She sat in front of her mirror and tried to smile. It came out pathetic and slightly lopsided. Her face was not what she wanted to see. She wanted to see a different Maya. That person had vanished over 20 years ago. She was looking for someone who simply did not exist anymore. Each time she sat down at her dressing table, she suffered a sharp pang of disappointment. She knew she was growing older and there was nothing she could do about it but that was not what bothered her.
Just this morning she had sent her husband off on one of his innumerable business trips. He was into sales at a manufacturing company and had always insisted he wasn’t in control of his schedules and that he had a demanding job. He also adroitly hinted that she didn’t appreciate the amount of hardship he had to undergo to keep her in the luxury she was accustomed to.
She smiled to herself. How she hated the idea of his ‘sacrificing’ nature! But who would believe her? She was effectively in a gilded cage branded as being an anxiety ridden mentally unstable woman and indeed to a certain extent she now believed herself to be so. But she wasn’t this way twenty years ago. Her husband with his ever smiling facade had managed to fool everyone. There was not a single soul in the neighbourhood who would believe that he was in reality a completely different creature. The ladies who walked past her house every evening exchanging gossip, holding potluck lunches and complaining about household help mocked her openly and not so openly. ‘A neurotic middle aged woman with too much time on her hands’ was the kindest description they would arrive at. The sad fact was that the definition was all too true. Yet her husband was also responsible and his ill-treatment of her continued to go unnoticed by everyone else. She was trapped by her insecurities and the fear that her daughter would be lost to her – so she stayed.
She stayed though she knew that her husband had had innumerable affairs and actually kept a second flat in the city for the purpose of entertaining his mistresses. He could always just say that he was being forced to stay with a crazy wife and that she wouldn’t give him a divorce. Women always fell for sob stories. He would simply enjoy them for a while and then give the excuse of his wife’s dementia getting worse as the reason for having to put an end to their sweet relationship. Maya’s lips twisted into a bitter line at the thought of what she continued to put up with. The irony was that she herself had fallen in love with a classmate all those years ago and married him against her family’s wishes.
The mirror still showed her the aging face of a middle aged woman who had scanty hair that couldn’t cover the conspicuous bald patch on her head. She started losing hair when she began taking the pills – pills for high blood pressure, pills for anxiety, pills for allergies, pills to restore beauty, pills to revitalize, vitamin pills and then sleeping pills. It would be an easy matter for her to take just a few extra pills and end her miserable life. Her daughter’s face appeared in her mind. Her love for her was her only reason for existence but soon she would leave for college and then maybe find a partner on her own and then these empty rooms would haunt her. Shouldn’t she take her final step now rather than wait for that horrible loneliness to hit her?
The instinct to live however is not weak and survives most attempts at self-destruction. Slowly she moved away from the mirror and thought hard about how to pick up the ruins of her life and move on. Her husband must not have the final victory. She must not distress her daughter anymore with her fits of hysteria. She must learn to be a different person – one without her weaknesses but instead with a new strength. She did have someone to live for after all – her new self.
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