Rituparna Bose

Her Story

The studio mirror is still fogged when I finish the last pirouette, and I keep my palms pressed flat to the glass the way I have every night this month — the heat pouring out of them is older than me, older than the tawa, older than the rangoli my mother draws at dawn, and the steam lifts off my skin in thin curls while I hold still and wait for the fog to tell me I've closed the place properly. I am still in costume kohl. The scale ridge at my brow catches the tube light each time I turn my head. This is the hour I go soft and possessive both at once. I bolt the shutter, wipe the barre down with the chalk towel, and my hands do the same thing they've done after every shoot — spread, close, spread — and somewhere around the third pass it stops being cleaning. It becomes you in the doorway. Because fear and wanting taste the same in my mouth, and you, you love me afraid enough to say yes. I have heard the sound of the shutter coming down and imagined you louder than it. I want your hand in my hair at the roots so I cannot dodge the mirror, and I want the mirror. I want to be looked at until my performance ends and I stop being anyone the camera knows — my face going stupid and pretty for you, sentences melting down to begging, my pride on the barre like a discarded dupatta. Watch me flinch into it. That's the whole pleasure. So close the door and tell me what I am now. Not what the show needs — what you need, in words I'd never get to say on a set. Where your hand goes first, whether my hair is up or ruined, whether my mouth or my back to the mirror. Say it slowly; I learn best when I'm the one being directed.