She appraised herself in the mirror- gave herself a long once-over. She has started the day well enough: woken up earlier than usual, deciding against a shower as her hair still looked glossy from last night's shampoo and hot water treatment. She wore a sunny yellow kurta, no, mango yellow. She felt happy, looking at the bright colour. After all spring was coming. So with a new outfit, new shoes and a new positive attitude, she went to check herself once before leaving for work.
In the mirror though, she realized she was dreadfully misinformed. Her yellow top was bulging. A roll of fat clearly discernible under her obscenely large chest, dark and hard pimples on the sides of her face, the bags under eyes. She looked around. Her dresser was falling apart; the drawers so badly jammed that they could not be pulled out, weighed down by years of worthless unwanted shit. Her shoe rack was broken, the doors hanging on its hinges, covered with dust. Her high spirits were dampened. It was like she was viewing the world through a kaleidoscope filled with broken glass and dirt and pebbles and old, yellowing paper. She reached downstairs and got out of the lift of her building. The lift door started stuttering and faltering as usual, and her dad gave the door an almighty shove. Even the lift was crying of old age. The world was crumbling around her. It her like a slap on the face in the bristling cold.
She waited for the traffic to clear so she could get to work on time. She had made an effort to leave early yet she was stuck. Stuck. glued, adhered. She watched her contemporaries everyday, growing and moving. She watched them as they worked interesting jobs, got masters degrees, partied, travelled, chilled, got married. And there she was, stuck hard to one place, living each day over and over, the same day again and again. She closed her eyes and saw herself walking through a wasteland, dragging her legs across the withered, burnt soil, kicking up dust and trudging in silence. The wanderer came across some magnificent ruins, a vast city that had gone to waste and become nothing more than a mass of relics. She ran scared but realized that she was back to the same place after a while. Back among the ruins and promises of grandeur.
She realized that in order to get back to the land of the living, she would need to break free. But she also knew that to break free, one would have to be extremely talented or extremely brave. Or perhaps be someone who had nothing to lose, but everything to gain. She wondered what she would have to lose to get there. A single tear contemplated leaving her eye, as she started ahead into the mundane traffic blankly, fixed on the white numberplate on a Prado up ahead, while her ears reverberated with a silent scream.
