By The River - Part 1

Lakhimpur is a small village. Flanked by the river Sindhu, just before she gushes into the neighbouring country, the village is close-knit and everybody knows everybody else. There is a small amount of tourist population that flows in and out of the place on their way to the origin of the river. But they are few, the Sindhu being a little less celebrated than the Ganga.


Some of the tourists call it the Sindh. He does not prefer that name much. There is something very anglicized about it. He likes the very homey sound of Sindhu, the way it rolls off his tongue. He wakes up every morning to hear her gushing outside his windows in summers, frozen and still in winters, flooding and furious when it rains.


But she hardly makes the sounds she once used to make when he was younger, when his bones did not creak every time he squatted, when his skin did not sag like it does now, when his muscles did not seize up because of walking long distances. She hardly makes those sounds now. Those moans have gone, those sighs have gone, those sharp intakes of breath have vanished.


She does not meet him anymore, like she used to, either. She does not walk out of the river, her hair wet and rippling in the sunlight, black and wavy, reaching down to her knees. She does not gather her saree in a bunch and throw it lazily behind her back anymore, like she used to, when he used to call out to her, resting on her banks. She does not wipe a drop of water from her brow anymore, smiling at him while he stared at her. She does not push him back on the grassy wet shores anymore, her body silhouetted against the shadows of the sunset, her back arching to take his shape under her.


She stopped coming out to meet him decades back. He had met her first one evening, when he was young and believed in only what he saw. She was lying on the bank, her hair spread out like a fan on the wet earth, her breasts heaving, water glistening on her neck, her arms and her cheeks. She was a stranger and he had never seen her before in the village. Was she a tourist? Why was she lying there in the mud? Why was she so distractingly sensual at the end of the day, when everybody looks tired and haggard? He mustered up some courage and walked to her, trying hard to smother and hide the bulge between his legs, adjusting his dhoti hastily.


She was no tourist. She sat up at his arrival, shocked that he could see her. He found it odd. Why should he not see her? Was she invisible? He was even more shocked when she said he was right. He thought she must be mad. He was no longer turned on. If anything, he wanted to get away from this mad woman as soon as he could. He ran.


But she never went away - he saw her everyday after that evening, strolling out of the waters, coming out to talk to him, intrigued that he could see her, and she would then splash back into the water. He stayed behind a couple of times, wondering if she would come running out, choking, drawing huge gulps of air. But she never did.