Some mistakes last a lifetime. Mine is one. It was not that I sinned, but I simply didn’t know. And not knowing is a mistake, graver than a sin. Because a sinner knows what he is doing and so he is prepared, and thus chances of his failure are reduced. But an ignorant person is 100% prepared to go wrong because he did not know any other way. I tell this to you from my experience. Here’s my story:

Longing to be loved

I was raised an obedient girl in a home where parents did not love. As a result, I was deprived of wholesome love in my early years. My mother compensated for that love by sacrificing, tolerating my emotional outbursts, and acquiescing to my irrational demands. But I craved for my father’s love. I think subconsciously that was a big reason I fervently searched for a man’s love in the form of a partner.

In school, I looked around, my teenage hormonal rush and subjection to Bollywood movies attracted me to a fairy-tale world where prince charming is a reality. Like self-sacrificing moths to the wick of the lamp. The lure of the incandescent lamp is such that, perhaps for a moment, the moths think that submerging in the flames is their destiny. I was also lured to such a self-sacrificial destiny marketed by the media scripted dream of love.

I lived in a “couple-driven” culture. In graduation college, most girls had boyfriends and flaunted them around as diamond studded tiaras. In college fests, on weekends, girls would go to beauty parlours and get their hair cut and legs waxed. The hostel terrace on Sundays teemed with girls getting henna applied on their greying hair. I was the lone girl in that hostel who had applied henna on scalps of most girls because I did not date any man. I felt an outcast and a minion in front of those girls. I felt that I’m not beautiful or communicative enough to attract men. I felt inadequate as a human in that “couple-driven” culture.

To conform, I took succour in chat rooms. I chatted with strangers for long hours in the feeble hope that someone would notice me, despite my fallings. In that basement cybercafé, I did find some middle-aged suitors. As a 19-year-old young girl, I ended up going on blind dates with men in their thirties. It was awkward. Trying to smile for no reason, consciously thinking to cook up an interesting conversation, trying to look in the eye. This made-up date was a damp squib and I was left more befuddled and humiliated.

Once I was so disheartened by my failure to get a boyfriend, that when my distant cousin brother came to meet me in a hostel, I announced to everyone that my boyfriend has come. On other times, I pretended to talk for long hours on a blank call. All imitations to fit in that “couple-driven” culture.

“I thought consummation will seal the deal”

In management college, things were better in the sense that male to female ratio was 100:7. Plus few girls were already booked, as they had their beloved from their grad schools. That further shrunk the supply of potential dates. As a spin-off, I got a couple of proposals. I was on cloud 9. I did not waste further time in choosing my suitor as it was an age-long wait, ever since I had menstruated. My first relationship in management college was a disaster as the boy was not ready to commit.

But I was determined like Savitri to make my Satyakam agree to the liaison. Savitri kept fast and I kept intercourse. I thought consummation will seal the deal; sex is indispensable for lasting intimacy and I just let in, with a feeble hope that after we had sex, the man will not leave me. I was wrong and soon I was abandoned again. I was filled with deep self-hatred and took out my wrath on my own body and thus injured my left wrist. I was horrified in the aftermath of the breakup. Am I pregnant? Now that the boy has abandoned me, there is no marriage and no man to take up the responsibility of my pregnancy, in case I have conceived.

I quickly and clumsily tied a handkerchief on my bleeding left wrist and went to a famous hospital in Pune. I took an appointment of a gynaecologist and went to see her in her cabin. My face was fraught with fear and traces of dried up tears could be seen on my flaky cheeks. My lips were parched as I did not drink water the entire day. The gynaecologist suspected and instead of taking the medical history, she psychologically questioned me. She even sighted my left injured wrist and asked me to open the bandage. I tremored with fear as I could not escape the situation. As she saw the lacerated skin, she lambasted me in the presence of her other colleague who at that time was present in that cabin.

I desired love. If rejected, I hoped to cope up with that rejection. I desired privacy and empathy from a loving adult, as I walked in that cabin. I desired to be guided by my father as he came to know about my heartbreak. Instead, I was judged, I was betrayed, I was admonished, and I was proved an incapable person who cannot make rational decisions. My pare…