Home > Work > Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
1 " It was as though the throttling nature of the cloth against her mouth wanted to sentence her to a lifetime of silence. "
― Insha Juneja, , Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
2 " No one cares about your happiness, Udita. We’re just supposed to serve as wombs for patriarchy’s narcissistic desire for an endless line up of sons. "
3 " At exactly 11.11pm, a baby took its first breath in the Jhareja household. By 11.13 pm, the entire family’s faces bore frowns, all their hopes shattered into a million pieces. An atmosphere of gloom and melancholy settled over the entire household. The sombre and bleak looks on their faces seemed so distasteful that it seemed like they were in more agony than the time the head of the family had passed away. Udita’s daughter, Kairavi had been born. "
4 " I love you, Ayesha. What would I do without you?" Zorawar said in the platonic way he'd always told her that he loved her."I love you too, Zorawar. Always have always will." she said ambiguously. "
― , Imperfect Mortals : A Collection of Short Stories
5 " Maybe I'd spent way too long fighting for love, not realizing that all this while, I was fighting my fear of not wanting to lose someone I'd known forever.Maybe Zara and I too were always meant to be unfinished business. "
6 " The only question I ask myself is: did we teach each other the meaning of love for ourselves or someone else? "
7 " But had we become so awfully used to this love because it was the only kind of love we thought existed? What if love was supposed to be easier and not only be about 'fighting through the hard times and the dark clouds'? And what if there weren't supposed to be this many dark clouds and what if love was not supposed to be this hard? "
8 " I waited for her outside her house and saw her approaching in the aqua-blue dress I had gifted her on her last birthday. She obviously remembered my love for that colour on her and how I always told her that it complimented her skin beautifully. My heartbeat increased just a little as she sat in my car and the scent of her signature perfume- Chanel No 5- diffused in the air of my car. Her sleek-straight hair fell on her face."Hi Neel. How have you been?"I thought about the first month of sleepless nights, crying, sulking and overthinking and said, "I've been okay. "
9 " And in just ten seconds of giving our souls to each other, we knew, if not forever, at least tonight we would live as though it was the last day to love. "
10 " But is the timing of a thing supposed to be everything?I do, I do want all my ends and beginnings to be with you.But are you supposed to be one brick in the wall of my life and not the brick that completes it?Are you supposed to be one chapter in my book and the insignificant corner of my jigsaw puzzle?Did you and I collapse into each other for this one big pool of tears?Or is there more to it?I still think we could make the world a better place together and be strong for each other, and go till the ends of the world with each other.But at what cost?Please don't say at the cost of our peace.Because that's when you will give up and that's when you'll break my heart. "
11 " You and I will always be unfinished business. "
12 " That was when I realized I had no control over my actions anymore. All I knew was that though no one knew what hell felt like, my life had become a version of fire and brimstone. My restrictive anorexia was completely and inexorably interfering with my ability to live like a normal human being. "
13 " My life was now determined by the number on the scale or the digits behind food containers. But I was completely okay with it as long as my 24” waist size never felt even a tad tighter. But if it ever did, hell would freeze over, resulting in 21-day fasts until I felt thin enough. "
14 " He helped me sit up on my bed and tried to force-feed me glucose dissolved in water and a biscuit he’d grabbed from my roommate’s bedside. But I spat it right out, still thinking about calories and numbers.“That’s enough, Amira. I’m literally trying to feed you water. It’s not going to hurt you!” he screamed. "
15 " I remembered all those times when the people around me believed that I had spent the last two years of my life faking an eating disorder for the sole purpose of attention. For that reason, every day I would read a thousand articles and watch a hundred videos on real survivors who’d battled anorexia. Then I would question myself. My ribs aren’t popping out of my stomach, so maybe it’s actually just in my mind. Then after a few days of surviving on nothing at all, I would look at myself, see my ribs popping out and ask myself, Am I now? "
16 " The better question is: Do you want to recover?”I didn’t have an answer; I wasn’t sure. Recovery sounded great on paper and in the calm and casual way he said it. But why did the very thought of recovery seem like the most excruciating and difficult thing? What if I started hating myself after a few months of making conscious efforts to be a healthy person again? What if recovery meant being fat all over again? What if I wasn’t ready?“I’m not sure,” I said. "
17 " It was haunting to be entangled in this obnoxious cycle. I want to get out of this viciousness. That pizza is staring at me. I think that slice of pie might hurt me. Thirty-five calories for an Oreo cookie; 75caloriesfor a slice of bread; 285 for a slice of pizza; 350for a plate of pasta. You know, maybe I’ll just study the digits of eggs, wheat, vegetables, apples, oranges. Ugh! Stop. It all hurts so much. That’s it. Make it stop. Please, I beg you. Just make it stop. I felt like the walking and living encyclopedia of numbers and digits. "
18 " It wasn’t like I had started magically eating two entire meals in a day. I would still survive the day with black coffee and apples, but it just seemed like I’d taken one step heavenwards. The mirror felt a little less frightening with each passing day. It was refreshing to talk to someone who was fully convinced that my eating disorder was as real as I thought. "
19 " Everything was going perfectly well until Dr. Roy paused for a long minute to stare at me with utter shock and revelation. I knew I had messed up. I should have just worn my black, full-sleeved dress instead. But again, I thought that the scars had lightened to an unnoticeable extent. But I guess I was wrong. That was when I realized that scars never went away entirely. “Did you do that to yourself?” he asked. "
20 " Mirror, Mirror on the wall,who's the skinniest of them all?""Not you, Amir, not you. "
