it's not a monologue

Image Courtsey: https://www.absolutearts.com/painting_oil/maciej_hoffman-adolescence-1308156547.html

Mom has always been telling me to slow down,
to slow down moving the fingers while eating my dal-chawal, to slow down taking the mouthful, to slow down chewing, to slow down thinking that i am eating the best meal ever.

With the best meal, i remember the stale rice, little harder, an awkward looking stainless steel plate, boiled eggs and potatoes, green chilies, clarified butter, salt and us. the indefinite strikes outside the warmth of that stale rice and boiled eggs and potatoes and salt and us was so grave that even my eternal hunger precipitated, i saw blood on the TV screen, probably on doordarshan news.

With the blood comes to my mind, i was twelve years old when i first spotted the red splotches on my Bermuda, i was running my Hercules bicycle which had a few strokes of rust and slag. but it wasn't the rust that stained on my pant. i still remember how frantically i washed my private part that day.

With the private part, i remember my childhood friends, all boys, aged nine to eleven, in a sinfully delight way showing each other's genitals and peeing their way to measure whose high speed urine flow reaches the highest mark on the walls behind the bushes where i wasn't merely an audience, indeed, it was me who would decide which boy won their first masculine race.

With the race, i remember the annual sports, Marie biscuits suspending by a thread from a trembling rope, biting the part of those biscuits or snatching them from the hanging threads and reaching the finishing line; it was probably the most honest game to teach a nude purpose of life to a teenager.

By the teenager, i remember how my adolescent friends, all boys, aged fourteen to sixteen, frequently started asking me to sit on the crossbar of their bicycles, the inexplicable delectation oozing out from their physical maneuvers while they showcasing their trophy to others, preferably boys. i would try to enjoy those rides, nevertheless, the furtive peeps from around making my enjoyment eventually confined to certain extent of discomfort. however, the boys on the other-side, felt little beefier for sure.

with the beefier boys, comes in my mind the most good-looking boy in our group; he was facile, handsome, fairly virile of his age who, funnily, started steering clear of sitting beside me. i knew, he's scared of my physical appearance, i looked feminine to him, though i was seemingly oblivious to the fact that yes, my chest had two tiny yet significant bulges.

Bulges, they remind me of the brumal morning in a moderately cramped private bus; i, standing on the stair, about to get down at the school gate, felt a scratchy, hairy forearm groping around my chest and back; before i could figure out the source of my utter dismay and uneasiness, i saw the crooked yellow-stained teeth smile of the bus-conductor winking at me. his hollow look, his wicked smile and the haunting touch 
made me frustrated on why I was not a boy; i always wanted to get an admission to a boys' school.

School, my dear school, i still remember those girls, my school-mates, well-entered in the age where boys could make them little redden; only, I, a short-haired, impish and somewhat alien to the feelings of what a boy 'should' be to a 'girl', was always kept aside from all the tittle-tattles and other romantic whispers. was I a threat in the territory? an emissary among the rosebuds? just an odd, i guess.

with the oddness, i remember how baba told me, "you've been my little boy all around till now, may i see my adolescence daughter? may i see a bit longer tresses on you?" i was seventeen then and i first even in my life so far gave it a thought you