-: Pancha Vastra :- ( By Shailu )

[shailu4ever]

 
He photographs her hands weaving flowers. The concentration on her face. The way afternoon light catches in her hair. The lotus flowers behind her, the ocean beyond that.
 
But he keeps the camera lowered between shots, keeps looking at her directly more than through the viewfinder.
 
Seeing her, not just capturing her.
 
After a while, she finishes one garland, holds it up. "This is for you. To wear tomorrow. During the first day's ritual."
 
"I've never worn flowers before."
 
"Then it's time to start." She sets it aside carefully. "In our tradition, men wear flowers too. It's not gendered. Beauty is for everyone."
 
She starts another garland, and he sets down the camera entirely, just watches.
 
"Tell me about weaving," he says. "Why did you choose it?"
 
Her hands don't stop moving as she speaks:
"I didn't choose it. It chose me. My mother was a weaver, her mother before that. I learned before I could walk, my first memories are of sitting under my mother's loom, watching her feet work the pedals, her hands throw the shuttle."
 
"You said she died when you were fifteen."
 
"Yes. Fever. It took her quickly." Her voice is matter-of-fact, but he hears the old grief beneath.
 
"After she died, I almost quit weaving. It hurt too much, every thread reminded me of her. But then I realized, this was how I could keep talking to her. Every pattern I weave is a conversation we're still having. She's been dead nine years, but I talk to her every day through the loom."
"That's beautiful."
 
"It's also lonely." She finishes the second garland, looks directly at him.
 
"I've spent nine years having conversations with a ghost. With memory. Never with a living person. Never with someone who could talk back, see me, know me as something other than 'the weaver' or 'the quiet one.'"
 
"Is that what you want from these five days? To be known?"
 
"Yes." Simple, direct, honest. "I want to be seen. Really seen. Not as a role or a function or a pretty girl who makes pretty things. As... me. All of me. Including the parts I'm afraid to show."
"What are you afraid to show?"
 
She sets down the flowers, folds her hands in her lap.
 
"That I'm lonely. That I want to be touched. That I think about sex and don't know how to talk about it. That I'm terrified I've waited too long, that I've built my walls so high that no one will ever be able to climb them." She takes a breath. "That I'm desperate to be loved but convinced I'm unlovable."