My Boyfriend’s Ex-Girlfriend

By Krishnapriya S Prasad

Yes, the title does speak volumes about how us millennials in India live, love and learn. It implies blatantly the existence of a boyfriend who I plan to break up with soon, the existence of a girlfriend before me, and my indifference to all of this. But this isn’t what I am writing about. This is about how I stood up for myself and a woman I have never known. Because, women need to support women and there’s place for everyone.

I will start right at the middle of the story. After a night of fiery passion, we lay staring at the ceiling, utterly spent. I got up on my knees and leaned across him to pick up a lone cigarette and a lighter from the bedside table. He ran his fingers across my back. And made the very first comment that should have warned me. “You are beautiful. Not a bit of extra meat anywhere where it isn’t supposed to be. And enough and more where you need it to be. She was nothing like this. Too fat she was.” She was his girlfriend-a beautiful, smart woman with an established place in the world. Both of them are a full ten years older than me. It felt good, the favourable comparisons. I am feisty where she was measured. I am sexy where she was boring. I am fresh faced and smooth skinned while she was weathered and mature. I soaked in all the compliments and basked in the glory. It was heady, a mature handsome man telling me that the confused, immature, feisty me was superior to an elegant, worldly, accomplished woman. I tried denying the gnawing thought. Is he my sugar daddy and me a little minx?

It began at a book cafe. I was sipping a cinnamon dusted cappuccino, reading Murakami, painting the perfect picture of a young whimsical girl of refined tastes and vicariously attained wisdom. He sat down across me and began a conversation on Murakami and the magical world he builds. Of course, Murakami is overrated. If only I had read real literature, I’d have seen it. I nodded agreement in not so much concurrence as much as awe. Here was a man I would never find in my circles. Well-read and self-assured. Someone who can stand his ground and not be intimidated by a beautiful, smart and sharp-tongued girl. It didn’t take him much to take me from that cosy cafe chair to his ornate bed.

How did such a serendipitous romance turn this self-degrading? The answer is mired in his compliments. Both of us, different in all that we are, were pretty much the same to him. Proportionately distributed warm flesh for his pleasure and quick-witted conversation for his entertainment. It took me time to understand. It isn’t very easy for one to see through the cloud of deception and fanfare that is courting.

I minced him with my words and whipped him with my wrath. I did vindicate her-the respectable elegant woman he disrespected when he conquered me and displaced her.

About the Author:

Krishnapriya S Prasad is from the Batch of 2016–18. She was awarded the Gem of Shell during her internship stint at Shell. She is proficient in five languages which include German, Malayalam, Tamil, English and Hindi