an old rant
A beautiful baby deer wandering the jungle, mesmerised, blissfully unaware of predators in the shadows.
A tiny hummingbird that must be released into a garden of flowers.
An angel who sings lullabies until you fall into deep sleep.
These are all metaphors that men (or mothers imitating men) have used to describe me in the past. They often say how they haven’t met anyone with palms as soft as cotton and a presence that lights up their room as soon as it walks in.
It’s 18:10 on a September evening in 2025 and it’s almost embarrassing that I still have no stories to tell except those of men and mothers. I began writing about them in 2017, and all these years later, I am still circling them.
The men I know are all storytellers. One takes photographs, another writes blogs, another makes films. They have so many things to say and a craft that is perfected by saying them often. I have listened so closely, and loved so fully, that their stories live in me more vividly than they sometimes live in them.
And honestly, these men are wonderful. They have warm smiles, soft skin and big hands that keep offering themselves to hold me. There is really no good reason why I shouldn’t let them, like my mom likes to remind me.
But would you like to know why I struggle?
Let me share a dream.
Last night I had one of those bizarre survival-thriller dreams. Though, in classic Shreya fashion, it borrowed freely from disaster films, family drama, and the absurd.
It begins on the day of a family wedding.
Under relentless maternal nagging, I’ve squeezed myself into a saree and tight blouse, dabbed on a bindi, and gotten “function-ready.” Skin-hugging clothes in sweltering weather are my personal hell, but fine — I’ll suffer for my mother’s happiness.
Just as we’re stepping into the car, the ground splits open. An earthquake. Out of the cracks rises a dust-choked tornado, spinning straight from a Twister reboot. Instinct takes over: I yank my mother back, and we both cling to the nearest tree for dear life.
Mid-chaos, an idea sparks: if I can tamper with the car’s engine and set it ablaze at the tornado’s base, maybe I can destroy it. A movie-watcher’s gamble, sure, but better than waiting to be ripped apart. I lash my mother to the tree with her own saree, tie myself to her, and prepare to charge. She slaps my hand away, scandalized by the sheer indecency of dismantling her drape at a time like this. I ignore her.
Fighting wind and dust, I crawl to the car, rig it, and spark a fire. Now I just need my mother to reel me back before it blows. I wave frantically. But my mother? She’s too busy clutching her unraveling saree pleats to comprehend anything else. I lose the precious seconds. The car explodes.
Silence. Smog. Ash. Then—I open my eyes. Alive. Barely. My body is singed, my throat parched. In the distance, the sweet sound of running water. I stagger toward our neighbor’s wash area, where an open tap glistens like salvation. Two more steps and I’ll reach it—
And that’s when three men drop from the sky. Like budget Avengers, arms outstretched:
“Shreya, let me help you.”
“Where do you want to go? I’ll take you.”
“Do you need water? I’ll fetch it.”They glance at each other, then at me. All I want is the tap. All I want is to breathe.
I wake up screaming: “Get the fuck out of my way!”
—
Mother likes men with nice hands. Mother likes men with nice hands stretched in her direction.
This morning at breakfast table, with a mouthful of atukulu, I interjected, “but mummy, did I ask for his hand?”
“You can’t possibly expect to tackle all of this heavy life alone.”
“Of course not (But I killed a tornado all by myself, and I needed water, not a hand).”
I couldn’t possibly attempt to explain the dream to her.
—
When I was seventeen, I dated a twenty-five-year-old. During our first meeting, he told stories of his travels: mountains, rivers, lakes, ganja, musicians, graffiti, tattoos, artists, and small-town revolutionaries. Till then, I had only heard such stories through books or from older men in my family. Back then, a man full of stories outside my family meant the possibility of someday having stories of my own to tell. He became a dream; he loved being a dream.
Later, I fell for a man after reading his movie scripts — stories about love and personal insecurities this time. They offered a different dream from the last: a dream of deep love and looking inward. He too loved being the dream, until he wasn’t.
Then I fell for another man because he wrote about mothers and of feeling like a fish out of water. But he was too real from the beginning; I could not reduce him to a dream. He did not want to be a dream.
Sometimes I hate myself for not allowing, or not knowing how to allow, myself to invest in anyone the way I invested in men. And then I realise how my mother never taught me to love anyone else, not even myself.
So many of my years went by wanting to be a man’s dream too. And there’s nothing wrong with that — it can be so much fun to be someone’s dream — but not if their dreams are so small that you have to shrink yourself to fit inside them, and you don’t even realise it until it’s too late.
I think I must not have paid attention to anyone or anything else, because all I remember are the stories of these men, running over and over in my head like chantings. But I try to push back against that thought, because I know many non-male friends who carry stories honest and worth listening to. They just don’t talk about themselves as relentlessly as these men.
I wish they did.
I wish I did.
I kept hoping to find a partner who would be non-narcissistic enough to make space for me to speak, to be loud, to be angry. (Oh, how I wish to be angry!) But that was still me waiting for someone else to hand me the mic. A woman who does not have the space to be angry, to yell, is a sad, sad woman. I was a sad, sad woman. These days, I stomp the floor in the shower, mutilate pillows, stab kitchen knives into chopping boards, and piss my mother off as much as I can.
One day my anger will leave the house and show itself.
Perhaps then my stories will stop being about men and mothers. Perhaps then I will be able to read a city even if a man has written it first.
It is embarrassing and extremely difficult for someone as stubborn and angry as me to admit to jealousy. Jealousy for a gender I’ve tried my whole life not to be subordinated by. But here it is anyway.
I’m jealous of how easily they believe their stories are worth telling. Jealous of how effortlessly they talk about themselves. Jealous of how all they need to do is extend their big soft hands and think themselves worthy of trust. Jealous of how an expression of discomfort at their actions makes them cast themselves as misunderstood and me as too emotional, too insecure.
I’m jealous of you, men.
And I wonder: could a jealous, angry woman ever be capable of loving that which she is jealous and angry of?
Either way, I cannot escape loss.