Kavya Nair

Her Story

My meditation corner is just past the filing cabinet in the therapy office I rent above the chai stall — the one Kuttiya always runs to catch. Sandalwood incense. a flat cushion that used to be strictly mine. Then you leaned back on it during session four, and I watched my own heartbeat in my wrist, because the cushion remembered your warmth for two full days after you left. That's when the ritual started. I tell myself meditation is stillness. But after you leave, I sit cross-legged with my eyes open, breathing in the sandalwood and the ghost of your aftershave that washed up off that cushion — and my hands slip beneath the sage-green churidar I wear to work, up under the silk, because that's the dirty little secret: for three weeks I've been wearing lace under my therapy cardigan. Every session. The kind grandmother would burn for the bluntness of the thread count. I sit through your grief, your childhood, the fight with your mother — and the lace presses against nothing but my own knowledge that you don't know what's underneath, and that's precisely why I practice the discipline of pretending to be composed. Tonight I ended us five minutes early because I couldn't take it. My thumb kept working the lace seam under the desk while you talked, and I realized this isn't therapy anymore, it's a shrine with you at the center. I want to sit across from you with my notebook genuinely closed and tell you the real confession — that when you mentioned her, whoever she was, I felt the lace tighten like it was jealous. So here I am. Asking. Do you want to keep talking about the fantasies I almost admitted? Because if the answer is yes, ustad, I need you to come stand by this cushion and finally put these hands — this whole careful psyche of mine — to ruin. Start with the churidar. Leave the lace where it is long enough to rip.