Living In Bombay

The lights were dim outside. She missed her twilights, her life. She was faced with an endlessly repeating cycle of work and home, children and too many people inside a capsule of a house. She used to imagine these lives when she was young and not married, shuddering at the thought of how a family of ten, that included three couples, could live in a constricted 2BHK off the grinding railway platform of Byculla. Little did she know she would land in precisely a family like that.


"Where do they have sex?" she wondered then. She never dared ask, though. On their first night together, they were hustled into one of the two bedrooms, decorated with wilting flowers. It was miserable - she hardly knew this man, but she was not going to complain about sex, of course. She had waited for this night. It was an anti-climax of sorts when he fell asleep within seconds of resting his head on the pillow.


Sex was always hurried, performed in strictly traditional positions, at the most random times of the day or night, with quickly stifled moans, of mostly pain. On days that they found themselves alone in the house, when her ribs would hurt from all the jostling they put up with, in the local trains, she was expected to be sufficiently lubricated and ready to take the ramming. And clean up after him too. Not one word of love, not one caress, not a second to wait and ask her if she had enjoyed it.


So it was not surprising when, on one particularly tiring work day, she bumped into her cubemate at work, in the office restroom. They both quickly apologized, smiled in unison, and she stepped aside to let her out. Instead, she got pulled in.


There was shock and disgust piling up inside every pore of her body at first, as the girl pinned her to the wall. "I cannot get you pregnant. Relax," the girl said. "You are fighting too hard. Let go. Elope with me, I am going to make you so happy," she whispered.

And to her utmost chagrin, those words sent up a thrill of the most beautiful tingling up her spine, her hips. The girl let her fingers run over her collar bone, raising goosebumps on her skin. The girl knelt down at her feet then, her eyes raised in a worshipping stance, slowly hiking up the saree, and it was then, looking into those eyes, that she realised how much she had wanted her husband to do this to her.


He was just going to have to pay for all those hurried nights and days of insensitivity, wouldn't he?

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.

Four Years

Drops of dew sparkled in her hair. They glinted in the sunlight, white light scattering into winking rainbows, catching his eye, several feet below, as he gazed up at her. She had her chin up, her hair in one swirl over her shoulder, pristine womanhood in virgin white, a few minutes after her bath, hair dripping wet, loose ends knotted with a flimsy towel.


He stretched his hand out to catch the scattered droplets of water that she tried so hard to shake off. Unaware he stood to catch them five floors below.


Anita.


She didn't know his name. Her name was the first thought he had when he woke up each day in his empty bed and home. Few people knew her. His friends most obviously did not. There were fairer maidens to notice in the town.


Anita was not beautiful. At least, not beautiful in the way most men expected. She was too frail. Dark. Her hair was plain and long and straight. Her eyes jet black. Her clothes mostly white. her voice husky.


Nobody noticed the sway in her hips, the rise of her bosom. Nobody saw the frailty in her gait. The flush in her cheeks. The tremble in her hands. The deep lashes that sheltered her deep, dark eyes. The fullness of her lips. The serene simplicity of the virgin whites she was always clad in.


Four years he spent, walking by her house, catching drops of water from her hair, her hands. Four years he spent, seeing her walk by the river in the evening, sit on the rocky ledge and watch the sun set. Four years, hearing her sing in the temple every Saturday, quietly in her own corner, the plate full of jasmines and hibiscus balanced in one hand, her delicate, transparent shawl held in another.


Four years he spent, looking at her retrace her steps to the temple courtyard, her face to the idol inside, refusing to show her back to the god who alone knew her longings. Four years he spent seeing her hang her head in anger and humiliation as all prospective bridegrooms rejected her.


To tall. Too dark. Her voice too husky. Awakening the lust that no man wished to acknowledge.


Until she called his name one day after she had left the temple courtyard. How she knew, he knew not. But he knew she did and that was enough. Enough it was that she had noticed, she had accepted this subtle intrusion, his observance.


He followed.


She led the way, walking all the way to the river, the sway of her waist sending his heart leaping into his mouth, suddenly awakening his desire in ways it hadn't been beckoned before. at the bank, she swirled around to face him.


What do you want, she snapped.


He withdrew in shock. For he saw in her eyes the rage he did not know existed. Raw, red anger, its flames reaching into her pupils.


You, he whispered.


Four years, she retorted sharply. What were you busy doing for four years, she snapped.


What were you doing when I was undergoing all the humiliation at the hands of men that did not deserve to even see me? What were you doing for four years when I went walking down this lonely river every day in the vain hope that you would take me? What were you doing when I stood on my terrace every morning, to catch one glimpse of you waiting to trap drops of water that had touched with my skin? What were you doing when I retraced my steps from the temple in my hope to not lose sight of you? What were you doing all those afternoons when I feel asleep wanting you inside the warmth of my sheets?


What were you doing when I pleasured myself to sleep every night, imagining your manhood deep inside me? What were you doing when I wanted you to take the only few treasures that I bear before any other man set his intention on it? What were you doing on all those mornings when I woke up, wet with exhaustion from wanting your hands to mold me into the woman I could have become?


He stared at her, shock registering on his face. She stopped to catch her breath, shallow and ragged. He took a step towards her.


No, she hissed. Don't come near me. Don't look at me anymore either. I have been seen by a man today. I am to marry him. And I am to not look at any other man. Not anymore. He came this morning. He saw me. He is my father's age. And I am to marry him. He saw me, she repeated, her eyes welling up.


Is something wrong, he asked, sudden bile rising in his stomach.


He saw me...he saw me how I have always wanted you to see me, she said. But it gave me no happiness. I was so disgusted, I wanted to drown. And I will. I just had to tell you that it is not this man who is the cause for my death.


It is you. And the people who need to know this, have been told. You will pay for the woman that I could have been but am not. You will pay, she said, her eyes flaming again.


He wanted to stop her. He was late only four years.


He knew he would pay for it with his own life.