Hridhi Chatterjee:318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc7gLHXu5Uq
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr7VoawABFb
The very first time I saw him, his chubby little hands were resting on my friend's thin ones.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjFluKclN11
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 18.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ41mOF0yn54
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.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX6gDBUbEF6
His hands signalled danger. He’d roll his sleeves up to his elbows, like one of those self-made billionaires pretending to be effortless. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsugg8FZhUy
Pretending.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyZOX5Wm6tS
He was so damn good at it. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡErxuLN0BsA
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.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHMHHD5807C
But still at times when I run out of topics I pretend to study, I look at his hands. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg6ISvZ1oMA
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.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCGXPR4dI9e
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 . 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP9kJ6C8bUH
Advik, how do you move your hands? How do you operate with those same fingers with delicacy and still hit hard on the drums? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn39TPLQ1Ez
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:318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJsqzY68N1i
How can we stay together when we can't even look at each other?318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEm9aJobRzr
How do we stay under the same room and still bleed from wounds after fighting like wolves? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3imQB69Igk
How do we pretend to be greater than each other and still fail miserably? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdCBbU3RFqx
********318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTqFRAxG1sJ
Clink318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7AVYExKKGG
Clink.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBIjoXngw7D
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—318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKQUXzFtW67
Clink 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQGopVhpEkX
Clink318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡps9nj6nIv8
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEfZU8Q1eY5
I wouldn’t call it insomnia. I would never go to the therapist like those pathetic Americans. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVDuQuAyv01
I simply learned to enjoy it. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmvPKxozXWu
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKEftP2fDDs
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtbpCfU80Bb
Clink 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe10ZHj8obG
Clink318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuFvoPdMmmk
I got out of my bed, my lips twisted in the most disgusted expression I could master,318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHcDeJ1Xnlx
“Ring it louder, Advik—maybe He’ll finally pity you.” 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDPYMWjlhqO
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.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0LfQRd0XB9
I pulled the curtains. The sun was still hidden beneath the darkness. In our surrounding apartments, people still slept, thinking that it was midnight. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8jSRiNB9Xj
The nearest apartment looked directly into my room. The curtains were half-closed. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeBAlrdPKdd
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.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOgjEvAGKBC
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQpBkiPmtD3
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1Vbj5prCOu
Would that be the 2nd one? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUjPpGyXQFy
No…maybe the 3rd one?318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKk3Mi85wIG
Fuck. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlkGgKlGV3u
Why are there so many switches?318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzeGBM0RbAe
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzsDpepmbaZ
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKL6Fhn8wKn
The tiles screamed perfection, the walls shouted cleanliness and the furniture looked so dim under the sparkle that everything felt totally out of place.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnrocNDsRAK
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYlBZoyi4Qs
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?”318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK1zTQowAHS
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ87O3sHKb2L
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZJSMt2KxhD
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPqSvs9NpDi
You just got to pull your cool-girl mode on.
Babe, I miss you…318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡENyazqdy6Q
Oi, bae, how ya doin?318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXgepmK65YD
All okay? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvkspII6FxA
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’. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPDaayUiWuU
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. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡflrEeJY0s0
6:00 AM.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDIr3G7EVQB
Now, it was time to take out the trash as always. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDqTpXFOVqe
I scooped the black polythene bag and opened the door. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIqerY3ISv3
Thank God, he was not home. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyRVIvUiGba
I took out a deep breath. Finally! I was free.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7lMQMDDdyr
Like as free as a caged bird. Well, I wouldn’t include the smell of last night's stench along with it. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpc0UpLKGeI
I was just about to return to my floor, my hand finally empty when I noticed his hands. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡckGIsXbI9r
They were literally his hands. Like literally. I would never lie, mind you. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡM8itVaEq2x
I saw his hands on that girl's waist. Her waist. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtvVhKa2ma2
I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see her face. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsxujuXxySz
But his familiar hands were literally on her waist. Her hands rested on his. Just like a perfect couple. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRdmszF3pAo
And I felt his eyes on me, even though I didn't see his face.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoNS7IIUWBU
Pretending to be like those shocked, hurt wives who would never accept their husbands are cheating, I ran towards the elevator.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjfr7rU5Nty
Can't you see? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPiUCdveUvM
I was hurt. I was dejected. I was..i was..what else was that? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡedqCZEAoZf
Betrayed? 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6F35Y28RTR
When I was leaving for work, he stormed inside the living room and I noticed that his hands were now fidgety. 318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuR6c3bhH1C
Perfect. Totally perfect. It was just the way I have always wanted.318Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQxNhwKko3x
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and then Add to home screen.