Dreamt Lives
Anirudh Deshpande
II
The Lovers
It was past midnight when Ravi went to bed after smoking a cigarette on the terrace.He tip toed into the bedroom, took off his pants and shirt and slipped into the bed. Both mother and daughter were fast asleep next to him their silhouettes visible in the semi dark room.
A pointless conversation with his wife was the last thing he desired after a trying day. He knew she was inquisitive by nature. He failed anyway because a few minuteslater she turned towards him murmuring something in sleep. He felt her smooth warm thigh on his leg under the light blanket. He felt the down on her skin and was transported into a world far removed from the present.Memories of their love making flooded his imagination. He saw her, taut and ten years younger, straddling him with her tresses gently bouncing on her breasts. He felt the softness of her lips on his own and remembered the delightful taste of her mouth. Almost every moment of his life with her he lived a passion which never ceased to surprise him.
Despite the weariness he began to get aroused by the eagerness which persisted between them.
She had always sensed his presence in bed. For her this was the meaning of life. To lie with him and feel him aroused for her.
“How is he? Will he survive a few more days? Please say something” she muttered, half asleep.
“I feel Bahadurknowsmy father’send is near. He barely recognized me. I saw that his pupils are dilated and mother once told me to take that as a sign of dying. He mayor may not survive the night. I really don’t know. Anyway, I hope he gets some relief soon” Ravi replied in a tender voice.
Was it his rising desire, he thought without any guilt
He also thought of the relief he deserved. He looked at Smita and her predicament. She was barely thirty and trapped in a life of her choice. What if they had had an arranged marriage and she found herself in this predicament?“I think he saw Vaini at his door” Ravi spoke more to himself staring at the ceiling. He smelt the fragrance of the fresh flowers once again in his nostrils. “Is it possible for the dead to visit the living or dying? I wonder” he added.
Smita moved closer to him. She was scared of ghosts.
A conversation began between the lovers.
“Who was Vaini?Was she one of his many mistresses?” Smita asked.
“I believe, she was thelove of his life. Remember the woman in RajangiriI once told you about. The one whose husband was impotent” replied Ravi in a voice which sounded romantic to Smita who loved family stories. She had obviously forgotten that conversation about the Patriarch’s love for a woman called Vaini and the events related to the affair narrated to Ravi several years ago by an old aunt. Smita was prone to forgetting things as well.
“What is the difference between love and the love of one’s life?” she awoke with the question, feeling his warmth and hardness under the blanket. He sensed her naughtiness and loved such moments with her. During the day she often behaved as if he was a stranger to her but at night she often changed into a passionate lover.
“The difference between the others and you” Ravi said quietly taking Smita in his arms.
For six years he had remained married to Smita’s distantrelative before his undying unexplained passion for Smita blew away the remnants of an unhappy union. Six years after an unhappy marriage his wife had experimented with a couple of affairs. The affairs had left him feeling depressed and inadequate. Initially he had tried hard to keep the marriage going.Finallyhe accepted that the fire had gone out of it. Man and woman drifted apart, unhappy, desolate and aimless.They accepted that the marriage was a mistake. If they had waited a few years before tying the knot the marriage would never have happened.
Smita came into Ravi’s life when his faith in marriage was shaken. He felt rejected by his wife. Stricken with low self worth hebrimmed with hidden feelings. Smita did him a huge favor. She accepted him as he was. She fell in love with him without a thought for his time spent with other women before her.
Smita was a light sleeper. The slightest sound woke her up. She often got up with a start and this irritated Ravi. Sometimes when he turned in bed to be with himself she woke up to ask him what the matter was. There were nights when he lay next to her with an article or story revolving in his mind. Thinking made him feel less irrelevant. During such nights when she snuggled up expecting him to feel her long slim back he became irritated.
She would ask him the time as if time mattered. What difference did a clock make to his life? He would speculate the futility of time before trying out a regime of yogicbreathing to escape the consciousness of being. On many nights he would beaffectedby a comment made by someone during the day. Then her presence in the bed did not matter.
