see how it cooperates with each other.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh5Cy6R250l
Maybe he had done it in his medical school. But no one had taught him for sure how those hands worked like it had a mind of its own.
On a cozy Saturday morning, my frail hands resting on his strong ones, I would have asked him questions if I was a normal wife . 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzxfVJ3ELug
Advik, how do you move your hands? How do you operate with those same fingers with delicacy and still hit hard on the drums? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3oPiaoRUgt
How do your fingers crawl around my throat, looking like you would make me breathe for the last time and still, still never hurt?
Maybe a number of how’s simply cloud our marriage, like storm clouds before the rain:220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH90QxwScj1
How can we stay together when we can't even look at each other?220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFGascYNJfD
How do we stay under the same room and still bleed from wounds after fighting like wolves? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv5gZPSTP75
How do we pretend to be greater than each other and still fail miserably? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYVNT2geNOE
********220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0837J0tSGp
Clink220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpO6j2E4I2A
Clink.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu3SPicXyaV
My eyes snapped open exactly at five a.m. No clock was needed. I never used an alarm clock in my whole life. My mind was always conscious, working and working, never sparing me, never caring to pull out its gentle features. I would imagine scenes inside my head during these hours my eyes were shut down. People running, new plot threads, weaving new lies to rip my worried mum off stress. And then—220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8MdT6hQ0S0
Clink 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgghUWsdLKq
Clink220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡywJ1xo5AAq
It was time to officially drift towards consciousness and this time, into the stinky damn real thing people cared to call ‘world’. All these five hours my eyes were shut down, I never saw black. Fragments of images never forget to cloud into me. Inside my brain. Inside my heart. Inside my muscles. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7p2gEOVIG8
I wouldn’t call it insomnia. I would never go to the therapist like those pathetic Americans. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ447DtW9YO
I simply learned to enjoy it. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH8WIsDBANk
I waited for nights just to start imagining things, walking back to that pathetic scene I had left out the night before, taking inspiration for my next novels, as my brain went tick-tick throughout the whole night.
My sleep was like the objects in Newton’s law of motion. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTlgxWOiSr6
I never open my eyes until an external force is applied on me. And in my case, it might be a subtle sound, a touch, or a gentle stream of light from that one hole in my old curtain. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7PkUY7kgj7
Clink 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr9gMGk1Fx3
Clink220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh75ieiVrAh
I got out of my bed, my lips twisted in the most disgusted expression I could master,220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnN638f0oDR
“Ring it louder, Advik—maybe He’ll finally pity you.” 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFPbpxjTmHr
At that exact moment, 5:05 AM, he finally stopped playing the bell, a metallic plate landing on the topmost shelf of his room hitting hard on the concrete.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡt8ZxwJF9DE
I pulled the curtains. The sun was still hidden beneath the darkness. In our surrounding apartments, people still slept, thinking that it was midnight. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZJXuNiXMCI
The nearest apartment looked directly into my room. The curtains were half-closed. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzgVQOwwhzT
When my eyes fell on the half-naked man in the bed, he moved. And I could almost hear his girlfriend say, We were seen. We are seen. We will be seen.
I grabbed my towel, which was technically four years old, and still called it a towel because I had never found another that felt like home, and then I staggered toward the restroom.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjsATpsJLY8
I don't know why I become so tipsy in the morning. It’s not that I ever sleep. It’s not that I was desperate to sleep in on weekends. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjphlgG0ThE
The bathroom door never ever felt familiar in my fingers. Even though we had been stuck here for a year, I still couldn’t figure out the switches. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqWJu719ef4
Would that be the 2nd one? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeLulDnatTz
No…maybe the 3rd one?220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfljV8TTYTX
Fuck. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkyjv2mPaux
Why are there so many switches?220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwuz7JelqkU
I clicked on all of them until the bathroom door lit up. It felt like a hotel, I must say. I grabbed the handle but it felt ice cold under my fingers. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7Apr6x6o9W
Even after months, I still waited for the familiar click of my old apartment.
Advik had rented a big apartment in Manhattan, with rooms which were far too big for the both of us. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡytHj4arSAi
The tiles screamed perfection, the walls shouted cleanliness and the furniture looked so dim under the sparkle that everything felt totally out of place.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGaV5dzY0RC
And I knew that he, too, couldn’t bear to care for them any less.
“You would dust the shelves,” was his first line upon arrival. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk92KcaTR7x
We got into a big fight that night. It was fair, wasn’t it? I must pay half the rent. But he wanted me to feel like those immature girls he fucked.
“Are you that keen on making me lose face in front of my parents, bitch?”220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNTbl8JrozE
That night, I returned to bed with a split lip and he stormed out to grab a beer and maybe, fuck that girl after so long. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDPenumthlg
But still, at the end of the month, I always transferred half the rent in his bank account. It had been our first compromise: He had planned on making me the cook of the house in exchange for the rent. And as you can see, I can never ever let him do that to me. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDjhqZd6M0R
It had been a tack. I catfished him under that girl’s name for weeks until I got his account number. Which was, I will add, really really easy. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFSCHPpTLy5
You just got to pull your cool-girl mode on.
Babe, I miss you…220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmWOyzxvVaG
Oi, bae, how ya doin?220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5ugcdShgh7
All okay? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr6OlepR21Z
You know, I been stuck in that mall. U see, I really need this bubble tea ASAP. Can you transfer me 15 bucks or somethin’. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN7k8lZ1llk
Love ya. XOX.
And surprisingly, when I gave him my account number, he actually transferred me 15 bucks while I casually collected his account number like a genius.
The first time I had transferred him the rent, I had added 15 bucks along with it.
You know, he kept shouting about it for three straight months, but when I pulled my pretend-to-be-dumb act more often, he finally stopped and walked briskly back to the kitchen like a dog with its tail cut. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3xPGtTnlQE
6:00 AM.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKftrTLSxRO
Now, it was time to take out the trash as always. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgSrLbXZZje
I scooped the black polythene bag and opened the door. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW1QZiFrz10
Thank God, he was not home. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyBP5oR8cWJ
I took out a deep breath. Finally! I was free.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaZWIvpfbUJ
Like as free as a caged bird. Well, I wouldn’t include the smell of last night's stench along with it. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNbJsogyn6M
I was just about to return to my floor, my hand finally empty when I noticed his hands. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSc5lIDw9Dq
They were literally his hands. Like literally. I would never lie, mind you. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5j0GDoLQdh
I saw his hands on that girl's waist. Her waist. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtWmBxHdgUX
I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see her face. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCaZ1ksiU9m
But his familiar hands were literally on her waist. Her hands rested on his. Just like a perfect couple. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJuCEh3wh1m
And I felt his eyes on me, even though I didn't see his face.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW1cVIzFD1y
Pretending to be like those shocked, hurt wives who would never accept their husbands are cheating, I ran towards the elevator.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOqWT2r3EnV
Can't you see? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBKL3XbALUT
I was hurt. I was dejected. I was..i was..what else was that? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡatbuYCbPyB
Betrayed? 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYK9e5v4g0l
When I was leaving for work, he stormed inside the living room and I noticed that his hands were now fidgety. 220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtzWOfMfj5v
Perfect. Totally perfect. It was just the way I have always wanted.220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaoEBBAfPiV
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and then Add to home screen.