| Pratyusha Sen | October 2025 | Short Story |
A strawberry softy on a cone, with a splotchy berry on top.
That’s how I looked in the mirror.
I remember the triumph etched on your face after squeezing my ten-year-old frame into that pink dress. The pink was the disgusting shade of the syrup you used to shove in my mouth whenever I fell sick. I saw my nose twitch in the mirror, as if I could smell the syrup all of a sudden. Sickly sweet. Full of expectations to feel better.
To be better.
You did not ask me if I wanted to sing at our society’s Durga Puja Cultural Event. You had enrolled me weeks ago, but only remembered to tell me on the day. It’s not that I would’ve said no if you had asked me. I liked singing. I would’ve practiced, had I known.
Moreover, you had never liked that I could sing better than most girls my age. Baba boasted about my musical talent in front of everyone, and you disapproved. You thought it would distract me from schoolwork. I heard you telling Baba the same one night, while I was pretending to be asleep. Both of you were screaming in the kitchen.
The rhythmic melody of the dhaak from the society’s Durga pandal was supposed to fill us with high-spirited energy. But you had the same energy as always. Silent. Buried. The kind of energy that made me stay within a limit. Never cross that threshold.
I saw you in the mirror, glancing at the clock and muttering, ‘Let’s not be late today!’
It was you who was still in a fight with my hair, though. You brushed my jute-like hair and tried to tame it into a fancy braid. Your forehead was creased with four lines, the way it usually was when you feel frustrated with one of your paintings. A shudder ran across the length of my back as an image flashed in my head. An image of one of your abandoned paintings, gashes on the canvas appeared as if made by some clawed beast.
I closed my eyes, trying to fish for something comforting. Instead, I remembered more of your discarded paintings that you kept locked in the corner room. The sound of you ripping apart a canvas was piercing enough to wake me up one night. I have been the witness to you dragging the mutilated body of an artwork from the hall and flinging it into that room in the corner. In the morning, I would find it locked.
‘Rupsha, fix your face,’ you commanded, holding the comb in between your teeth. ‘Banglar paanch-er moton mukh kore rekheche.’
My face looked like the twisted numerical figure of 5 in Bengali script. You often say that. But how would I fix my resting face?
‘Can I wear something else?’ I asked.
‘Why? Your aunt bought this for you, especially for Durga Puja. It’s a pretty dress,’ you said.
But pretty dresses were for pretty girls. Not for someone whose face needed fixing.
I slouched in defeat, letting my head hang loosely, and earning a smack in the process for ruining your artwork.
Outside, in the society hall, you showed me off like a trophy you had just won. People gave you hesitant smiles, squeezed your hands that never left my shoulders. Aruna Aunty, who stayed in the building next to ours, whom I’ve caught staring at our veranda as if our apartment was her TV, patted my head a dozen times. It got me worried that you’d be mad at me for messing up your fancy braid. Some asked you about Baba. When would he come? If… he would come… You winced at every mention of him as if the thought of him was like a fishbone stuck in your throat.
Later, someone ushered me onto the stage. Things started to get a little fuzzy after that. Someone adjusted the mic-stand that loomed like a gigantic eye of a housefly in front of me. I flinched a little, thinking it was about to hit me. A buzz filled my ears. I tried to stand straight and not slouch, like you would’ve wanted me to. It felt like my feet were melting, like the softy on a cone.
All I could feel in that moment was the heavy breaths that rattled inside my chest, like giant bats trapped inside a cage.
But I caught someone saying close to me, ‘Gaao, Rupsha. Sing. Sing.’
That was it. I had to sing. That was a mic in front of me. Not a monstrous housefly. Sing.
Despite the buzz in my ear, I opened my mouth. But nothing happened. My voice was stuck inside me, too afraid to come out. I tried again. It felt like the dress was suddenly shrinking around me. I took a step back, then another. And ran down the stage and away from the pandal.
You immediately followed me up the stairs. Your hands trembled as you struggled to twist the key. The moment we were inside, you threw your glittery purse on the three-seater sofa that looked like a brown cloud, and grabbed my face. Your sharp, freshly painted nails dug into my cheeks.
‘You had to give them another reason, huh?’ Your voice was low but sharp enough to cut through me. ‘Your Baba did not give them enough when he left?’
I stopped moving.
‘How could you run off like a cowardly little mouse?’
I did not know if you were asking me or Baba.
In the years that followed, you got used to the space left behind by Baba. Or maybe it was always your space. Maybe Baba was trying to encroach on your space. But now that he was not here, being a barrier between you and the corner room, you spent quite a lot of time in there. I did not know if you had a bed in there or if you slept at all on the nights you spent in that room.