He lay awake remembering the scenes of a dreamt life. His soul would escape into a conjured past through the open window.He felt free of desire. “A man can live without fucking” he thought and laughed aloud. In such moments his alarmed wife responded with queries eliciting false answers.
SometimesSmita and the child sleeping on the bed were strangers. He lay sleepless in that insecure secret knowledge. His own voice sounded strange to him. At times,among friends, he wandered away into scandalous imaginations. He heardthem and they believed they heard him.
No one realized that he was gone.
On some nights he wondered why Smita shared a bed with him.Both might have sought happiness otherwise. In such moments the loss of time plagued him. A man and woman can sleep on the same bed but not always together. Sometimes they turn away from each other to escape the emptiness of monogamy.
Marriage teaches you to share and hide feelingstogether.
Ravi remembered how his friends had imagined femalesand marriage.
Women were supposed to be attractive, perfumed, manicured and willing to make love! Nothing, absolutely nothing, about them would put you off. Sometimes when these thoughts rushed through his mind at night he laughed aloud waking up Smita. She would ask him what the matter was and he made up a story; an allusion to an episode to hide the truth. Years of living with her taught him to keep his candidness in check. The thought of his not loving her for a few moments a day would have destroyed her delicate self esteem. When breathless passion gave way to matrimony her depression and sulking were exposed to him.
Despite everything Smita remained in love with Ravi.She was obsessed with him and often got up late at night to make sure he was alive. “I love you Ravi” she would say and return to her dreams. When he was away for a few days she tidied his almirah and sniffed his clothes. She sometimes felt envious of the dogs who were his shadows and to whom he never spoke a harsh word. He was omnipresent in her consciousness. She believed that his memory would keep her happy even after her death. She wanted to die seeing his face, full of his happy memories. She was sure of leaving the world before him and asked him whether he would find another woman in her absence.
“Suppose I die tomorrow, what will you do? Will you live alone like the heroes in some novels caring for our mother-less children?” she asked him once after their second daughter was born.
His answer was practical and calculated to preempt a longer discussion.
“What difference will it make to you, if I did? You will not be there to see anything”.
“So within a week of my death you will bring home another woman and fuck her on this bed” she responded to his cryptic reply using the f word deliberately.
Her directness did not shock him. Years ago she would never speak such words but with age she was changing.
He noted the accent on the word fuck. Those were days when her language was cleaner. It became dirty when she crossed into her forties. He was surprised by the choice of a word which he usually used when he expressed his desire to mount her from behind. Men made love, dogs and horses fucked! Language had always intrigued him and as a boy he had found the etymology of the word.
The description, he had noted with amusement, came from the human observation of fornicating pigs in the German speaking states of Europe.
But as he spoke the pragmatic words, he foresaw the emptyfuture without her. He regretted the words.He thought of the foolish things he would do with her restraining hand withdrawn from his life. He knew he would be afraid of life without her. Whom would he turn to at night to escape his fears? Who would have a pot of tea with him in the morning? With whom would he converse mentally to thrash out a contradiction? To whom would he turn for shrewd advice?
These questions scared him. His friends believed he was self sufficient but he knew how vulnerable to the world he really was.
He imagined himself as an old man like the grandfather in Galsworthy’s A Man of Property. He thought of being uncared for, inching towards death in an old people’s home among strangers. He imagined living in rags under the Neem tree outside thehouse begging for food. Scenes from No One Writes to the Colonel by Marquez crowded his mind. It never occurred to him that his headstrong daughters would support him.Possibly one would grow out of a troubled past to become a successful professional, secure and happy.The other might become a social leader known for her erudition and common sense.
A small house in the mountains with a vegetable garden and fruit trees appeared in his dreams. In the dreams Smita stood admiring a garden prepared with care. In the four corners of the garden beehive boxes hung on poles.In a corner a large Persian cat relaxed on a doormat. Smita always appeared young and shapely in his dreams.
Smita remained Ravi’slifetime sexual fantasy.
