Hridhi Chatterjee:284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡw6MqROnonJ
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡd486lLzgRO
The very first time I saw him, his chubby little hands were resting on my friend's thin ones.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRfwoCya53f
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 18.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjdDgfe1sPU
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.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCfPsBeDAc2
His hands signalled danger. He’d roll his sleeves up to his elbows, like one of those self-made billionaires pretending to be effortless. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡin6n6VlJ4x
Pretending.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡshcnMHk4JK
He was so damn good at it. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPE4w9NeYUq
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.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3LPrKgl58a
But still at times when I run out of topics I pretend to study, I look at his hands. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu1wdNq7JKc
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.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrtdd7FFW9q
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 . 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJ460uVjiON
Advik, how do you move your hands? How do you operate with those same fingers with delicacy and still hit hard on the drums? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxxPUCO3sk0
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:284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡszWniEBGbW
How can we stay together when we can't even look at each other?284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLCtWBAPhY8
How do we stay under the same room and still bleed from wounds after fighting like wolves? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ05s4nBpRCI
How do we pretend to be greater than each other and still fail miserably? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4Q7SHxZW22
********284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0GQuQusMiO
Clink284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYqNFvCZOSq
Clink.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9ygBIhkYUK
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—284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSkK9GfXjgw
Clink 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK5TE31pqdZ
Clink284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVenrsn31Nw
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOBnB1ru1Ro
I wouldn’t call it insomnia. I would never go to the therapist like those pathetic Americans. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3oquGVSDb3
I simply learned to enjoy it. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHEDRGEoS98
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcPhUTf2AHQ
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ00jedHhW9r
Clink 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvdrNMHlB8Y
Clink284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjQKSDngkbu
I got out of my bed, my lips twisted in the most disgusted expression I could master,284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLsVFlmfFgV
“Ring it louder, Advik—maybe He’ll finally pity you.” 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡF4UuI4B7AQ
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.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6NHnYGLDsu
I pulled the curtains. The sun was still hidden beneath the darkness. In our surrounding apartments, people still slept, thinking that it was midnight. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT6EnUwXKqm
The nearest apartment looked directly into my room. The curtains were half-closed. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2Q1IOhGEV3
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.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOOpTJND8Bo
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDvgcoXDH6e
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiqEp69haFx
Would that be the 2nd one? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa6pVfOd00l
No…maybe the 3rd one?284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2D5OavOdDB
Fuck. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcIFU9ybM7L
Why are there so many switches?284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡflWMlrFSiq
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXm2C8uMYpQ
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHdXNI4rKzL
The tiles screamed perfection, the walls shouted cleanliness and the furniture looked so dim under the sparkle that everything felt totally out of place.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLI7y02h5fS
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6IglRCI80g
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?”284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa2fxRK8lK6
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwNCmey5Pjd
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdoTtXct6rY
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNuU8Ig52TZ
You just got to pull your cool-girl mode on.
Babe, I miss you…284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0zUwbSlkI6
Oi, bae, how ya doin?284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT880yOsaPr
All okay? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7q0pRz9zZl
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’. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR04xGlOXF6
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. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc3nUH9dENC
6:00 AM.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa8cb1r1aRD
Now, it was time to take out the trash as always. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡy9xc3pfQMk
I scooped the black polythene bag and opened the door. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8UibGGLCSv
Thank God, he was not home. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkzIzF2kPHq
I took out a deep breath. Finally! I was free.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡezbQi5EL15
Like as free as a caged bird. Well, I wouldn’t include the smell of last night's stench along with it. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAK5VmjSNAi
I was just about to return to my floor, my hand finally empty when I noticed his hands. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9q6XhONEqK
They were literally his hands. Like literally. I would never lie, mind you. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv1PNIPvgjr
I saw his hands on that girl's waist. Her waist. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGhJvv5WknT
I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see her face. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡezIB0S4b44
But his familiar hands were literally on her waist. Her hands rested on his. Just like a perfect couple. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4bmjkXVvQp
And I felt his eyes on me, even though I didn't see his face.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiVhyLN4WkZ
Pretending to be like those shocked, hurt wives who would never accept their husbands are cheating, I ran towards the elevator.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmj2XXIbB8o
Can't you see? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU7Zl51bWWo
I was hurt. I was dejected. I was..i was..what else was that? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn2gu21dbbC
Betrayed? 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFOGvtIATqw
When I was leaving for work, he stormed inside the living room and I noticed that his hands were now fidgety. 284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbHNen6oCZ4
Perfect. Totally perfect. It was just the way I have always wanted.284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDrUuFpH5nT
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and then Add to home screen.