Breathe, by Shuktara Lal, Kolkata
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Born, raised, and currently living in Kolkata, West Bengal, Shuktara teaches, directs, writes, uses theatre and performing techniques for wellness and therapy, and, in her free time, tends to seven cats.
Safety is the luxury of not having to remind yourself to breathe. It takes some getting used to, when for years you’ve grown accustomed to a kind of hot constriction in the chest, a dull, throbbing pain, an acutely conscious breathing to cajole your body back to a simulated normalcy. All this in the place you called your home.
I still find it surreal that I returned to an absolutely natural state of safety, in a year where the world outside has been marked by unprecedented uncertainty: by unsafety. I feel like a spectator watching an event in progress. I observe the readiness with which everyone around me talks about and listens to the fear the pandemic has caused, the easy relatability. I’ve learned it’s not a readiness that extends to discussing sexual assault or domestic violence or structural violence. I wonder about the line that separates what we talk about from what we don’t talk about.
I retreat within. Into the place I can once again call home. I dress up. I do my eyes. Winged eyeliner. An unapologetic, in-your-face red lipstick. An off-shoulder top with a tiny pair of shorts. Dangle earrings. I own and revel in my body, because after years and years, I finally can. I glide from one room to another where doors no longer have to be locked behind me. I can sit and stand still wherever I please. I can loiter. I don’t have to be strategic. I used to be a plastic toy wound up to its maximum with no release. Waiting with dread for the click of a camera taking pictures of me without my consent. Performing personae for protection– be it a “don’t mess with me” persona or a “slouched and head bowed, look invisible” persona. I am discovering who I am, without these personae.
It’s a shade after 2 a.m., and I ease down the stairs, my toes curling into the coolness of the mosaic. I shimmy to the main door. The same darkness that would have kept me on edge, my neck muscles tense, the side of my head aching sharply, is now empty of stress points. I don’t look around me. I relish the quiet. I relish not having to turn lights on.
I open the door and step outside into the garden. The still air caresses me, lightly, my skin responds with goosebumps of long forgotten pleasure. The leaves tease me into thinking they move, in the corners of my vision. The sky above is starless with a haze to it. A mundane night.
And I think of the sheer luxury of mundaneness. Of not having to live with domestic violence. Of not having to live with the fear of domestic violence, in the time of a pandemic. Of not having to strategize sanitization of surfaces and wear masks indoors, of the anxiety triggered by sharing living space with people who won’t help you keep safe. It’s banal only when you haven’t had to live its opposite.
The corset-like tightness that was my second skin when I was constantly on guard, is gone. I soak it up, there is no optimum. I breathe.
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(This story was prepared for an “Imagine Another World” online storytelling workshop held October 16, 2020.)
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