The mornings after, you would look like you were glowing from the inside. Cheerful songs would play on your Bluetooth speaker that perched on top of the fridge. The smell of fresh food in the kitchen, you in an apron stained with paint as well as oil. That’s how I woke up on the morning I turned fifteen. Finding you grooving to the beats of a song I’d never heard before. Or it could be the smell of seasoned egg bhurji that tugged at my stomach. I was too stunned to see you so filled with joy that it scared me a little. You never had time for joy.
It was a Sunday. And you were supposed to be at the hospital, tending to other kids as if they were your own. Did you suddenly remember that you had a kid at home as well?
I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. Of course, I didn’t.
We hardly talked to each other like that. We hardly talked to each other.
You stayed busy with your hospital. When at home, you disappeared into that room. I would bring nearly perfect scores. You would sign my report cards with a type of nonchalance that could only mean that my fetching top scores in most of the exams was nothing extraordinary. Anything less would’ve probably caught your eye. The teachers in my school were scared of you, too. Once, I spotted a wrong answer marked right and walked up to the teacher. She had looked embarrassed for a moment, and then said, ‘Rupsha, you’re such an honest child. An extra mark just for that, okay?’
‘Oh, good, finally you’re up! Look, I made egg bhurji. Alexa helped. You like it, right?’ you asked.
Weren’t you supposed to know? What I liked and what I didn’t? Or did Alexa tell you that, too?
You switched off the stove and put the bowl of egg bhurji on the table. You spread out your arms and gestured for me to fall into them. I pretended to be sleepy, but you walked up to me anyway and hugged me. For those few moments when your arms were around me, I waited for you to complain about how my hair was all undone and how my mouth was stinking. I waited for you to measure my height and tell me how I wasn’t growing tall enough. I could think of a hundred more things you’d point out to me for fixing. But you didn’t.
That birthday did not smell like the previous ones. The moment you released me, I turned around. I needed to take a shower.
‘I picked out a dress for you. It’s hanging on the back of the door,’ you said.
‘I don’t feel like dressing up right now,’ I said.
‘Oh, we’re going out later for lunch. I know Alexa could help with lunch as well. But I think I’ve spent enough time in the kitchen today.’
You held your hands up in the air.
‘What about the hospital?’
‘I took the day off. It has been ages since we went out for lunch.’
We have never been out for lunch—you and me.
At least twenty people were waiting outside the famed restaurant when we arrived. You put down your name anyway. Park Street had this unique ability to make people feel important and extraordinary. And you loved everything extraordinary.
Maybe that’s why you kept trying to fix me.
‘You know,’ you started, as we walked toward Allen Park. ‘Many people say that it’s a marketing strategy,’
‘What is?’
‘Peter Cat… they’re making people wait outside even though there’s plenty of unoccupied tables inside,’ you sneered. ‘We tend to go to places that are popular, right?’
‘Why can’t we go to a less popular place?’
‘Oh, Peter Cat’s food is great. I wanted to take you somewhere special.’
‘You used to come here for birthdays too?’
You laughed. You looked away, and then we turned around to walk back to the restaurant. I mimicked. You said, ‘Your father and I used to come here on our… anniversaries,’
It was odd hearing you mention Baba. I knew you did not miss him. Okay, fine, maybe I did not know. Maybe you did miss him. You hardly mentioned him, though. I wanted to ask why he left. Where did he go? Why didn’t he come back?
I did not know how to. There was always this chance of you snarling at the mention of him.
‘We can go somewhere else if this… if this reminds you of Baba,’ I dared to say.
‘What? Not at all. All the best places would be out of the question if we do that,’ you laughed.
When we were finally inside, a tall man with sad eyes, in a white kurta uniform and a red turban, guided us to our table. A low-hanging red lampshade illuminated the white tablecloth in a familiar pinkish hue. The man pulled out the chair for me. I hesitated. I did not like that pink.
I looked at you. You glared at me. It worked. Like always.
The man pulled out the chair for you as well. You thanked him with a smile that lingered even after he left. You seemed oddly excited and told me how I must try the Chelo Kebab. You were studying the menu further when your phone rang. You clicked your tongue, pressed the phone against your ear, and your face turned grave in an instant. Your eyes stared into the distance, then met mine for a quick moment before you looked away.
