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    Teething
    Teething
    Teething
    Ebook81 pages38 minutes

    Teething

    By Megha Rao

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A story told in verse, Teething begins when Kochu, a young boy in Kerala, is caught kissing the neighbour's son. All hell breaks loose, ending in Kochu taking his own life.

    Years after the scandal, after discovering his suicide note, his oldest sister, Achu, sets out to uncover the mysteries of their dysfunctional family by putting pieces of their past back together. Along the way, she discovers things she never noticed - their mother's brokenness and obsession with the church, their father's disturbing secrecy inside the bedroom, and, of course, their own individual traumas that stopped time altogether. Soon, Achu realizes that none of them will ever truly grow up until they live their lives all over again, from the very beginning.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins India
    Release dateDec 20, 2021
    ISBN9789354894343
    Teething
    Author

    Megha Rao

    Megha Rao is a confessional performance poet and a surrealist artist. Her work has been featured on platforms such as Penguin Random House India, Firstpost, The Open Road Review, New Asian Writing, The Alipore Post, Spoken Fest, Why Indian Men Rape and Thought Catalog. Megha is a postgraduate in English Literature from the University of Nottingham, UK, and is currently spending her time between Mumbai and Kerala.

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      Book preview

      Teething - Megha Rao

      Prologue

      My English teacher once told me you should never start a sentence with the word because. So I never told her that if there was one word to summarize my entire life, it was this.

      You see, I was born with excuses in my mouth. Why’re you still alive?

      Because my mother’s Church taught me that suicide was a sin.

      Because it was the first thing Baba told me when he found the bottle of sleeping pills on the table I lay next to, my breath quietening underneath my ribs:

      The Prophet said, ‘whoever commits suicide with piece of iron will be punished with the same piece of iron in the Hell Fire.’

      Because my sister and I couldn’t get past the third sentence of our brother’s suicide note or the way he giggled the day before, as his bunny teeth pressed over his lower lip in an effort to stop.

      You see, because was a defensive word. A justification. An apology. Why is your face always puffy? Because I was crying. Why were you crying? Because a month after my brother died, my boyfriend left. Why did he leave? Because I was always sad. Because I saw him look at that girl in the Xerox shop. Because it’s my fault I didn’t have a body like that. Why don’t you have a body like that? Because my relationship with my blade was bigger than my relationship with him.

      Because the cuts got in the way and he didn’t think I was beautiful anymore. Why did you cut? Because my past was after me and the blood distracted it. Because the biggest thing life stole from me was innocence, and I never saw the world the same way again.

      Because it hurts.

      And why does it hurt? Because we asked for balloons and got trauma instead. Because my sister saw things that made her wish she wasn’t so young. Because the night we ran away from home, we felt guilt wash over our heads like the Johnson’s baby shampoo our Mama had sold her silk sarees to buy. Because we couldn’t save her.

      Because there are days when I stand in front of her grave with freshly picked white carnation and think about how she wasted her love on us. Because there are days when I cry in front of her grave with excuses so loud for not loving her back.

      Because, because, because. Because.

      Because I still can’t bring myself to ask my mother

      if the collateral damage was

      the stretch marks, or the children.

      Second-hand Children

      The Story of My Birth

      If I am allowed one memory in the last days of my life,

      then, God, let it be this:

      Take me back to the very beginning of me,

      when a passer-by was driven wild

      by the ancient poetry of a woman’s anklets in the rain,

      and asked for her hand in marriage.

      Back when I remembered my birth

      as a moment in transcendental history,

      unsullied by the heartache of growing up.

      Sometimes I still climb up my terrace to the stars,

      just to wonder about the

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