Baroda-based Atreyi (name changed) studies music.
I was a topper throughout and have always been very focused about my career. My family’s very proud of me and supportive of my future plans. Although I’ve been brought up in a traditional set up, I didn’t have any restrictions imposed upon me. My parents happily allowed me on college trips. Male friends could come home. I never had anything to hide from my mother.
Charming uncle
I met this uncle on a family trip to Coorg. He was my mother’s cousin, a couple of years younger than her and by far the most exciting person I had ever met. Everything about him held me in total charm. He was good-looking and unmarried. We spent quite some time together going for walks, discussing music and cooking meals. The setting was filmy and I was beginning to get attracted to him.
Nervous about things becoming obvious, I dragged my younger brother along wherever I went out with him. He, on the other hand, was very casual. He would read my poems and mesmerize me with his feedback. One evening, my mother spotted us sitting in the verandah. Before stepping inside, she cast a look and asked me to get in and help with dinner. I felt so awkward that I avoided him for the rest of the trip.
Closer and closer
His family moved to Calcutta. My parents were helping them settle in. This gave me a lot of opportunity to maintain contact. I longed for his visits and looped him into helping me out with assignments. He enjoyed my company and was more of a friend rather than an uncle. I treated this as my license to fantasise about him as my lover.
Around the same time, I discovered what it meant to feel sexy, tried a bikini wax and bought lacy lingerie – something I would’ve been scandalised to do before I met him. And all this brought along a newfound sense of freedom. Nevertheless, I was uncomfortable with the thought of people in my family noticing these changes.
'Like a slut'
His visits started becoming difficult to handle - I had also started feeling guilty. In my head, I was betraying my mother by fantasising about her cousin. I felt like a slut. Not being able to share this with my mother made me guiltier as I had never hidden anything from her. In my eyes, I had lost the status of a 'role-model child' in the family.
I started dropping out of family gatherings. Since I had begun associating looking sexy with being adulterous, I put in an effort to look plain and at times even shabby. At home, I talked very little. When I could take it no longer, I talked out the whole thing with my elder sister.
Unburdening
She laughed and shared how even she had been having erotic dreams about a hot-looking cousin of ours. It was unburdening to know I wasn’t the only one guilty of such secret pleasures.
For the first time, we had a hearty chat about our erotic dreams and fantasies. How lovely it was to open up and not be judged! I must confess I still fancy making love to that uncle. And while I thoroughly enjoy the delicious feeling it brings along, I’ve decided to let it remain just a fantasy that I needn’t take too seriously.
The woman pictured in the article isn't Atreyi.
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