Preksha

By Aastha Nagi

The house preksha grew up in is the house that is very vividly imrinted in the fading of memories half of which i am not sure are dreams or real. I think i was maybe 6 or 7 or 8. Playing hide and seek in the street that was an escape from monster house but felt just as haunted because it was always an escape. I always knew i would have to go back to the monster house. But the ghosts of the escape house and i became friends at a very young age. They still scared me, but they got me toys. And i was a child. I loved toys. 

I dont think i was ever happy in the escape house. I was only ever escaping. Running. How could you run from the monsters and be happy while doing it. But the destination was back to the monster house so i had to learn to enjoy the road and not think of the destination. 

In the escape house, there were people, who loved me, but did not love themselves enough. In the escape house, i was a child in the corner of a 4 storey house. In that house i knew my mother was broken. But so was father. In that house i was behind the curtain that they used to hide it all from me. I was a child i was not blind. And they put a curtain over my eyes but i could still hear their screaming haunting voices. And i knew. 

Escape house felt safe from the wolves to a child who was going to grow up and become a wolf herself. Escape house gave safety to the child who was just a child and did not understand. The child thought that if just ran away from the monsters and went to the escape house, all would be right. She thought if she ran away from the screaming voices, they would cease to exist. But she was just a little far from the voices. They were still loud. They always were. They always are. And she was just was away from the monsters, but the monsters were still alive. She could never kill them. She could not kill them and they refused to eat her too. They chew her out alive. But the monsters refused to swallow her. Refused to kill her for once and all. Monster house was made of rooms with walls built of suffering and torture. 

The child confused the safety of the escape house for comfort. 

And all that comfort came crumbling down when the escape house did. 

She would never have that comfort again. 

She would never spend those safe nights in the illusion like safe escape house ever again. Because it no longer existed. 

One day while i was staying at the escape house, i played hide and seek. And i hid in a house that was teal blue and had a very rusted and old door. I had never hidden there before and i was scared. I remember climbing the stairs and thinking i would die. I remember the pink on the inside and the big window with mesh on it and i remember thinking i did not like that house and that i would never come here again. 

That is the house preksha lives in. 

And just when i thought i could never have the comfort and safety of the escape house ever again.

I saw preksha. 

She is like the imaginary friend i had as a child who i talked to about my monsters just that the imaginary friend has come to life. If to be with me is to bathe in those nights then she gives me darkness of those nights. 

Preksha: 

Viewer, beholding, viewing

To be seen 

I have no idea who preksha is, but if i am a battered body fading to oblivion the only idea i have is who preksha is. I have no idea if she is into art, poetry, music, if she loves her brother just as much as she seems to do, if she walks with her mother just to oblige her or if she actually wants to take laps around a dying park with her beloved mother. 

I do not know her favourite books or the time she wakes up, I do not know if she hated her country’s education system just as much as i did and do. I do not know if she looked at me because I was too close or if she looked at me because I reminded her of her. I do not know if she mentioned me to her best friend and if her best friend told her they knew me. 

But what I do know is, preksha does not leave her eyes naked. Her eyes are the canvas she was born with and everyday when she wakes up ,irrelevant of the time, she takes her brushes and decorates her eyes with black and coal. To her it may just be strokes of black tracing the windows to her soul, the windows no one looked into enough, but to a poet who she is the muse of, her black strokes are the dignity of her lovers, the black strokes are the evidence of the holy privilege they had of having her canvas be their mirror. 

What I do know is that she is the mystery woman around her town, that night is her season, that everytime her world has ended it has ended in the night, and everytime it has begun again, it has begun again in the night. When she is burned to ashes, she is reborn, in the night, and everytime, her ashes get darker and stronger and fiercer around her eyes. What I do know is that her crowd of comfort is little, calm, settled, and quiet. What I do know is that darkness surrounds her and what I do know is that darkness consumes me. And if she is the storm that comes in the night when they are asleep and only honors the ones who were lucky enough to not sleep that night, then i haven't slept in years and god someone tell her i dance in storms. 

I do not know if the threads of her love are woven only around the male bodies or if she worships the women’s divinity too, i do not know of her gods and her holy grounds, i do not know if ghosts were her friends when she was a child, i do not know why she does not repaint her teal, spider conceived house. I do not know preksha. I want to though. 

I do not know if she knows that her history has the same ink as mine, if they have told her yet, if she knows I played hide and seek in her pink staircase. I do not know if she knows. 

But what I do know is she does not look at them. But she looked at me. And I just know.

By Aastha Nagi