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20 Musings of an introspective Aunty

The Traitor Within

Dolly Koghar explores the meaning of ‘self’

The Ides of March, groomed her with the latest and the best of trends and of peace and volumes of wisdom. But thanks to her
or the 15th of products. I neither partied nor did masti, so she could and her five senses, I experienced a glorious double-
March, is a yearly have her beauty sleep. I endured treadmills and yucky rainbow in Maui and the fuzzy warmth of a beagle’s
occurrence, except concoctions to keep her slim and trim. Despite feeding underbelly. I heard divinity in music and smelt heaven
for the historical her badam (almonds) and walnuts to ward off senility, in the strange combination of powder and the pungent
one of 44 BC, when I can’t remember what I walked into a room for, or maha-hing on a baby. I witnessed the magic of a new
Julius Caesar was where the latest place I hid my safe-deposit keys. life inside of her and the wonderment of childbirth and
stabbed to death by She’s terrific at torturing me by digging up the the most sublime feeling of love, surging through me
his best friend, Brutus. past, and when it comes to grumbling about aches as she held the newborn to her bosom.
That tragedy was skillfully and pains and the smallest of maladies, she takes In all fairness, she, my body, didn’t betray
dramatised by Shakespeare the cake. She rattles the daylights out of me every so me, I misled myself. I thought she was me and I, her. If
in a five-part play in which he often over inconsequential complaints and problems only I had fully comprehended Rumi’s words, ’we are
immortalised Caesar’s dying words of, about anything and everything under the sun, giving stars wrapped in skin,’ and devoted my precious pranas
‘Et tu, Brute?’, or ‘even you, Brutus?’ to mean treachery me blood pressure and heartache. She’s a drama queen to brushing off the grime that hid the real me: a star,
and betrayal for eternity. and everybody else saw through her, but me! unique, bright, and unblemished. A supernova in the
I too, have been betrayed by a closer, dearer friend The offspring is her own, but nobody is ever good making!
than Brutus could’ve ever been to Caesar; someone enough; she finds them complacent and nags them
who’s been with me from the moment I was born, nay, to keep up with the Joneses. She’s a pro at emotional
even earlier than that. She’s my very own body. blackmail and the poor kids don’t stand a chance to
In the long mirror, I searched for ‘me’ in the get a word in, when arguing with her. She’s always “Deep inside, she
stooped, flabby, baggy old hag with wiry, grey hair and right! Her trump card is self-deprecation. The whole hankers for recognition,
furrows in her brows; for some sparkle in the droopy past is up for scrutiny and mais oui, nothing was right,
kajal-lined eyes with crow’s-feet. The siren-red lipstick and the future is of course, always dark and bleak. an identity of her own;
mocked the lined and wilted lips. Deep inside, she hankers for recognition, an not an appendage to
My own body has been deceiving me, ravaging me identity of her own; not an appendage to someone or
stealthily from deep within myself, eroding me at my some name, but a person, an individual. Her ambition someone or some name,
cellular level. She cunningly, but progressively robbed towards that elusive crown, a fabrication of her own but a person,
me of my life-force, my pranas. imagination, has kept me so busy that I never had an individual.”
She dunnit to me even though I’ve slaved at her every time to get in touch with my real self, the inner and
whim and demand. I’ve gone to great lengths to feed higher self, or to listen to that ‘sound of silence’; a
her nutrients, and oiled her and massaged her and sound beyond the region of mind and body, the sound

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