Page 27 of The Ex Factor

SUJIT

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Aarti said with a pensive curve of her lip. “Who am I? Is it who I am, or who I’ve become? And is our self-perception influenced by how others see us?”

I contemplated her questions while nursing the glass in my hand.

“You know how I feel?” she asked, sitting up in the chair. “Like no one has ever loved me for me. No one knows who I am. What I am.”

Uncertain if she wanted my verbal input, I reserved my words and kept my eyes on her.

“You know what I love? I love reading, and I love someone reading to me. I used to lay with my head in Mom’s lap, and she’d read to me every night until I was almost ten. I love that feeling of sharing stories with someone. I want to share a gasp when something intriguing happens in a book. I love to read aloud sentences that are strung together by the sheer beauty of the language. And you know how many people know this about me?”

I shook my head.

“One. My mom. I was all set to marry him, but even Sameer didn’t know this. He never had time. Now I know he never had time for me.”

Her eyes glazed, dimming the happy gleam in them from a moment ago.

“What else do you love?” I asked, and she looked at me with surprise.

“You really want to know?” she asked with a lilt in her voice.

“I do.” I sat back and crossed my ankles on the hassock.

“I love doing my own makeup. I love pampering myself because only I know what I like. I love a well-made tiramisu.”

I smiled. “And here I thought you were a chocolate cake gal.”

She laughed in response. “But no one knows any of this about me because no one asked. People always assume things about me because of how I look or who my father is. Right from the first boyfriend I had in high school to Sameer and every other man who wanted to marry me, I’ve been an heiress who was incredibly hot. I was only ever defined by two things: my looks and my father’s wealth.”

I let a beat of silence pass before saying, “That’s unfortunate.”

“You’re defined by your wealth, too,” she observed. “And it is unfair. Your worth is measured in terms of your assets—the car you drive, the expanse of the home you live in, the brand of clothes you wear, your lifestyle. In today’s shallow world, the allure and the enigma of a billionaire surpasses the evils that wealth inequality has created in our society.”

Fuck!These were my words in her voice. If I thought I was impressed with her before, she just turned this into a full-blown admiration.

“But,” she said, and I reined in my walloping heart. “The burden of the body that women are made to carry is so unfair, so cumbersome.”

I wasn’t going to argue with that.

“My closest friend in college, Isha, was a fat activist,” she said. “She identified as fat, politically. She didn’t mince words. No fatacceptance, she used to say. Acceptance assumes toleration. Why should fat people expect to be tolerated? We have a right to exist as we are.”

I nodded.

“As a fat person, society expected her to hate her body, but she didn’t. And she wanted to be with someone who understood that. She didn’t want to be in a relationship, even casually, who didn’t see her body as a part of her, and vice versa.”

Aarti was in the zone now, her eyes fixed on a spot behind me.

“At that time, I didn’t give it much thought, because I possessed the ideal body type as defined by society. I thought my situation was different. Then I heard what men had been saying behind my back, and I realized that Isha and I were not that different after all. We both were defined through our bodies. Following in her footsteps, I decided I didn’t want to be with anyone who didn’t respect my body the same way I did. The only purpose of my body is not to be fuckable, to be there for others’ pleasure. She wasn’t seen as more than her body, and neither was I.”

“I’m sorry, Aarti.”

She let out a hysterical laugh. “Are you going to apologize to all women? Because most of us have been through this.”

I grew thoughtful. “I think as a society we can keep apologizing to women, and it will never be enough for all the crap we’ve put you through.”

“You got that right,” she said with a snort, then her eyes turned soft. “In fact, even though I later found out that Sameer didn’t love me, he was the only one who’d made me feel good about myself in a long time. Yes, he used me to reinstate hisfamily name, but he saw me as a person. He respected me. He wasn’t faking that. He’s a good man, and I hate saying this, but Tara is lucky to have him.”

He was lucky to have Tara, but I didn’t mention it.

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