I am a person who prefers busses to trains. Not that I hate train journeys – I love them. But since few years since the laws against smoking were implemented, I stopped travelling by trains. You cannot smoke in the train or premises of railway stations. While the buses halt at various dhabas and you get a chance to walk a bit out of those premises and inhale the smoke you long for…
This time it was a bit different, I had to attend a wedding at Nashik and my travel agency booked me into a train which left around afternoon and reached Nashik somewhere about 7pm. I had nothing much to do in the morning. So I decided and caught up with a friend who was stationed at Navi Mumbai and asked him to meet me at Thane which was midway for him and me…
We met at Thane and had a good time first enjoying the jumbo Wada pav at Kunj Vihar outside Thane station and then moving on to Thane Sweets and hogging on to the Malai sandwiches. Then we moved on to a simple open to sky normal tea stall and sat on a bench catching up with each other’s life… enjoying smoke and cuttings…
I boarded the train at Thane which surprisingly was on-time and looked around for my seat. I found it and settled for my almost 3 hour journey. There was a girl about in her late twenties sitting between me and the window and I felt a pang of jealousy because she would be able to enjoy the scenery of ghat when the train crossed it better than me…
I thought it would have been better that I had taken a local train to Kasara and then a local bus to Nashik from there – it would have given me a chance to enjoy a smoke at Kasara before I entered the bus stand.
I resigned to the fate blaming myself and started to look out of the window as much as I could catch the sights outside when my glance fell on the girl occupying the window seat – I thought I saw tears in her eyes flowing over her comely face when she turned her head away from me and looked outside the window…
I am a sensitive person and I cannot hold back when I see someone sad or in tears – it was almost 2 hours before I could make her speak her troubles out… and I am going to relate her troubles as a systematic story instead of a conversation between me and her… we had already passed the ghat by the time… the names as usual have been changed for the subject’s integrity…
The Instagram Girl :
Rain pressed softly against the windows of the late afternoon train as Meera rested her forehead against the cold glass and watched the blurred lights of villages disappear into the darkness.
The compartment smelled faintly of wet clothes, old steel, and tea leaves. Somewhere at the far end of the coach, a baby cried. A vendor dragged his tired voice through the aisle.
“Chaaai… garam chai…”
Meera tightened her shawl around herself and looked again at the message glowing on her phone.
Come if you can. She isn’t doing well…
It had been sent by her cousin three days ago.
Please come. Not that your sister misses you.
It is just that She isn’t doing well…
As though depression was a fever… as though sorrow could be measured with a thermometer… Meera closed her eyes. She had not spoken properly to her younger sister Ananya for almost a year.
Not because they had fought. But because somewhere between sponsored makeup reels, filtered photographs, cosmetic brands, and millions of strangers typing heart emojis beneath her pictures, Ananya had slowly become unreachable.
Not physically – emotionally. And tonight, Meera was going to see what remained of her.
When they were children, Ananya had been sunlight. Their mother used to say that the house itself looked brighter when Ananya laughed.
She was effortlessly beautiful even then her large expressive eyes, glowing skin and thick black hair that curled slightly during the monsoons. Relatives adored her. Teachers adored her… Neighbours found excuses to visit just to speak to her.
But Meera remembered something nobody else noticed.
Ananya always needed to be admired. Not loved but admired. There was a difference. Even at fourteen she would stand before the mirror and ask softly:
“Do you think I’m prettier than Richa? Or… If I become an actress one day, will you still talk to me normally?”
Meera would laugh and throw pillows at her.
Back then it sounded harmless. Now, years later, she understood that some hungers begin quietly and if fed wrongly, they devour a person from inside.
The train reached Mumbai close to dawn.
The city looked exhausted beneath a grey sky. Meera stepped out carrying a small bag and found herself swallowed by noise of honking taxis, shouting drivers, crowds moving like rivers that never stopped flowing.
Ananya lived in a luxury apartment near the sea now. At least that was what Instagram showed… sunsets… champagne glasses… designer gowns… foreign vacations… perfect smiles… perfect lighting… perfect life…
Meera took a cab. As the car crawled through traffic, giant billboards towered above the roads – models selling perfume, lipstick, watches and lots of dreams. Every face looked flawless. Every smile looked lonely…
The apartment building was enormous… glass walls… marble floors… artificial fragrance in the lobby. The security guard recognized Ananya’s name instantly.
“Madam influencer?” he asked.
Meera nodded.
