How Sizdah Paid For Her Abortion.

“You’re late again,” I told Sizdah as I climbed into the passenger seat of her car, “Just once, bitch, just once I would like you to be on time.”

She laughed and waved her hand at me, not just to dismiss my words but the entire concept of punctuality, say what you will about the girl, she had the uncanny ability to make reasonable requests seem silly and outlandish, and do it without ever abandoning her cheery demeanour. In all the years that I knew her, I don’t think I ever saw her without a smile on her face. It wasn’t as wholesome as it sounds, it was as if her face had ossified in that state, like she had botoxed the smile on there because like lipstick, she thought it looked good.

“Just once I would like you to get through the day without swearing,” she said, driving off, “Can you not swear when we are at the clinic, please?”

A darkness emerged on her face, passing like a shadow through her eyes and rolling off on the other end without announcing itself. Sizdah would set herself on fire before being seen in a lugubrious state so I averted my gaze for the second it took her to compose herself.

“You okay?” I asked her, “Are you worried?”

“Don’t be cheap, Jugs,” She said, “This is not something to worry about.”

She called me Jugs, not because of the huge tits, but because, evidently, I walked like a neighbourhood gangster named Jaggu who used to operate in the area where we all lived. Dressed like him, too. Back in the day, Sizdah fucked him or loved him or something like that. I didn’t care for the hypocorism, but only in so far as I don’t care for my actual name either, call me by any name, so long as I know you are talking to me, we are good.

“It’s not fucking cheap Sizdah, not everything in the world is cheap!” I said, feigning more exasperation than I felt, “It’s okay for you to be scared and worried, for fuck’s sake.”

“Jugs please, anyone in the world can give me this lecture okay, but you? You would rather stick a knife in your throat than be scared because of something a man did to you,” she said, still smiling, “You call sex *playing rape*, I’ve had men who slept with you text me later to ask if you are nuts. Seriously, don’t give lectures about sanity.”

Damn. Checkmate.

“Fine, I wont say anything,” I told her, “Is that what you want?”

“No!” She said, “Can you…do all the talking at the clinic? You know I cant talk about these cheap things.”

That was the dichotomous nature of Sizdah. She’d strip down naked in the middle of a street and own the shit out of it, but you wouldn’t catch her dead buying a condom. Even saying words like that. She’d have an abortion and refuse to acknowledge a world where she didn’t have the right to do that, but she would never talk about it. That was for *cheap* girls. Like me. Girls who swore all the time, marched in the streets and didn’t have the decency to pretend they were falling in love with the man they took home from the club. Her declaration that I was cheap wasn’t a judgement, though, it was almost a compliment. Deep inside her soul, Sizdah wanted nothing more than to be *cheap*.

“Of course I will do all the talking,” I told her, “That’s why I am here.”

In groups of friends, there are roles we all take, yeah? That was, that is, mine. I’m the friend you ask to take you to an abortion clinic, the friend you call when you are being stalked, the one who gets you the drugs you need, the one who will help you elope, the one who will sleep with someone to help you secure a favour. Sizdah was the one who remembered birthdays, got you into clubs and parties, dealt with the cops if it came to that, helped you cheat on your partners, picked out clothes for you, took your mom shopping when you were at work. Our other friend, my roommate, Trylika, she was the one who always made sure we had food and running water, she fixed the Wi-Fi when it was down, she took away our car keys when we hadn’t slept in a while, she reminded us to have orgasms and not just give blowjobs, she always had that strange costume you needed in her closet. Between the three of us, we had an entire family.

“You want to go to Fusion later tonight?” Sizdah asked me as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Are you nuts?” I asked her, “You have to rest and shit, Trylika will kill you.”

“Already asked her, it’s not like I will start bleeding immediately, they give you the other pill first,” She said, confident of her unreasonable plans.

“Seriously?” I asked her, “I am expected to believe that Trylika is on board *and* you actually want to go to Fusion?”

Fusion was my favourite club in the city, Sizdah hated it and if you knew her, you’d know why pretty instantly. Fusion was the kind of club that only existed because the owners definitely had some money to launder. It was effortless, unassuming and cheap. The furniture had clearly been robbed from a bunch of houses on the outskirts of town and sold from a godown that had no sign over it. It was the kind of place that was inexplicably closed for a week every other month because of what the cops had found during the raid. The noisome odour of the place — cigarettes, marijuana, sweat and dirty water mixed with floor cleaner — is still singed into my memory. Good girls didn’t go to Fusion, hell, good boys didn’t even go to Fusion but we went all the time. Even Sizdah who allegedly hated it so much. My memories of the place and being there with my friends three-times a week are still eidetic, even though it doesn’t exist anymore, and I haven’t seen Sizdah in a decade.

“It’s Thursday,” she said, brushing her hair before getting out of the car, “We always go to Fusion on Thursdays.”

“Yeah but you have to know that I will go anywhere you want me to today, I would even go to Bollywood night,” I said to her as we walked into the clinic, “You really expect me to believe that you actually want to go to Fusion? You, Sizdah, want to go to Fusion and everything is just okay with you?"

"Jugs can you stop over-analysing everything for one minute? No wonder you have the kind of sex you do, of course it would take a near-death experience to get you to shut up your brain,” she said, gesturing for me to keep my volume down, “Now be serious for some time, we have work to do here.”

Then she giggled.

