Thoughts in my head

A cheerful greeting flooded Neha's ears as she joined the online office call. They were all set for another week and would get a glimpse of what each of the team members were working on. They were encouraged to say a few words about how they were doing before plunging into work-related details, and Neha wanted to say that she had had a restful weekend. She had started reading a book, gone for a walk with her family, and had baked some banana bread. Neha had a big smile on her face at the start of the call but it started disappearing gradually as she heard what her colleagues had been up to. "What I did was hardly as exciting," she thought. By the time it was her turn to speak Neha only said, "Hi, I'm well. This week I will be working on xyz...." The call ended and Neha felt a bit deflated. "Argh! I should have told them about banana bread at least! Maybe next time." But then she had been on many of these calls over the past year and couldn't remember any occasion where she had drawn any "oohs!" and "aahs!" from the team. She rolled her eyes, walked dolefully towards the kitchen and then brightened up a bit as she made a cup of coffee. "Let's get to work now."

An hour later, while taking a break, Neha's mind drifted back to this thought, "Why don't I ever say anything exciting while I'm interacting with my colleagues?" She remembered a work-related event that had taken place about a year ago. It had started out well as she had looked presentable, knew that she would find a few familiar faces in the crowd, and had thought about a few things to say. "But my mouth had to run dry and I started panicking about bad breath! It felt like eternity before the non-alcoholic drinks were served! I did manage to say a few words after that but ended up listening a lot more." She had nodded her head, even if what the guests were saying didn't completely register in her brains. "I see, that's very interesting! You should meet my colleague here who's worked on that topic," is what she had managed to say before getting another drink. Then she had stayed at the edge of a few groups, smiling and sipping. The canapes looked tasty but she had feared that they would worsen her bad breath and so had just eaten one, maybe two. "I was so hungry," Neha thought as she bit into a muffin.

"At least I don't have to think ahead about what I should say to my family," thought Neha as she sat down for lunch with her family in the afternoon. That thought, and the warm food, helped her relax. But it only lasted a few moments as she thought, "Hang on a minute. I end up listening and barely get a word across, again!" She did find it difficult to have a conversation when there was food on the plate. Add to that, while growing up, she had been a bit slow when it came to eating food. Many a time, she would be the last one at the table and the conversation, if any, would have moved to another room. She was a lot faster at finshing her meals now since she'd become a mum and had to make sure that her child ate on time. But she didn't want to have much of a conversation now out of fear that her child would choke on her food! "Do I need to make time for conversation before or after meals? But where is the time? Maybe a few minutes right after the meal, hmmm? And how about we talk about something, anything, in the evening instead of staring at the television or our tablets?" Even as she considered that idea Neha knew it would be tough to execute as she herself had made quite a long list of shows to watch on Amazon and Netflix! Add to that the shows that her husband wanted to watch, which were quite an interesting lot. "Mummy, finished," was the announcement that drew Neha back to the table. "Oh good. Ok, go wash your hands." And they went back to work or play or somewhere in between.

Neha was checking her WhatsApp messages during her tea break and saw something funny that her friends from uni had shared. "Such a crazy lot we were, still are," she thought. There was always someone talking and cracking jokes, inside or outside the classroom. "I just kept laughing! Could hardly get a word out because I was laughing so hard!" But what of the times when it was not a joke. "By the time I could think of a response the conversation would have shifted to another topic. It would be weird to say, "Ah! Now I want to say blah, blah, blah!" She thought about a couple of times when she actually had an immediate response, and had even got her friends' attention. But she had paused too long in the middle of her sentence, looking for the right word, and that pause had been interpreted as the end of her trail of thought. And before she knew it, her friends were chatting away a mile a minute. She had shrugged her shoulders and continued listening.

After putting her child to bed at night, Neha started listening to a daily news round up on the radio. The world seemed to be tearing itself apart. She was about to turn off the radio when the news reader mentioned a sexual assault committed somewhere in the city. It brought back memories of her multiple encounters with molesters, both as a child and as an adult. They would be lurking in the bus, on the road, inside shops. Sometimes she would catch a glimpse of the molester before he disappeared in the crowd, but many a time she couldn't tell who had committed the crime. She had thought about exactly what to yell out when this happened, but who would she be yelling at if the molester was long gone? She would be yelling at clueless people who would just give her weird looks and label her as the crazy one. So, all she could do in such circumstances was to push her way to the front of the crowded bus while keeping her bag behind her back or get a cab or leave the shop. On two occasions, when she knew who had touched her or had passed a lewd comment, she had yelled out. She had even chased one of them on the road. He had the fright of his life and sped away on his bicycle. She had yelled out the worst possible expletives that she could think of. Her throat had hurt after that outburst but what hurt most was the sinking realisation that this would happen again, to her and to others. "Don't trouble yourself with unhappy thoughts, not at night," said Neha to herself. "Close your eyes and, if you want to, think about this again in the morning." She lay awake for a while but did go to sleep, eventually. 

Sipping a cup of coffee in her balcony the following morning, Neha thought less about the unhappy incidents. Instead, a squirrel in a tree had caught her attention. She was reminded of a morning, long ago, when she had been sitting quietly under a tree in her college, watching the sunrise and listening to nature's many sounds. She had been so still that a curious squirrel had jumped on her back. "That wouldn't have happened if I had been talking," thought Neha, with a smile. "Listening isn't a bad thing, it is one of my senses after all! If all of us talked aloud all the time, well, we would only be hearing our own voice and little else. I can definitely try and speak up more often, but shouldn't worry about it." The squirrel caught her attention once again as it chased another squirrel. Neha took a deep breath and headed back into the house to get started with work and play and everything in between.