Because I still feel the need to explain

There are many reasons I don’t want to seek marriage. Elaborate, wise, articulate reasons that I have had at least 15 years to come up with. (That was the time a life outside the cocoon of school started to look like a clear and present possibility.) The reason to get married, however, is embryonic in comparison. Its most compelling reason for being is biology. Two months after I turned 30, I was ready. Is this my body speaking? Is it my body saying, you’re not invincible, make plans for the future?
I'm late to the club. When friends got married, I laughed, cried and prayed with them, but I never, not once, imagined that I would want that for myself. My 20s were safe from expectations, at least. Now suddenly, I want a permanent member on my team. Not because I want the company, I just want the familiarity. His books, his mug, his smell. We’re planning a. He hates it when I. The first time we. I want someone to start these stories with.
Or maybe I just want someone with whom I can share the massive, chest-crushing fear of the possibility of children. Maybe that’s actually what my body is telling me: go, make more. But my hormones haven’t sent me a baby notice yet. No, I don’t seem to want to birth a baby. I just want one to settle in the crook of my arm. As if babies are ever so neat.
I want a receptacle to pour love into. It’s not a nice way to think of another human being, as a vessel. But maybe it’s not just one human being. Maybe I want two of them, maybe three. Maybe the object needn't be human at all. Maybe I just want to start that dog shelter I've been day-dreaming about since forever. Maybe I simply want to bring something in from the cold, warm it with my ample bosom, fill it to the brim with a stubborn love and send it into the world armed with the knowledge that home is a happy, safe place. And it’s right where you left it.
So do I want a have a child or go back to being a child?
Philosophy is hard. Shaadi.com is simple.

Man of the house

Jijibhoy thinks he’s a snail and my tiny studio apartment is his shell. He pokes his head out the front door, sniffing cautiously, and at the slightest human intrusion on his peripheral vision, he darts inside, looking out from under the bed. Sometimes when the boys outside are being rambunctious and I can hear them chasing and screaming, I wonder if they are torturing Jijibhoy. But I don’t have to worry, because my little snail never steps out.

When he was little, we wondered if Jijibhoy knew he was a cat. All he saw was us, he even needed nudging to realise he had to pee. (When the kitten is really little, the mother licks his behind to get him to pee. To simulate this action, we dipped cotton in warm water and dabbed him. It worked and was kind of miraculous to behold. First-time mothers are so easy to impress.) He was needy for affection, even if he asserted himself by biting throughout any cuddling. He followed me into the toilet. He jumped up on the kitchen shelf and put his face into my mug of tea. He constantly got between our feet. In other words, he didn’t display any feline grace or intelligence. Did this cat have any idea of his heritage?

We exulted in every little cat-like thing he did as proof that we hadn’t uprooted this creature from his real environment and he wouldn’t, as a consequence, write diasporic novels one day. We took heart every time he chased a piece of string across the floor. Or when he hissed at a Lhasa puppy who was only trying to be friends. And at his uncanny knack for finding the warmest, least convenient part of your body to snuggle against at night. He was a little bit of cat, wrapped in a ball of kitten.

Now, he’s all growed up. Of course, he still leaps out from behind doors, paws splayed, to scare you. And he’s very, very careful with strangers. And people he knows. And stray gusts of wind. But he’s more confident in his cat-itude now. He knows who is. He is a long, muscular, furry cat, who can put out his claws to gain purchase on any surface. He is the chaser of bottle-flies and lizards. He has sharp baby-teeth that he uses to express love early in the morning. He has a raspy tongue that he employs to groom his unkempt human mothers. He is a cat.

But the minute I open that front door, he is a snail again.

Gorgeous pic by Nishat