Hridhi Chatterjee:288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrELDEHgUeC
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWZ3DhP59qJ
The very first time I saw him, his chubby little hands were resting on my friend's thin ones.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHXmCNtKA7W
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 18.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ2RceZr10u
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.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlBSqBIifJQ
His hands signalled danger. He’d roll his sleeves up to his elbows, like one of those self-made billionaires pretending to be effortless. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0eg0J2OCFa
Pretending.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeqrbIMWoCD
He was so damn good at it. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPIlNVpFfEU
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.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLxrPNaC7Ew
But still at times when I run out of topics I pretend to study, I look at his hands. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu1pyjsBQjN
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.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPGnIc2t0hU
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 . 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8dlzSEmIiO
Advik, how do you move your hands? How do you operate with those same fingers with delicacy and still hit hard on the drums? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO2KsXjurHJ
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:288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4bQLCcq33G
How can we stay together when we can't even look at each other?288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUdMuFDtMzL
How do we stay under the same room and still bleed from wounds after fighting like wolves? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1SJKoFE8lR
How do we pretend to be greater than each other and still fail miserably? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡikBzu3UwzL
********288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡP7ZEOrWlG2
Clink288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnngi6Lf7BF
Clink.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0sE3brpaXb
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—288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNYSU567oT5
Clink 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiRd9G5mQfg
Clink288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvP9RJfEyBa
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfYPBpnaR5q
I wouldn’t call it insomnia. I would never go to the therapist like those pathetic Americans. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡS9fSkCl4M5
I simply learned to enjoy it. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGQ144efymI
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuyFIucMsJr
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYCLUkfdUmM
Clink 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlbm38E6YFX
Clink288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDwo9XE2Cab
I got out of my bed, my lips twisted in the most disgusted expression I could master,288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGwLCnp3BKO
“Ring it louder, Advik—maybe He’ll finally pity you.” 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ650vilnXQp
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.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbUESXdl4nH
I pulled the curtains. The sun was still hidden beneath the darkness. In our surrounding apartments, people still slept, thinking that it was midnight. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtGiVz6fheo
The nearest apartment looked directly into my room. The curtains were half-closed. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiUI7MIr2lH
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.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0noxXbxUXW
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡs5j7nG53C2
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj3b3oTbvui
Would that be the 2nd one? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAarbJLBIRX
No…maybe the 3rd one?288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb5RdaGQvmq
Fuck. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqS3TlDO1Y7
Why are there so many switches?288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD29tKEWYTl
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7U7zkB0Qrf
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwPPWDkRKBJ
The tiles screamed perfection, the walls shouted cleanliness and the furniture looked so dim under the sparkle that everything felt totally out of place.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4MLtgy0eec
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcXCN24M7WT
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?”288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnrnWLapoY6
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2nYsn8y41Y
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3GHcFsatPD
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjhvTlmM9cx
You just got to pull your cool-girl mode on.
Babe, I miss you…288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJlNC8OUOJ5
Oi, bae, how ya doin?288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhHtPXNxF6G
All okay? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaxv94Rpa4l
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’. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOfEsLcfACC
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. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0pRTUfA7SQ
6:00 AM.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡESmlDJ2R5Z
Now, it was time to take out the trash as always. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡe2UWHwelkB
I scooped the black polythene bag and opened the door. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgmBGstyEy3
Thank God, he was not home. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7iTS2mybJs
I took out a deep breath. Finally! I was free.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡf9HCLv4H7y
Like as free as a caged bird. Well, I wouldn’t include the smell of last night's stench along with it. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMItO1bkSwn
I was just about to return to my floor, my hand finally empty when I noticed his hands. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNNdpTOK5Dw
They were literally his hands. Like literally. I would never lie, mind you. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6AoruOWuaI
I saw his hands on that girl's waist. Her waist. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR6ztKN6EmK
I couldn't see his face. I couldn't see her face. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡESvIEzAkvV
But his familiar hands were literally on her waist. Her hands rested on his. Just like a perfect couple. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb4bJPCNBkn
And I felt his eyes on me, even though I didn't see his face.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXX9YYMME1X
Pretending to be like those shocked, hurt wives who would never accept their husbands are cheating, I ran towards the elevator.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNSXPaVrfor
Can't you see? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoeXyEK79bM
I was hurt. I was dejected. I was..i was..what else was that? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWwZ72JtZeb
Betrayed? 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDgzG0eZZCh
When I was leaving for work, he stormed inside the living room and I noticed that his hands were now fidgety. 288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb0UnjnzXtA
Perfect. Totally perfect. It was just the way I have always wanted.288Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp1wIF06xI9
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and then Add to home screen.