His appetite for sex did not decline when she stopped dyeing her hair. As a young man he had promised himself that he would celebrate his sixtieth birthday in a love-making holiday with Smita in the mountains. With age he became bold and shameless in the expression his desire for his wife.In the mornings at four he woke her up expecting unexpected favors. He made her feel his guard upand whispered in her ear “Let us make love now. A liter of hot water has accumulated inside my balls. It will soon go to my head. So much ojas is not good for me” She would smile, fondle his phallus and the grey hairs on his chest and make fun of him. Occasionally he turned her on her back and took her missionary style ignoring her aches and pains. She loved it. One day she decided to get a haircut after she had stopped dyeing the tresses for a while. He watched her turn white with false nonchalance for a few days. She prepared a surprise for him at, what she thought, was the ripe age of fifty five to see his reaction. That day he returned late and pretended not to see the change with much surprise. After dinner when the two retired to their bedroom she was shocked by his pulsing desire. Before she could say anything, he grabbed her waist and swung her into position over himself. Well past her menopause, and not wet as she used to be some years ago,she could not care less. Within a couple of minutes she rode him comfortably and before anyone could disturb themboth the lovers collapsed in a welter of pleasure.
Smita’s white short white hair inflamedRavi’s passion in bed. After that day of love making husband and wife often sat together and discussed in detail the kind of hairstyle which would suit her face and body. After a decision, he waited anxiously for the day he would see her nude in bed sporting her new style. She looked lovely in a Maharashtrian cotton saree. In her mid fifties her body was firm and reminded him of her youth.He had felt all her firmness decades ago during a warm late summer evening the lovers had stolenat Nanda’s house in West Delhi. For the first time she had bared herself to someone. She converted him into a devotee of her supple body with that single gesture which remained embedded in his memory. Later the steam of love making had settled into a fragrant sweat when her nudity cradled into his hairy chest.Her nipples never failed to challenge his powerful chest muscles. Smita would never stop loving Ravi as the couple aged but there was one demand of his she never met. Since his childhood in NEFA, when beauty presented to him were elegant ladies in low slung sarees and sleeveless blouses, he had imagined a wife who would dress exactly like them. Smita never wore a sleeve less blouse.In fact her blouse sleeves grew longer despite his calling them as “Brahmakumari Blouses”.
This joke did not weaken her resistance to his demand.
“What difference will it make to you, you will take them off in any case” she would say to him her eyes lowered. It was her habit. She rarely looked into his eyes when he was so bold.
“Rip them off!” he rejoined. And both would laugh loudly.
Such conversations reminded him of the occasions when the urgency of love making had given her no time to remove her blouse. The blouse would remain unbuttoned, the bra would be unhinged and the rest would be accomplished with an energy which surprised them both.
The past had also been uncomfortable.
In December 1992 a horde of impassioned men with saffron headbands demolished a mosque in north India triggering the country’s slide into violence and chaos. The event inflicted a festering wound onIndia. Witness to these events, Ravi’s faith in humanity plummeted and his personal history became more enmeshed with the future of India.
From 1992he lived with the feeling that time was running out.
The love between Ravi and Smita had flowered a few months before that unfortunate event.
Smitasometimes thought that gaining Ravi had meant the loss of a world spread at her feet.She never comprehended what attracted her to him. Neither rich nor handsome,he had no prospects. He was chivalrous, warm, caring and laid back. He cooked and sang and wrote prose. He opened the car door for her. At night he whispered endearments into her ears which he nibbled.She helplessly came before him shivering with ecstasy.He later took his pleasure leaving her legs trembling. She never had enough of his hand caressing her. For his eyes she spent nothing on waxing her arms or wearing lipstick. A handloomsaree or a fitted salwarkameez was enough to ignite his passion.
Ravi was a passionate man but a friend would remark to him in the year of his father’s death, “Ravi, being good is not enough. You must be powerful. History is not made by goodness alone. The prime mover of history is power.” Theyhad driven to meet this friend, a colleague in the NGO he joined for a few months in 1998. They drovethrough NOIDA on never ending broad roads to have lunch with Manish Singh and his hospitable family. Singh was a Rajput from Bihar. His wife was simple, sharp featured and fair and his two children were delighted to see the three visitors. The woman taught Smita how to prepare Arhar Dal with a dash of hing, haldi and salt.
This simple tasty dish became a staple in their house from the next day.
