They’ve already won. Without lifting a finger. So here I am. Unaware, complicit slave. My chains are subtle, hardwired into my DNA…generations of good, solid middle class upbringing. What do you do when the last bastion of mindless bureaucratic evil, of fear, of polite envy, of righteous hypocrisy also smells of your childhood? When it reminds you of summer holidays and car trips with families like us, of playing in the shade of identical ‘company’ flats, of attending birthday parties with ice-cold dahi vada, of dancing to Do re me on the gramophone, of finally being allowed to watch the parent censored bits from Sound of Music on the home VCR, our gadget of aspiration. What do you do when you are charmed by the cocoon of naivete and innocence and are disgusted when the maggots of repression and respectability emerge. Of being thankful for being loved and being taught to be honest and good and kind but cringe at how the goodness is extended freely to only "people like us". When the sense of entitlement ringing in the voices of your kith and kin makes you want to tear out a part of yourself---the part that expects similar things and articulates it in perfect English.
So I dream of being skinned. I dream of my skin breaking, flesh tearing apart voluntarily. Splitting, the tear spreading down my face, down the nose, the lips, the chin…the muscles unravelling, the sinews breaking, parting cleanly. Till the white below shows. The expressionless skull. Tearing further still, down between my breasts, tearing apart the fat, the intricate weave of blood, the pounding heart, the cunt. Till all that is left is clean bone with no markers left, of gender, of identity, of whom I’ve loved and who have loved me, stripped of all that is expected of me and of what I expect…all gone, wrapped as they were in the flesh that wrapped me. I sit, bone clean, on the edge of my bed and feel unsoiled, the bloody mess at my feet. Now if only I could walk away.