He smiled in a strange way.
A smile she disliked immediately.
“She used to have many visitors before,” he said casually while signing her entry. “Nowadays very quiet.”
Used to?
The words lingered unpleasantly.
Meera took the elevator to the twenty-second floor.
When the door opened, she noticed silence first.
Not peace but silence… the kind that gathers in homes where nobody speaks anymore.
She rang the bell. After nearly a minute, the door opened slowly.
And for one terrible moment Meera did not recognize her sister.
Ananya stood there wearing an oversized sweatshirt and loose pajamas. Her hair was unwashed. Dark circles had hollowed her eyes. Her face – the same face once worshipped online by millions – looked drained of life.
But the worst thing was her expression. It was the expression of someone who had stopped expecting kindness.
“Meera…” she whispered…
Then suddenly she began crying.
Not elegantly. Not softly. She broke apart like a child.
The apartment was dim even during daylight. Curtains remained drawn. Empty coffee cups stood near the couch. Medicine strips littered the centre table. A ring light stood abandoned in one corner like a dead machine from some another life.
Meera walked through the rooms quietly. Everywhere she looked she saw fragments of performance… branded makeup kits… Expensive dresses… Tripods… Camera stands… Boxes from luxury companies.
And on the bedroom wall – A giant framed photograph of Ananya smiling in a silver dress… nearly perfect… nearly unreal… The girl in that photograph no longer existed.
“Do you eat properly?” Meera asked gently from the kitchen.
Ananya shrugged.
“Sometimes.”
“When did you last sleep?”
Another shrug.
Meera made tea anyway.
They sat together near the balcony while rain clouds gathered over the sea.
For a long time neither spoke.
Finally Ananya laughed bitterly.
“You know what’s funny?”
Meera looked at her.
“I became famous because people said I looked beautiful. Then when more beautiful girls came, suddenly beauty wasn’t enough anymore.”
Her fingers trembled around the teacup.
“So I adapted.”
The last word sounded poisonous.
“At first it was harmless. Fashion reels. Glamour shoots. Then people stopped reacting the same way. Engagement dropped. Followers slowed.”
She gave a tired smile.
“Managers told me I had to stay relevant.”
Meera remained silent.
Ananya continued staring at the rain.
“So my clothes became smaller.”
A pause…
“My poses became bolder and skimpy. Almost porny…”
Another pause…
“And strangers … they became hungrier.”
Her voice cracked…
“You have no idea what it feels like, Meera. Millions of people who are looking at you but not seeing you… feeling hungrier for sex with you.”
That night Meera slept beside her sister like they used to as children. Around midnight she woke up hearing muffled sobbing. Ananya sat on the floor near the bed clutching her phone. The screen glowed against her tear-streaked face.
“What happened?” Meera whispered.
Ananya turned the phone toward her… thousands of comments… not words… Consumption… Hot… Available?… Perfect body… I’d ruin her… She exists only for men.
One message read:
Girls like you can never become wives… only fantasies.
Meera felt cold. Ananya laughed weakly.
“They don’t know me. None of them know me.”
She wiped her eyes furiously.
“But after a point… you begin believing them.”
Over the next few days Meera slowly learned the truth.
The depression had not begun when Ananya lost followers. She had a choice not to go with the flow – not to become a sex symbol.
It all began when she realized the followers she still had no longer cared whether she was human. Few men took photographs from her page and edited them obscenely.
Brands demanded “hotter” content for engagement.
Interviewers flirted shamelessly during meetings.
Even ordinary conversations became unbearably sensuously flirty.
A man at a café once looked at her Instagram profile before speaking to her and said smiling – “So you’re that type of girl.”
That type? It was as though the internet had reduced her soul into a category.
Ananya stopped going outside after that episode… then came panic attacks… sleepless nights and medication… therapy… isolation and finally – numbness.
One evening they sat together watching the sea from the balcony.
The sky looked bruised purple.
“Do you know what hurts most?” Ananya asked softly.
Meera shook her head.
“I started posting revealing pictures because I thought people would admire me more.”
Her eyes filled slowly.
“But admiration became hunger.”
The rain began falling again.
“And hunger has no respect.”
A week later Meera convinced Ananya to step outside. A simple short walk near the beach… nothing more.
Ananya resisted at first but eventually agreed. She wore simple clothes and tied her hair back. For a brief moment, while they walked beside the crashing waves, Meera saw traces of the old Ananya again.
They bought roasted corn from a vendor.
