Mirror, Mirror

Five years earlier, a friend's nasty comment makes Ananya start hating her body. She decides to change into a new person-one who effortlessly fits into all kinds of clothes, who shuns food unless it's salad, and who can never be called 'Miss Piggy'-and to cut everything from her 'old' life, including her best friend, Raghu, for being the witness to her humiliation.

- Andaleeb Wajid

I felt a little guilty about the way I had been treating Ma so I went looking for her. When I didn’t find her at home, I called her phone.

‘I’m back home. Where are you?’ I asked.

‘I left you messages. You didn’t see?’

Her voice was a little muffled. Where was she?

‘No. Why? Where are you?’

‘At the gynecologist,’ she said. What? Already?

‘But you just found out yesterday!’

‘At my age, sweetie, you can’t be too careful,’ she said. ‘Okay, I have to go now.’ She hung up and I continued staring at my phone.

At her age?

Mom was just forty-three. But . . . have a baby at her age . . . I suddenly felt a spasm of fear. What if 15 something went wrong and she died? All because of this stupid baby.

My throat closed with panic. I needed to talk to someone but didn’t want to call up Nisha. Obviously, I didn’t want to talk to Anirudh about it either. I called up Papa instead.

‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice coming muffled too.

‘Are you also at the gynecologist’s?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said gruffly. ‘What is it, Ananya?’

‘I . . .’ I didn’t know how to tell him what I’d been thinking.

‘Nothing. I’ll see you at home,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ he said and he hung up too.

I sat on my bed, feeling out of sorts. I needed to do something. I needed to take my mind off this panic.