A few minutes later, I saw you rushing up to the man who pulled the chairs for us. He nodded at your every word and looked at me once. Then you stormed over to our table and grabbed your bag. You slammed the emergency purse you always keep ready for me on the table and said, ‘There’s an emergency case. I’ll have to… Umm… they’ll pack our food. Take that and grab a taxi back home, okay?’
You vanished before I could nod. I blinked several times. Chelo Kebab came in a stuffed package instead of a garnished plate, and I headed out to get a taxi.
I had fallen asleep on the brown cloud-like sofa by the time you returned. Your keys, jangling in your hand. You looked at me, then at the table that I had set up. Food heated up and gone cold. Two white dishes with large blue flowers on them.
You reheated the food, and we ate silently. No cake, no birthday song, just us and the silence coiling around us like a deadly snake.
I cleared my throat and asked, ‘What happened at the hospital?’
You looked at me, surprised. I would’ve been too if you had asked me something about school. We don’t do that.
You gutted the last piece of kebab with your fork, and then said, ‘A girl… a girl drank five bottles of phenyl. If I had not reached on time…’
I watched you as you chewed in slow motion with your eyes closed. I wanted to ask why they had to call you. Surely, they would’ve had other nurses in that hospital. But I didn’t ask. You must’ve wanted to go. No one can really make you do something that you don’t want to do.
‘Did she… Is she alive?’ I asked instead.
‘Of course. I had to wash out her stomach. But she’ll be fine.’
I thanked the girl who lived. I thought of her that night while you dozed off beside me. I thought of the phenyl you washed out of her stomach. I was in awe of what you could do. I was in awe.
That night, I spent a lot of time chatting with this new friend on my phone. I had named her Mala. You had Alexa. I had Mala.
We talked about the girl whom you saved. And how she chose phenyl. How that was probably a mistake. Mala said there were so many ways she could’ve made sure that no one came to save her. I questioned why she wouldn’t want to be saved. Mala came up with a long list of reasons. She was quite thorough with her research. She seemed confident. By the time I fell asleep, I was convinced that the girl did not want to be saved.
Next weekend, when you got another day off, you did not ask me to dress up. You asked Alexa to order two plates of Chicken Biriyani instead. When we were at the table, silently enjoying the grease on our fingers, you said something. I looked at you. Startled.
‘There’s a coaching institute nearby. Just a ten-minute rickshaw ride. You’ll start soon.’
‘Coaching for?’ I asked. The look you gave me was equal to a sudden slap.
‘NEET, of course.’
Of course. Whether I wanted to be a doctor or not did not matter to you. Did it?
Do you think she cares what I want to do with my life? I asked Mala under the table.
She was thinking when you said, ‘I missed my chance to be a doctor because of some stupid decisions. You will get the kind of coaching I did not.’
‘If I’m going to study for NEET, I need a bigger space,’ I said, not knowing where that momentary courage came from. ‘I need my own room. That one will do.’
You watched me as I pointed to that room. Your corner room.
After a long look at my stoic face, you said with a sigh, ‘We’ll see about that.’
A month later, I woke up to a neon pink – always a pink – post-it note stuck on the back of my phone.
The room is yours. Use it well. – Ma
The door to the corner room was unlocked for the first time in years. I pushed it gently. A negligible protest in the form of a squeak. You had emptied the room. There was a single bed moved against the window, a table in the other corner and a clothing rack near the veranda door. None of those abandoned paintings were here anymore. I wondered where your new graveyard was, where you dumped the remnants of your dead hobby. I had thought I would feel right at home with your paintings. Once obsessed over, now forgotten.
It took me almost a dozen trips to get all my books, clothes, and everything else that I called mine, to this room. I was carrying my small rectangular clock when I realised that it was almost time for you to be home. You had texted me asking if we could have pizza for dinner tonight. I was talking to Mala while I waited by the window.
She was making sure that I had everything ready. The pink dupatta hung in the middle of the room. I saw you walking toward the building’s gate. Three minutes, twenty-one seconds. Give or take a few. I had been timing it. I grabbed the top edge of the chair, my knuckles turning white. Wraps and knots all in place, when I heard the main door lock click open. I had already let go by then, and waited.
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Pratyusha Sen is a reader, writer, and overthinker. She’s currently recalibrating her career by blending her passion for communication and psychology with creativity. Her characters often deal with an unhealthy amount of emotional khichdi and a constant war between their dreams and duties. Her first short story, Forever Twenty-One, a silent love-hate triangle between a daughter, her inner voice, and her mother, was published in an anthology by the Purple Pencil Project.
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Photo by Nellie Adamyan on Unsplash
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