After that fateful year Ravi and Manish lost touch. Some years later, Ravi heard that Singh had joined a political party and risen to prominence in the political life of Bihar. By then Ravi had become a fellow at a research centre in New Delhi and the tide of his life had turned.
The words spoken by Manish stuck in Ravi’s mind and he began to take the role of power in history more seriously. During the time when his star rose Ravi remembered the words everyday.
One day Smita had asked him, “Do you know why I love you?”
They were in the Lodi Gardens to discuss her doctoral synopsis seated on a metal bench. Couples and single joggers went past them. Groups of old men gossiped in the distance. Hawkers passed by selling spicy moong sprouts or lentil pakodas. He read her draft word by word, pen in hand, his forehead creased in a frown. The draft had been carelessly written. He knew it would not impress the peers as it was. Lost in concentration he barely heardher.
She repeated the question. Her habit of repeating questions and suggestions would irritate him forever. Over time he trained himself to control the irritation and speak with her in a measured tone. This change in behavior was not lost upon her.But, like other issues, this too was resolved in bed.
Ravibelievedthat love making between husband and wife solved mostmarital problems.He had read about this is a semi-porn novel in school and the idea became imprinted on his juvenile psyche at an age when sex is all important to boys. He also felt that marriage meant good sex. In fact he was in the habit of casually blaming a lack of a satisfying sex life for the ego problems of people.
Marriages ended when husbands and wives stopped making love or at least stopped thinking of it.
“I don’t know what made you fall in love with me” he replied, his eyes fixed on the draft she had written without rethinking the topic. A bad draftusually angered him. “All writing is re-writing” one of his professors in JNU had once remarked after reading his assignment. It was a different matter that this professor was only good at writing well crafted applications. “Train yourself to write learned prose” another professor deeply interested in literature had said to him. “You can do that by continuously examining the drafts you write. And also take copious notes from what you read” the professor had added blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke in the canteenThese words stuck in his memory.
That evening he stripped before the mirror but found no answer to her question. He never understood why women felt comfortable in his company. This fact had not gone down well with his male classmates in school.Their observations led them to believe that girls felt happy in the company of effeminate boys. Ravi’s habit of reading novels was considered strange because novels were associated with girls. Some friends poked fun at his library copies ofHardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels. Ravi was not effeminate. His irregular looks, copper complexion and masculinity did not scare the girls. Girls preferred to be dropped home after the parties by him because they felt safe in his company. He did not undress and ravish them with his eyes as the custom was in north India. They held on to his muscular waist and sat close to him on his motorcycle as he enjoyed the short lived intimacy. On occasion he got into brawls because of the girls. There were serious fights involving beer bottles, motorcycle chains and car cranking rods.
Smita’s friends in distant Oxford had followed their minds.She followed her heart which brought her back to India. Close to the submission of her thesis draft to a supervisor in failing health she became pregnant during one of Ravi’s trips to her hostel. A few days before the night of passionate love making which resulted in their first child, she forced him into marriage in a registry.
The marriage was followed by a short honeymoon on a narrow single bed in her room under the influence of a twenty year old single malt whiskey. Then he left for Delhi.
She discovered she was pregnant the month after he left and told him about it over a long distance call. He accepted the news quietly. She was out of funding and her seriously unwell supervisor had not read her draft. After a few days she called him again. She was afraid of a miscarriage and said so. A month later he sold his motorcycle to a Sikh vendor of reconditioned Bullets in Karol Bagh, purchased a cheap ticket to London and arrived in her hostel unannounced. The conditions left them no choice but to return to India.
On a whim she had informed her family of the marriage and had received a brusque reply.
They disowned and exiled her. She had lived with her family for eighteen years and missed them sometimes. As time passed the memories of her parents and brother became faded and selective. She never met her relatives.She had always disliked those people full of petty concerns. Years later she read of the deaths of some of them in the newspapers by sheer accident.
