Natasha

One of my favourite smells is the smell of curry leaves and chopped onion being sautéed in oil. My mother’s cooking. Home. It was the most comforting smell for me when I studied abroad in Manchester for a year and a half. I would walk 10 minutes to the store in the freezing cold, on the deserted, dimly lit streets, at lonely times of the night, just to get those leaves.

I must smell them, I must make an extravagant meal even though I have looming deadlines or class in the morning. So what if it is 3 am?

I would look up complicated recipes online, and plan my dishes, more than I would tend to my work or social-ize with my flatmates. It was desperation. It was salva-tion. Whatever tiny reminder I had of home. It was the smell that quelled my loneliness for a few hours.

SAMEBodies.Style.Dress.Smile.

Walking into the club, I did not know why I was there. I was hit by a wave of nausea as my body rejected my actions and my stomach churned. I felt grossly out of place. I met a friend, she was drinking her wine. Cool, calm, just like her slick city life. Another iconic club to scratch off Dubai’s top nightlife spots. It was so not me. Atleast not anymore. So grown up, but in a different way. In that harsh way when you force yourself into experiencing things that erode your innocence slowly but surely. But you don’t know why. Like it is a

Oh how powerful the men must feel. Surrounded by groups of beautiful women who dote on everything they say, naturally, of course. As another bottle of champagne is brought in, with sparklers intact, their ego and empty sense of masculinity must have skyrocketed. “More drinks for the women!”

Never again, I promised myself, will I step into a club with such nauseating vanity.

I go back home and log in to Facebook, only to find my friend’s posts about her amazing night of club hopping.

How trendy and happening she sounds.

rite of passage that you didn’t need in the first place. Obscene spending. Obscene money. Vulgarity screaming out of the women’s minimal, but classy clothes and cocktails in every sense. Ironic. Laughable.

Who said you needed a strip club to shock you? The job could be done equally well in the plushest club, in an Islamic country!

Even while I fake danced with this group of much older women who were also pretending to enjoy themselves, I could not help but observe all the perfect, plastic women around me.

Same bodies. Same style. Same dress. Same smile.

Do I match up to that? Wait! Why am I even comparing myself to them? I need to get out! I must! I cant breathe. “I need to leave. Im sorry.” My friend nods understandingly, “I know, too many gold diggers.” she says. She still chooses to mention that they were going to check out two other, again great, clubs after this, in hopes of convincing me to stay.

I put my horrifically expensive drink down. I walk out as fast as I can in my heels, trying to hide my awkward stride. And maintain my class. But screaming inside. Burning inside, as I walk past the fully clothed yet extremely suggestive women dancing on the podiums, and the herds of models swooning after the only 3 men at their table.

The man looks thin, and from my knowledge, he was quite old. He looked like he was in his mid 60s. It made me feel awkward, to be carried by someone as old as that. But he was surprisingly strong, and didn’t get tired. It looked like he had been riding the cycle rickshaw for years. His means of income is so simple and earnest, earning a mere 10 rupees for a 5 minute drive. It was a humbling experience because he represented the simple minded, hard working class that form the smaller cities in India. Like the tired backbone of India on which the country and its metropolitan cities are developing and being industrialized at a dizzying pace, at the cost of the lower, hardworking class being exploited.

I was very blessed to travel as much as I did when I was a child. I saw some of the most revered artwork, heritage sites and scenic beauty across Europe, South East Asia, India. But I didn’t care. At the age of eight, all that I looked forward to was the fact that Mcdonalds was the only cheap meal we could afford while travelling, to my delight. I looked forward to the long haul night flights, train journeys, and fluffy hotel beds. I loved the huge breakfast spreads at the hotels too. I would eagerly wait for the end of the day of hectic touring. “When are we going to pass by an ice cream cart so that I can whine about the heat at a coincidental time?” I would wonder. I’d pester my parents to return to the hotel so that I could spend the remaining hours of daytime in the pool, or flipping through cartoon channels on TV. I believed in sleeping in, while my parents nagged at me to wake up at 8am to make it in time for the floating market in Thailand or some other tourist attraction. Most of my pictures show a sulking face, because I was probably sulking about how tired I was. I don’t remember much of the monuments or paintings we saw, but I do know that I collected these memories and formed my own, unique pattern of the newer cultures over my existing cultural identity.

During middle school, I was always associated with my last name- Koshy. Koshy’s sister, in particular, after my brother’s infamous shenanigans in school. I was popular, amongst the seniors, and people would coolly attach a light tone of respect to my name when they found out I was Koshy’s sister. I would carry this second-hand fame around school with a hint of pride, feeling immune to the petty troubles of high school. Teachers would pause for a second, with caution, the first time they read my full name out during roll call. They would observe me in my natural environment, or that is what I felt or imagined at least. After a few classes, to their surprise and delight, they would warm up to my diligent nature and respect for authority, which my brother greatly lacked. Some of my peers in the boy’s section of the school would be abnormally hesitant to speak to me, and if they did muster up the courage, they’d often mention the bully routine he would usually exercise on them. And so, after my brother graduated from high school, I, ironically enough, inherited his popular name- Koshy- within my friend circle. University has however, allowed me to reinvent and rediscover myself as: Natasha.

koshy