Children ran laughing through puddles.
A musician played old Hindi songs nearby.
Life moved normally around them.
Then three young men recognized her.
“Bro… that’s her.”
Phones appeared instantly.
One of them grinned.
“Madam, one bold selfie please?”
Another laughed.
“I follow all your content.”
The way he said content made Meera furious.
Ananya froze.
The colour vanished from her face.
The boys kept smirking among themselves.
One whispered something vulgar.
Meera stepped forward angrily, but Ananya held her wrist tightly.
“No,” she whispered.
Her hand was ice cold.
The sisters walked back home in silence.
That night Ananya locked herself in the bathroom for nearly an hour.
Meera sat outside the door terrified. Finally she opened the bathroom door and she saw Ananya with swollen eyes and a cut wrist. She was rushed to a nearby hospital and tended to,,, those two three days were vulnerable for her… finally she was released and she returned to her apartment.
“I deleted the app,” she whispered.
Meera stared at her.
“What?”
“I deleted Instagram.”
The words sounded both tragic and liberating.
Then Ananya began crying again.
“Why does it feel like I killed myself?”
Days passed slowly afterward.
Healing did not arrive dramatically.
There were no magical speeches.
No sudden transformation.
Depression remained.
Some mornings Ananya refused to leave bed.
Some nights she shook with anxiety.
But tiny things began returning.
She started cooking occasionally.
She watered plants in the balcony.
She read old novels again.
And sometimes – rarely – she laughed without forcing it.
One afternoon Meera found her looking through childhood photographs.
There was one picture of both sisters sitting under a mango tree. Ananya touched it gently.
“I miss her,” she said.
“Who?”
“The girl I was before strangers taught me my value.”
Meera sat beside her quietly caressing her shoulder. After a long silence she said softly “You know… people online didn’t create your worth.” Ananya looked away “They just rented it from you.” Tears slipped down Ananya’s cheeks. “And now?” Meera held her hand tenderly “Now you take it back from them…”
Months later, the apartment looked different.
Sunlight entered again.
The curtains remained open.
The ring light was gone.
Ananya still attended therapy. She still struggled. She still carried scars invisible to others.
But one evening, while serving tea to Meera, she smiled genuinely for the first time in years. Not the practiced smile of photographs. Not the seductive smile designed for algorithms. A real smile… fragile… human… The Beautiful Her…
“Do you think people can begin in life again?” she asked quietly.
Meera looked at her sister carefully. At her tired eyes, at her healing wounds. At her surviving heart.
“Yes,” she answered. Not perfectly… but honestly @The ghosts will still haunt you. You have to be brave enough to fight them off.”
Outside, rain washed the city slowly clean. And somewhere beyond millions of screens, filters, comments, and false desires, two sisters sat together in silence – holding onto what the world had almost destroyed.
A human soul trying to remember that it was never meant to become content.
At the end of her story she smiled wryly at me and shook her head sadly “She has started going back to college. She has changed her apartment to a simple one she can afford on her lavish savings. She seems to be making friends – though most of them are girls… she seems to be catching up on life she has missed during her zest to become the best influencer… what do you think – would she be able to do it?”
I looked at her, “If she has been able to come this far – she should be able to get out of it – provided you keep speaking to her and visiting her intermittently – enough to show that you care and not imposing yourself on her choices…”
“I think I agree to what you say… I am sorry I didn’t ask you what you do…” she said with an apologetic tone.
“I was about to tell you that… I work and as a hobby I write stories, poems and blogs in my free time – I am not on social media as much – I only go there to post about anything new that I have written or composed… may be at that time, I may click on likes or hearts of people I personally know… I don’t watch reels or movies because the sense of morality has gone down the drain…”
“Are you going to write on our experience?” she looked at me inquisitively.
“That’s not my genre however as a service to people who still have a fragment of morality left – I think I will write on it one day… though I will change the names of you and your sister so that I don’t contribute to the ghosts she is fighting…” I smiled at her, “Don’t you think that your experience can inspire few others who are falling into the trap Ananya fell into?”
“I guess it should… but will depend on what they choose – name, fame, money or morality…” she said thoughtfully.
“It is difficult when I look at it – simply thinking – how people manage to mangle life, trying to squeeze the best out of it…”
These were my parting words as the train entered Nashik railway station and we had to get off the train – she went her way while I was greeted by my friend who drove me into the city. I kept thinking if I had to write about this – will I be able to give this experience a proper justice…
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