It didn’t take us very long at the clinic. She got an ultrasound and they told her that she was seven to eight weeks. They gave her information about her options peppered with snide judgement about “young women these days," the fact that she was unmarried and the insinuation that we were sex workers (and sure, one us was, but it wasn't her). They informed me they would be putting her down as married nonetheless, this was way before Chief Justice Chandrachud so termination for contraceptive failure wasn’t *quite* applicable to unmarried women (though I have personally never been to a clinic where they refused it to anyone and that likely has to do with the accessibility to services I have been afforded because of the privilege of living in big cities, being financially independent, emancipated from family and the ambiguous nature of the former law that didn’t quite allow for it, but failed to disallow as well). The doctor made sure she was confident of her decision, ensured her haemoglobin wasn’t low and administered the mifepristone. She gave her instructions on administering the misoprostal the next day and gave us a number to call if there was excessive bleeding. Before we left, she told us it shouldn’t be so easy for girls like us to avail these services because we would never learn the consequences of our actions unless we suffered.

You know, because we smiled at the clinic, knew about the process and were honest about our situation. They don’t tell you that when you are terrified, broken and helpless, brought in by a man who has made the decision for you instead of a *cheap* friend, no, all judgement is reserved for free-will. All smiles meant we didn't care what was happening to our bodies; women who had the audacity to avail medical services available to us instead of subjecting ourselves to public humiliation. All knowledge of the process meant we were loose women who didn't respect our bodies. All honesty means we didn't have the shame that is misinterpreted as dignity and to be worn as a scarlet badge of honour.

We didn't talk very much on the way home.

When I saw her again six-hours later, it was as if that afternoon hadn't happened. I got into her car and Trylika got into the back-seat. Sizdah admonished me, as usual, about wearing crocs and shorts to go to the club and I told her to fuck all the way off. Trylika said that she hoped her boyfriend wouldn't be at the club because she had told him she was out of town that week to avoid seeing him, she spent most of her time avoiding seeing him and by then I knew better than to ask why. After we parked, Sizdah chatted with the parking attendant, asking about his family and the scuffle that had taken place the last time we had been there. Sizdah knew and remembered everything about everyone's life, if you met her, you'd leave believing you truly mattered to her, but if you knew her, you'd never know if anything in the world mattered to her at all.

"Are you ready to dance?" Sizdah asked us as we made our way up the stairs, "Come on! Whooooo!"

She was the woo-est of woo-girls, and always the only one of us dancing when we went to the club. Trylika drank and I performed hard-target searches for people to fuck, but that day, I guess we felt we had to do what Sizdah wanted, so we got in there and shuffled our feet, raised our arms every once in a while and hoped shaking our asses would signal to her that we were there for her.

"I have to do something," Sizdah said all of a sudden, leaning over to us, "*Ondu nimisha.*" (Translation: one minute/wait one minute)

As she paced away from us, we followed through the crowd. She stopped at the bar, right in front of Ravi, one of the owners of the club who also tended the bar sometimes. We all knew Ravi, he was always just *there* but none of us really *knew* Ravi. When we caught up to her she was rummaging through her bag and as we reached the counter she had pulled up her medical file from the gynaecologist and banged it on the table.

"You're paying for this," she said to Ravi, and then turning to Trylika and gesturing to me, she said, "Keep Jugs out of this."

They didn't let me get into scuffles, because I was half a decade younger, from out of town and "had a lot more to lose and reveal if we were criminally investigated." You can always trust Trylika to provide an insane version of a sane explanation.

"So, Sizdah slept with Ravi? He's one who got her pregnant?" I turned to ask Trylika, "She told me she wasn't sure who it was, why didn't she just tell me?"

"She thought you would punch him because of what happened and you know he hates northies, he is a shady guy, you would definitely end up in jail," she said.

"Because of what happened... *What happened*?" I asked, but before she could answer, Sizdah had grabbed Ravi by the collar and was quite literally, shaking him down and as I looked back-and-forth between one of my friends shaking a man and the other watching with alarming nonchalance, I couldn't help but ask, "What exactly was she afraid I would do, if this was her plan?"

We got kicked out, but not until Sizdah got her money. It was the cheapest thing she had ever done and it was the most proud of her I had ever been.

"Are you going to tell me what happened, Sizdah?" I asked as we walked to the parking lot.

She turned to me in street.

"Fine. I ran into him at the transport office, we went to his place, we were making out and he tied my hands and blindfolded me, it was accidentally the best sex I ever had, but after he finished I realised he had lied about using a condom," she finished, "Now can we stop talking about cheap things?"

"Sizdah, I am so sorry, that's horrible," I said, turning back immediately, "I will kill him."

"Jugs, no! I took care of it, okay?" She said, "And please don't start off about the various kinds of rape, you think everything is rape."

The hardest conversations are the ones you cannot have. The hardest sentences to hear are the ones you have to respond to, but cannot because you love the speaker too much.

"I won't say anything, okay? I just want you to be okay," I said, suppressing every urge to murder Ravi, "I wish you had told me but I understand why you didn't."

"I didn't want to put this on you," she said, the most serious she had ever been, "You have enough of your own rape-stuff to deal with."

I had never mentioned anything about any personal experience with rape to either of them.

"What do you mean?" I asked, as both of them tried not to look at me.

"Jugs, you're transparent darling," Sizdah said, as they both stood in front of me, "But it is okay, you don't have to talk about anything, we're just..here, okay? We're all just here for each other? We don't have to talk about any of it."

Some moments are so portentous that even while they are happening, they look and feel like memories. My friends were strange, questionable women but they were the only people I have known to whom I didn't ever have to explain myself. I never had to tell them anything. They just knew. We stood there for one second. Each one more determined not to offer a hug than the other.

"Should we go to the midnight buffet?" Trylika finally said.

"You want to go?" I asked Sizdah, as we began walking again.

"Yes!" She responded, back to smiling incessantly and dancing with her words, "I want some biryani and kebab."

"Are we paying with Ravi's abortion fund?" I asked.

"Of course," Sizdah responded, "He better put something in me I actually want."

"Let's go eat then," I said, putting my arm through hers, as Trylika put hers through mine.

It was the best meal I ever had.