HORSE FACE

by Nayana Sivanandan

In those days, we did not take many photos. When we did, it was a big deal. Her father would bring out his old canon camera, which was locked in a steel cupboard. We all were in awe of that camera.

Her cousins applied an extra layer of white sandal powder, combed their wet hair straight, put on dresses they got from the last festival, and bit their lips to make them redder. She stood there with her uncombed hair and her home clothes in defiance. When they mocked her and shook their heads in disagreement, she went inside and wore a blouse and a skirt pulled up so high it almost touched her ribs.

She stood for the group photo with her lips tightly closed and a semblance of a smile on her face. Her mother looked at her daughter, and then at her cousins, and hissed in her daughter’s ear, you look like a horse. She didn’t mean any elegance of stride or polished finesse of an equestrian: in plain words, she meant her daughter looked pathetic.

She held herself to stop from shivering and ran to her room. One of her cousins came to knock and asked her to come down. She said she would go in five minutes. She didn’t. They continued the photo session. No one noticed her absence. She spent the rest of the day crying.

A month later, her childhood friend, a boy from the neighbourhood, came to her and told her that she was very beautiful. They were playing a game of chess. She looked up at him and started crying. She sighed and sighed and cried. Tears flowed from her eyes as if there were no stopping them. The boy got frightened. He liked her a lot. He was a shy boy. Telling her that she was beautiful was a herculean task which took him almost eight months to master. Her crying frightened him. She wanted to hear again what he had said. He didn’t look at her. He was afraid that she would tell his mother.

That day, when she looked at the mirror, she saw her face beginning to converge into a point. She lost her best friend and would never again find anyone like him.

Her face continued on shrinking, and finally became a spot in the mirror. Then, from that spot, again her face began to grow; but it was not her face. It was the face of a horse—an old horse, with eyes full of sorrow and a mane uncombed and dusty. No one else saw it, but she knew it was true. Even at night it was there. She had become a horse. She knew there was no escape, there was no turning back.

She started to go down to the kitchen to eat raw rice. Then she began to take the big plastic bottle where they kept oats, put her hand into it, and, with a greedy palm, eat fistfuls of raw oats. Like sand, some oats escaped her tight fists, but the rest she savoured in her room alone, the residue of oats smeared her lips. She rubbed her face with the back of her hand. When she was sure no one could see, she bent down in the garden, put her palms and knees in the soil, and stood like a horse and ate from the lawn. She liked the grass moist with water droplets.

An old lady from the neighbourhood came to the garden to pick a few flowers and saw her there. The old lady screamed, but with her cataract eyes she didn’t see much. The old lady ran away. She hadn’t even seen the old lady standing between the bushes of hibiscus. She was afraid that the old lady has seen the horse, so she began to skip the road that went near the old lady’s house. She was afraid that the old lady might tell her mother about her being a horse.

One day their maid saw her taking rice and oats from the big wooden cupboard and eating them raw. The maid told her mother. Her mother took her to a general physician. The doctor said she had an iron deficiency and gave her iron syrup. Her mother forcefully gave it to her—she hated the sticky syrup. They gave her oats porridge, but she hated eating the oats cooked. At night, she would wake up and neigh. She couldn’t sleep lying down, so she stood on all fours to sleep.

A month after the boy proposed to her, when she looked the mirror only her horse face peered out at her. Then, it slowly came out of the mirror. She stepped back as the horse jumped out and stood next to her. Now there was no ignoring it. And it wasn’t a silent horse: it made lots of noise. It neighed and neighed, even louder than before. Her mother came running after hearing the noise. She tried pushing the horse back into the mirror, but it didn’t go away. Her father came and started crying. He tried to hug her but the horse stood between them. Everyone could see the horse. She started laughing in relief; she needed not hide it again.

Her relatives and cousins from the neighbourhood came to visit her. The horse started jumping hysterically at seeing all the faces—the horse wasn’t used much attention. It jumped and jumped. She neighed.

They tied her up with the horse. They all talked in hushes. She saw everyone looking at her and she knew that, finally, they all could see the screaming horse. She was happy; she need not hide that horse anymore.

About the Author

Nayana Sivanandan lives in Bangalore, India. She enjoys writing and photography. Her poem has been published in Wingless dreamer.