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.
So the next day, he forced himself to stay back at work. He stayed back and sorted different kinds of cinnamon sticks into neat stacks. The shopkeeper was happy that his helper was finally taking his job seriously and asked no questions, hoping this new change stayed for a while.
He went back home from a different longer route that day, avoiding the banks of his river. He heard her gushing currents rage and flow, fertilising her banks but still crushing weeds and pebbles with her force. He wondered if he was the reason for the rage or if he was imagining things. He liked how he affected her, that proud river who said what if she disappeared. He would show her. He would make her wait.
He kept away the next day too. It was tougher though and he found it difficult, the fantasy had worn and he had to tear himself away from his usual route again, his feet protesting with pain, his head buzzing. The river raged, egged on by the unseasonal rains. He swore he would go back the next day. He swore he would pretend that nothing abnormal had happened.
But he did not go. He awoke the next day to find his father's body lying limp and lifeless on the bed. Torn with grief, he spent the day arranging his father's funeral and last rites. His father was cremated in the temple compound, and a day later, finally, he found himself making his way to her banks again. This time, to release his father's ashes into her waters. It felt like an intrusion but he walked and he reached her banks. But no Sindhu came strolling out. He waited, half scared, half eager, but an hour passed and finally, he tossed in the ashes and made his way back home, his head shaved, his house lonely.
Ten days later, he went back to work. While coming home, he took the route that passed the river bank, like he did. He did not look up this time, he did not expect her this time. He knew he would go home, he knew he would never see her again. He had kept away too long.
He was wrong.
She was perched on a rock, looking at him, dressed in white. The white of mourning? The white of peace? The white of renunciation? He did not know. He walked, a little taken aback at her appearance. He stopped in front of her. The minutes passed, slow, stretched out, until the sun sank in the horizon and Sindhu embraced him.
Her hands were icy like they always were, her breath came short, her lips were at his ears and her hands were on his shoulders. He automatically lifted her off the rock and threw her down on the ground, tearing off her white, her white of peace, of renunciation, of mourning, grinding into her flesh, violent, painful and wild. he left the marks of his nails on her back and hips, he left bites on her neck and navel, he left her womanhood pounding and throbbing. Those luscious and ample breasts were finally his, and he claimed them like he would claim his woman, his mother, his goddess.
She held on, letting his violence course through her veins, gasping, moaning, weeping, begging, laughing, sobbing and screaming.
He was sure the whole village must have heard them, the next day, when we woke up, sore and scratched. But evidently, they did not. And they would not, for the next few days as he ravaged his Sindhu, and she filled him up with her currents and waves. He knew every contour and mood now, he knew every pleasure and pain, he knew every need and desire that coursed through her.
But there was still something he did not know. There were shadows in her eyes he did not see.
She called herself Sindhu. And she was like the river. Monosyllabic and moody in summers. Bursting with life and emotion when it rained, insatiable like the flow of her waters. Wintry, distant and a little scary too, when temperatures dropped and she froze over.
She always asked him questions. And he found he finally had a genuinely interested audience in her. He told her stories of his village, his dead mother, his old father, his friends, the temple near his house, his time in the shop where he worked, selling saffron and cinnamon.
She listened. She observed. She smiled, Her eyes brimmed over. Her lips parted in wonder, her brows shot straight up in shock, strands of hair loose on her forehead, wringing her saree and throwing it over her head, gently placing her hand on his, her hands always icy cold and wet, her touch causing little pinpricks of heat to rush down his spine.
He asked her if she would be disappointed if he did not come one day, to see her like he did every evening. She looked amused. It's the other way round, she whispered. I may be here forever, like I have been. If one day, you lose sight of me, will that be alright? He went back home that evening, a strange and heavy hollowness in the pit of his stomach. He could not be falling in love with a river could he? Was she really the river she claimed to be? The village wiseman had spoken about spirits of the river and trees long ago. Was she one of those spirits? Were they real? Was she dangerous?
