It took me a while to realise that despite making my way into my thirties, my fear of rejection hasn't been at all stemmed. At best, I have learned to subdue it, to keep it at bay and not allow it to be debilitating. Because, growing up, I was a lanky, awkward, dark girl, I internalised every bit of jeering laughter that came by way, usually from the corner where the boys in my colony hung out. It's entirely possible that they weren't mocking me and I imagined the whole thing. But I do remember one specific incident when I was walking with my parents for the Christmas Midnight Mass. The star had been hung up outside, in the centre of the lane that leads from the main road to our colony.

That year, I had decided not to get a dress tailored. Instead, with my mother's sanction, I'd picked a black sequined dress. Very flapper. I was skeletal thin then and had little sense of self-consciousness since the dress hugged my figure flatteringly. However, when I was heading out, one boy (I won't take names) who was part of a larger gang, made a loud comment about how the blackness of the dress made me invisible. I spent the next few hours feeling the heat of derision. I don't know if I've fully recovered from that incident. It's such a small event in my life. It must have taken him all of one minute to think up the jibe, and then another to deliver it. He probably doesn't even remember having said it at all. And yet, here I am, still possessed by the memory. Each time I start to feel confident about myself, I am reminded how I was once brought down to size by a cruel boy.