A Self-explanatory Picture Reel

By Neethu Krishnan

The one with the cast of doctors

A junior doctor, my palm in his, fingers entwined. Something about grip testing. I have to resist his pressure or not let him open my fists. The exact details, lost to unfrequented memory. Fruitless repetitions of the same battery of tests have automated me. I am as impersonal and impatient as he. An interruption: another white coat chatting to him mid-test. My eyes rest on the still-laced hands, snapshot the sorry bracket of cold contact.

*

Different year, another hospital. Consultant cardiologist shuffles to my bed, asks dad to step out, shuts the door. This is new. I am unsure if a panicking is warranted. A stoic, creased face asks in a monotone if I am physically active. Not much, I shrug. He looks disappointed at my moronic response. His cataracted gaze bores into my forehead as he reframes the question, enunciating “sexually active” like I am an idiot. I am mortified. I squeak out a No, saucer-eyed. He prods if I am sure, if I have no boyfriend. Lava laces my ears. I assure him I do not have one with juvenile defiance. Never had or will, I bite between my teeth, but don’t spit.

My mind retrieves for me neon shame—the Polaroid of a doctor’s frosty finger nubbins in mine—the choice distillate of the countless medical examinations of recent past, courtesy of the advent of an undiagnosed illness. It is a humiliating stretch to even qualify this touch as physical contact, but this is the closest and only approximation of it that I’ve known outside of familial bounds.

I could not be less bothered about a love life if I tried, but in the blazing flame of embarrassment, I am mad at the whole of me for not complying with the self-preserving, age-appropriate, checklist-fulfilling Thumbelina in me, who only demands I try to substitute, if only in fantasy, touching the finger valleys of another person with something charged, intimate, romantic.

The senior doctor noisily clears his throat and with it, my fleeting resentment. The corners of his mouth twitch a little, trying and failing at a friendly smile. Don’t mind, we are required to ask such personal questions, he apologizes on his way out.

The one with boys, reel and real

Every year, English newspapers, in their entertainment section, publish the fifty most desirable men and women, shortlisted from the world of popular sports and films, the ones that enjoy the most limelight, voted for by readers. In school and early college, when everyone had someone to gush about, pixelated or with breath, I would study these glossy, ranked photographs like pinned specimens; scrutinize faces, the spreads of flesh. Spotting a pair of kind eyes or aesthetically pleasing profile symmetries, I would rejoice in the victory of having some semblance of normalcy. I was not blind to beauty, after all. Notch up the game, try to picture anything beyond friendly handshakes or waving from a distance. Ridiculous. The hope for something—anything—to churn in me if only at the cost of torturous concentration and painstakingly chiseled imaginations, always ended up roadkill.

*

This guy whose romantic advances I repeatedly thwart curses me more than once—that I too suffer from unrequited love or the burn of abandonment—so I would taste his entitled bitterness for once. My inability to understand his “love” is a personal affront to him. A farce to shirk him off with an invalid, dumb substitute of an excuse. (I had yet to grow a spine or learn to wield No as a complete, forceful statement.) I am not like other girls, I offer in apology. This sounds narcissistic, obviously, like I am above the trivialities of the plebeian, romantic inclinations of my peers. When in reality, my feelings of insufficiency sometimes border on the grotesque, making me think I am missing a vital romantic limb that every other girl my age flexes so effortlessly.

Prone to idiot compassion, I am devastated for the guy. He had set his eyes on the only stone replica in a school of dancing, beckoning silver fish.

On my eighteenth, he sends me suites of passive-aggressive texts masquerading as birthday wishes. He segues his monologue from the possibilities of driving to voting to “now that you are eighteen you are free to have sex with anyone.”

It shocks my system. Why? I ask, appalled, on autopilot, not considering that the other side of the screen is manned.

Smug comes his reply. Because you are legally an adult, you can do it with whomever.

I meant why me, why the vitriol, why this adult thing thrust at still-a-child me, most of all, why my recoil at this seemingly normal act? All addressed to my inner committee shrugging nonchalant and not the dejected guy who was trying his best to hang on as “cool” friend until I eventually came to my senses, like all the girls in the vanilla films he worshipped did when they realized true love’s kiss was plain-clothed and patiently waiting in the pining, stalkerish friend all along.

I would stonewall him from my life later when I was no longer jellyfish, but that would be months from this conversation. His tiny black words framed by my tiny white screen that day stung, a slap of adulthood I did not anticipate to fly my way. I was, by default of my age, a candidate capable of consent in the eyes of others, but I had never ever regarded participating in acts requiring such consent even a remote plausibility for me. The fact that it never even occurred to place myself inside the bubble of consent and romantic relationships was an obvious indicator of my naivety, of how I assumed everyone felt the same as me, unperturbed and unaffected by hormones or fantasies.

I believed sex and romance to be beatific artefacts in literature and media, like the absurd breeze that chased only silver-screen heroines, depriving the plain sidekicks around her of similarly angelized appearances despite them sharing the same air bubble. Unrealistic, doctored, fantasy. Physical intimacy abounded in books and screens, and much to my surprise, in real life, but I figured this was a result of life imitating art. I was not repulsed by any of it, but I just could not wait to skip ahead to more relevant plot points or arcs of consequence in both.

The one with girls, now women

A handwritten note—from a school best friend addressed to sixteen-turned me—wishes for me a husband and not a boyfriend because the latter is only an invitation to pain. I do not get the relevance of either in a birthday card. Or life.

*

Another school friend catching up on WhatsApp is aghast. Still single? What are you waiting for? Prince Charming?

I am malleable. Buds of twenty only beginning to unfurl. A cryptic corner in me concedes I have God-level unrealistic standards and it is only a matter of time or fate or whoever the horsemen are, to deliver someone custom-cut, complementary. I am conveniently blind to the fact that no person, fictional or real, even for a wink, irrespective of gender, has ever been pictured in a fantasy. Or that I have never had fantasies to begin with. Or even the bare minimum of puberty-onset, garden-variety crushes.

*

A college friend trembles noticeably when she recounts her latest dating endeavors. Explains to me in-unasked-for filmic detail the way he holds her, cradles her body, the way her longing scalds through her even after she is home after being at his for long, slow-burn hours. Her voice tremors, cheeks pink, fingers quiver like baby bird chests. I am puzzled and mesmerized by the strange hold of desire. I am a good listener. I nod along as if it is natural, as if I understand even a smidgen of her agony.

Listening to her woes, a momentary, guilty pinhead of relief pricks me. Having basic control of my faculties and not fearing it galloping wild in the presence of someone inviting, attractive, is a privilege I have unknowingly enjoyed all my life, I remind myself; maybe that is silver lining enough to never being licked by desire.

I empathize as best as I can with her dilemma of maddening pangs ravaging her waking hours. She knows he is not right, he is toxic, he eats into her productive mental space, but his words and magnetism win over her wits in the end anyway, she bemoans. After describing each new wave of desire, the softness of his lips or the gentleness of his touch or the electricity of their contact, she goes you know, you know, you know as if it is shared primal knowledge, like hunger or thirst. I do not tell her yet, I don’t.

---

Neethu Krishnan is a writer based in Mumbai, India, who writes between genres. She holds an MA in English and an M.Sc. in Microbiology, and her work has been curated in 35+ international literary venues, including The Spectacle, Prairie Fire, The Four Faced Liar, and elsewhere. She is a Best of the Net poetry nominee, Bacopa Literary Review Creative Nonfiction Award winner, and 2024 Erbacce Poetry Prize longlisted poet. You can find her @neethu.krishnan_ on Instagram and her works at https://neethukrishnan.carrd.co/.

---