By The River - Part 4

His mouth in the hollow of her neck, when he lay spent and panting one night, she pulled back his head. Why did you not come those two evenings, she asked, her voice casual but determined. Just wanted to test you. Wanted to test myself, he whispered. Test the waters, she asked. He smiled in agreement. You were angry, weren't you, he wondered aloud. I heard you raging. It was nice in a very odd way.


So you are here. You failed then, did you not, if your test was to keep away?

No. I wanted to know how badly I wanted to be here, with you, this way. I learnt that I wanted very badly to be with you.

It is odd, how your method of finding things out about yourself, must hold somebody else at stake.

Why are we talking about this now? I thought you were happy to be here with me.

I am happy you came back so I could see you again and ask you, what is it about men and women of the earth, that makes them curious? So curious that you play with other destinies. Why is it difficult to ask straight questions and get straight answers?

Things are not that simple.


But they are. It's your ego, is it not? Your need to feel important and vital? I will tell you what's vital. It's vital when I stop watering your fields. When I toss back the ashes of your dead. When I trample over your lands and leave everything barren despite being the most fertile river you have set eyes on. That is important.


She stood up, snatching his hair, dragging him to his feet.


You enjoyed humiliating me, didn't you? Here's how it feels.


She threw him into her waters, her currents catching him in violent gushes, tossing his body back and forth against the rocks before attempting to drown him. She stood on the banks, her legs rippling into the now dark waters, her eyes red and lit. He screamed silent screams for help, for mercy, but she plunged back into the waters and with one powerful blow, threw him out, wet and breathless, bruised and broken.

You are cursed, she screeched, her hair flying out behind her like a black curtain while the heavens opened up, putting her in spate. You are cursed henceforth, man, to bear the burden of your ego. In this lifetime, you shall have no other woman the way I let you have me. You shall enter no woman, you shall create no other. It is time you learnt that to spite a woman is to spite nature.

And she sank, never to surface again. She changed course. The Sindhu, incidentally, has moved out of Indian soil inch by inch over the centuries. And although she watered an entire civilization, right from the Harappan and Mohen-jo-Daro cultures, she also wiped them all out in a massive flood that took away all connections to the history of where we come from. Where you come from. The price man has paid, for his ego. For Edging God Out.