Once upon a time, on a boring and uneventful afternoon, within a typical beige house, in a stereotypical pink bedroom, in front of an intricate doll’s house, an elaborate tea party had been set up.

The entire setting was replete with plastic food and mismatched cutlery. Makeshift furniture was strategically deployed, a precarious staging that made the host’s blatant favourism utterly obvious.

The imaginary tea was growing cold, but the atmosphere was pretty heated. The dolls were all having a rather spirited discussion about who had it worse.

The Matryoshka, a pretty blonde foreign nesting doll with a heavy Russian accent, was getting increasingly impatient with the Barbie doll.

The Barbie was upset. She was upset about being dressed. She was upset about being undressed. She was upset about being undressed and dressed ten times an hour for the merriment of whoever she had the misfortune of entertaining.

Some dolls empathised with her, some chuckled, and others retorted that she was overreacting to the curiosity of innocent children. The Matryoshka, however, seemed personally offended.

Barbie’s complaints were trivial after all. It was just voyeurism. A ubiquitous, inevitable occurrence in the realm of dolls. They were all used to being stared at by unblinking eyes. Why was she even surprised?

An argument commenced with lots and lots of eye-rolling, of course.

The Matryoshka persisted with her taunts. The Barbie persisted with her complaints.

The Barbie spoke of feeling the creeps when examined. Then she raged at the apathy of the children and the disappointed faces she encountered when deemed “not interesting enough.”

She seemed blissfully content with being blind to the hypocrisy of her statements, and so, the Matryoshka bypassed the argument and resorted to good old name-calling.

She called the Barbie a dumb blonde. She called her an entitled bimbo. She then called her progressively worse slurs that are best left unmentioned to maintain decorum.

Mediation was required. So, the wiser dolls intervened. After a bit of persuasion and some coddling, the Matryoshka calmed down.

She reminisced about the old days. She once loved being taken apart layer by layer and watching the looks of wonder as people discovered the pretty tiny doll inside.

This was until that day. On the aforementioned day, a child was on a quest to find a treasure. The Matryoshka, however, was unaware that she was supposed to contain the treasure.

The child first dismantled her layer by layer with much gusto. The Matryoshka found the display mildly endearing. But that was brief.

All the child found were smaller and smaller versions of the same doll. The mounting frustration was inevitable.

When the child finally found nothing but the tiniest doll inside, the child smashed the doll in a fit of rage. The damage was irreversible, of course. So, the child then shoved the broken pieces into the next biggest layer and sealed it shut with messy, ugly glue, leaving the inside a gooey mess. The bad attempt to cover up a crime of passion had resulted in the Matryoshka becoming a coffin for the ruins of her own destruction.

Silence, sympathetic and awkward, characterised the atmosphere in the aftermath of that story. The dramatic sigh of the Thalayatti, a graceful dancing bobblehead from a small town in Tamil Nadu, interrupted the stillness. She was not one to stop for anyone.

She announced that she envied the Matryoshka, to the chagrin of many. She, at least, envied the idea of stasis. Her crisis was an existential one. She was made only to be flicked by random passersby. The perpetual motion due to endless head bobbling had left her with permanent double vision and an eternal migraine, making her also envy those who died during the Dancing Plague. She professed that she’d rather be broken and neglected, collecting dust, than exist in the Sisyphean horror of her reality.

The idol, a small intricately carved deity, joined in to contribute to the ever-flowing wellspring of complaints. She too had been suffering from a never-ending migraine.

On the surface, her job was simple – all she had to do was listen. She had to listen to people offer ridiculous prayers. She had to listen as they rambled, criticising her for not granting the wishes they had decided upon unilaterally. Worse still, she had to listen to the heartfelt, tone-deaf songs that they sang with complete devotion to her. People spoke for her and to her. She, however, had no say in anything.

She stopped complaining midway. The voodoo doll was glaring at her with a dark impression from the mat set up next to the tea party. The voodoo doll was never formally invited to these parties, but the other dolls always made sure to graciously include her in their chats.

The voodoo, cold and cynical, preferred staring. She was hated and feared. Nobody dared to touch her. Nobody dared to play with her. Most people either looked at her with disgust, repulsion, or misplaced pity. The truth was that she was sick of being treated as something evil, though the source of malice was always a human.

The party turned silent again. The voodoo’s pain was guttural. It was so deeply embedded that, to reach it inside, one will have to tear themselves apart, destroying their self in the process. Everybody knew this. They understood the unfairness, but could do nothing, so they just sat there with her.

An almost palpable feeling of misery took hold of the atmosphere.

A gentle voice from afar finally interrupted their tea party, calling for a certain Gudiya. They looked at each other puzzled, for they knew no one of such name. A chair finally moved and everyone turned towards the lovely host who had set this tea party up. A little girl, who had now been summoned to entertain unexpected guests in the living room. She smiled at them sweetly in a reluctant goodbye and left the room. They all just sat together in silence, tongues now heavy with words unsaid.