Hridhi Chatterjee:46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQU5Qlh84Ts
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBizmAMma1H
The very first time I saw him, his chubby little hands were resting on my friend's thin ones.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLTxLYiydIu
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 18.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5BMNVucIPU
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.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0RGBe0ylUj
His hands signalled danger. He’d roll his sleeves up to his elbows, like one of those self-made billionaires pretending to be effortless. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQhfZiTljbg
Pretending.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvkYc1T37og
He was so damn good at it. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡA8cpHMqod3
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.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxkKWfP8UOV
But still at times when I run out of topics I pretend to study, I look at his hands. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3NuVz15zEy
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.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWaMzCVDSMg
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 . 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfsE59HyyTD
Advik, how do you move your hands? How do you operate with those same fingers with delicacy and still hit hard on the drums? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTmxE4GgYL3
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:46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd5znKr1Jgu
How can we stay together when we can't even look at each other?46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC2DRQBCBho
How do we stay under the same room and still bleed from wounds after fighting like wolves? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCdfpUPl5ax
How do we pretend to be greater than each other and still fail miserably? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmYGsPQnWes
********46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZh8b2IpcyV
Clink46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ54xE1YKslR
Clink.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV8E91TUxzv
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—46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1NLfp96LzB
Clink 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT6M21ByrlU
Clink46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEybcvBKq9I
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡB2fAoL9wzm
I wouldn’t call it insomnia. I would never go to the therapist like those pathetic Americans. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXpmHxxSUWI
I simply learned to enjoy it. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡICPVSfwuSy
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtDzhTsvzYj
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy6IwfOMnRq
Clink 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUGhOk6ckpu
Clink46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDGfJl9mTNv
I got out of my bed, my lips twisted in the most disgusted expression I could master,46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8p6CfUXEU7
“Ring it louder, Advik—maybe He’ll finally pity you.” 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfPhi35qwvd
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.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDbDuFrauHq
I pulled the curtains. The sun was still hidden beneath the darkness. In our surrounding apartments, people still slept, thinking that it was midnight. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd0JzMMYCkc
The nearest apartment looked directly into my room. The curtains were half-closed. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡI32fuoz1J7
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.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJT96c0jopv
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc9XfTvtwg3
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXcQdKdMyAd
Would that be the 2nd one? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKCP30Eps72
No…maybe the 3rd one?46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwJocs6WuVe
Fuck. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIFjbSkz8Q0
Why are there so many switches?46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0JETibwaDV
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFsX67v20P6
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOglMjzzYWW
The tiles screamed perfection, the walls shouted cleanliness and the furniture looked so dim under the sparkle that everything felt totally out of place.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeT8spqPWBO
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5iXxNlkJg9
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?”46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSC0L1XnCDw
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSo2jfpdKnn
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWHhXUga2C4
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUXUINcZv2A
You just got to pull your cool-girl mode on.
Babe, I miss you…46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgtGqrdAwyZ
Oi, bae, how ya doin?46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl59PT6U2zh
All okay? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZNzTbQEtBW
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’. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtAissINBCn
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. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡglrCacYdQO
6:00 AM.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXlzJ3xHaBm
Now, it was time to take out the trash as always. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3SpcxmiGdB
I scooped the black polythene bag and opened the door. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUjHUE2qZeS
Thank God, he was not home. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnPAAFSSYw1
I took out a deep breath. Finally! I was free.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVyquwKMzE2
Like as free as a caged bird. Well, I wouldn’t include the smell of last night's stench along with it. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaue2Y0edzF
I was just about to return to my floor, my hand finally empty when I noticed his hands. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJAThJaOqHh
They were literally his hands. Like literally. I would never lie, mind you. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4fPmO0bhrf
I saw his hands on that girl's waist. Her waist. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQZjM19jSD4
I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see her face. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs6pajl6ynv
But his familiar hands were literally on her waist. Her hands rested on his. Just like a perfect couple. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpgeRjmlQY2
And I felt his eyes on me, even though I didn't see his face.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡitjrgTklHW
Pretending to be like those shocked, hurt wives who would never accept their husbands are cheating, I ran towards the elevator.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr8TgutmCUM
Can't you see? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVdJhXUpsjs
I was hurt. I was dejected. I was..i was..what else was that? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡi5XQxXkiAC
Betrayed? 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzEovkBWNDW
When I was leaving for work, he stormed inside the living room and I noticed that his hands were now fidgety. 46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGrYsH1yWBn
Perfect. Totally perfect. It was just the way I have always wanted.46Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKMyjPqCkQE
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and then Add to home screen.