I grew up in a chawl in Mumbai. We were poor, and life there was shared, and watched everyone knew everyone's business.
When i was in my school days, I remember doing something I couldn't explain to myself: I would secretly put on my mother's clothes and stand in front of the mirror, just looking. I didn't understand what it meant or why I felt drawn to it. I only knew I couldn't tell my parents, if they found out, they would have beaten me. So I kept it hidden, doing it only when no one was around.
In the chawl, water didn't come to our homes directly. It arrived at a common tap outside, for about ten minutes a day, and everyone lined up with their numbers to fill their pots. One day, a neighbor, a woman who lived nearby , handed me her key and asked me to fill water for her while she was away.
While I was inside her house, I saw her bra lying there. Something took over me. I don't fully understand it even now, but I picked it up, smelled it, and then put it on. I liked how it felt more than I expected to. I didn't have money to buy one for myself, so before I left, I hid it in my underwear and took it with me.
After that, I started wearing it secretly, every day. The woman noticed something was off she had a feeling the bra was missing but she could never bring herself to actually ask a child about it. She was a kind, beautiful woman, and I liked her.
She also ran a small business, stitching stones and embellishments onto girls' dresses, and she brought my mother into the work with her. Because of that, our house was suddenly full of dresses passing through and I took the chance, whenever I could, to secretly try them on.
One day, a small gap in the curtain just a slit the breeze had pushed open became an unexpected window. A boy from the neighborhood happened to glance through it and saw me standing there in the dress, wearing only the blouse on top, nothing below. My face wasn't visible to him, only that fleeting glimpse.I froze. Fear ran through me the thought of being found out, of what it would mean if this got around the chawl. But by some stroke of luck, he never said a word to anyone. My school days has passed slowly and this feeling grew deeper when i went to the colllege.
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