But how could she be dangerous, she of those silken tresses, she of those soft parted, bow-shaped lips, she of those arched eyebrows that cast deep shadows on her midnight black eyes, she of that slender neck that plunged into heavy, full breasts that he tried so hard not to look at, she of that swanlike grace, she of that gentle waist, she of those full and fertile hips, how could she be a dangerous spirit? How could she hurt him?
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.
Women have been cursed by mythical legends, to never be able to hold secrets. And you will agree; no woman ever kept her mouth shut about anything she had been specifically told to keep quiet about. She promises to share it only with you and before you know it, it's an open secret.
But curses fade over time, jinxes and magic wear over time. Especially in the face of love. Especially so.
I have my own secrets. I stay in a village, off the coast of Narmada, the river that arouses lust even inside sages who have practiced penance for decades now. The Narmada courses and turns and twists and curls and unfurls, like a maiden waking up from her wedding bed, swathed in swirls of saree, her nakedness glimpsing at its first new un-virgin morning. In surprise. With a lazy glance at her lover from last night. The Narmada winds her way into crevices, deep enough to carve caves over millennia. But I am interested in only one cave.
The temple of the Lord. He, in his crowning glory of dark matted hair, who could not be tempted by the great god of love (and reduced him to ashes), in His tiger skin wrapped tight around His waist, His muscled legs crossed over, His trident dripping ashes and blood, His eyes half closed, His deep, dark eyes turned upward in glorious meditation, His arms flexed on His knees, His palms firm.
The Lord, who will not cast a single glance in my direction when I go up to Him with my plate of bel leaves and raw milk. Who I will bathe with milk, pouring it gently down His head as rivulets, like small Ganga rivers, will flow down His forehead. His skin will bristle from the cold milk. His lips will hold steady, stopping the milk from entering His otherwise gently parted lips.
And I will utter unto myself, that perhaps, one day, the day will come, when the Lord will claim me. Perhaps if I visit Him enough, perhaps one day, if He opens His eyes, if He so much as looks at me, just once. Just once, and He will be mine. Mine to keep. If He only sees these eyes, dream-like and almond-shaped, dark with desire to possess Him, these lips, full and blossoming, waiting for His. If only once, He sees this waist, slender and fair, waiting for His hands to wrap to wrap around them.
If only, He will see these breasts, tender and quivering in their eternal wait for His lips, these legs, swathed in fabric that want to be torn by His able fingers. The arms that are waiting to be grabbed, pinned down and crushed under His weight. And this flower, untouched and pining, waiting to receive His godhood, to feel The Destroyer bestow her with life.
Devotees throng His temple everyday, with their offerings and their pleas and I am sure they receive their desires in time. To them He is stone...centuries old, built several hundred years ago. And He grants their wishes. But He won't grant me mine. He won't grant me this although I see Him breathe, I see Him sigh, I see His eyes sway upwards, His muscles taught with the tension of the body responding to the miracles of His mind. If He lets me see Him, why won't He let me touch Him?
Why won't He let me run my hands over His chest, why won't He react to my silent protests, requests, pleadings even? Why won't He let me lead Him home, why won't He let me kiss His palms, why won't He let me show Him how much I need Him to become the woman I really am?
He won't grant me my need to have Him grab me, carry me over to His bed, His pedestal even, tear my clothes, knead and squeeze and kiss and fondle my breasts, my flesh, my thighs, my back, suck on the honey, the nectar I have been saving for Him, and tell me what it tastes like, hold up my waist to meet His thrusts, His push, His universes inside of me, His dance and His anger and His discipline and His creations pounded inside me until I am just like Her, the Narmada, who ran down His forehead one day, when He was making love to His wife? Just like Narmada, winding, glowing, twisting, turning, writhing, in pain, in pleasure, in agony, in ecstasy, the colors blurring my eyes, still a virgin and yet completely violated, because she was never touched but was born of the perspiration of the Lord in His heat for His wife?
He won't. If the god of love and lust did not succeed, what are the chances I will? What are the chances I will see Him collapse on me, spent and exhausted and finally content, His eons of penance bringing fruit inside of me, His juices creating their own rivers and seas inside the universe I hold within? What are the chances? Unless of course, I turn to stone too, over the years, over these centuries, and wait, wait, wait until He obliges?