Upon reading such news she would exclaim to Ravi, “See, x died last week.” A short discussion on x followed and life went on.Then y would die after a few years. They had concluded years ago that relativesusually do not matter.Did she think in those moments of a day when the x or y would be replaced by mom or dad? He was sure she did. They never spoke of it though, both prey to a residual superstition. As if the mere utterance of such a possibility may materialize it. He knew it saddened her, he knew not how to comfort her and they let the moment pass, unsaid words conjuring a melancholy that the demise of a distant ‘x’ could never account for.
Ravi’s relatives lived in Maharashtra. One by one the elders died evoking short lived reminiscences. Finally he lost touch with the rest. To those who asked him where he “originally” was or where his “native place” was, he began to say “Africa” to relish their shocked reaction.
Everyone was an African to begin with, he would say to the inquisitive with academic seriousness.
Years after their marriage Ravi came across a long letter Smita had written him from England expressing her frustration with her choices. In her small handwriting she had written:
Dearest Ravi,
Hope all is well with you and your doctoral research is proceeding on schedule.
Here in Oxford everyone is working towards a career. Most of my batchmates do not want to live in England beyond the time they will spend getting their degrees. This country is cold and here it rains all the time. Very soon after coming here the charm of England wears off. A number of my classmates have already applied for funding to the States and some have received letters of acceptance for admissions to higher degrees from reputed universities across the Atlantic.
I am the only one who is considered mushy headed and love struck.
To be frank, no one wants to return to India.
Some Indian girls made it a point to get involved with European boys at the first opportunity in the hope of settling down here. I am sure you have heard of a couple of them from JNU who slept with their English seniors rather soon after arriving here. One of them has already left for Warwick with her English lover.
In fact when I approached an Indian professor in my department in the hope of making him my phd guide some of my friends here laughed at me. What is the point of working with an Indian professor in England, they asked me and this question left me depressed beyond words! I am confused and feel I have made the wrong choices in life.
Sometimes I think I should not have applied for the fellowship and come here.
On other occasions, and I am being frank here, I start regretting my relationship with you.
But for you and the memory of our love I would vanish in Western society forever. The scenes of our lovemaking torment my dreams. I cannot belong to anyone else. I can’t imagine someone violating my body.
Oh, how I hate myself for thinking like this!
Love,
Yours
Smita.
P.S. Please don’t feel hurt by what I have written above. Really, except you I have no one to confide in. Relating with people here truly seems meaningless to me.
He read the letter twice, put it back in the file and went for one of long therapeutic walks. Walking helped him and in those days he walked everywhere.The letter made him think that the past could not be undone and every moment in life was transient. He knew there was really neither past nor future and the joy of living resided in this knowledge.But things were different when your life was shared with others who thought otherwise.
While walking he remembered the reply he had written to her admission of despondence.
Dearest,
Our love was a product of our free will.
It happened because you reciprocated my desire for you. Search your heart for any trace of force in your feelings for me and I am sure you will find none.
Lovers don’t think of a future.
They spend their time savoring every precious moment history gives them. I still remember the evening when we met for the first time and I can never forget the wave of desire which swept over me during that brief verbal intercourse we had. On that fateful evening I found a love which I knew I would never give up.
Our love was not intended to trap you in a time warp. That much was clear to us.
When you departed for England we had decided to call it a day.
I thought I had lost you to a world to which I could never belong; the very thought of you going away had alienated me from a future which did not belong to me. If you continue to love me and feel that our destinies are bound together in an unbreakable bond I cannot help matters.
Love is hopeless. It is irrational. It defies common sense.
When our love began I told you that I would never stop loving you. Believe me, even if you were to marry someone other than me I will continue desiring you and make love to you in secret.
I remember saying this to you occasionally. Your response was to say that you would refuse me after becoming someone else’s wife but I noticed that you said so without much confidence. Your eyes and flushed face gave you away. Even you know that our destinies seem tied together irrespective of you marrying me or someone else for that matter.
Trust your judgement and do what will make you happy in life. You are free to make your choices. I would rather that you do not come back if coming back to India will make you unhappy.
But don't ask me to fall out of love with you because that will simply not happen.
Yours,
Ravi.
Smita’s friends got well paying jobs at the banks which reaped the benefit of the scholarships which had taken them to the West. Some became members of faculties which Ravi often likened to the ones described in the novels of David Lodge. Whenever she heard of some old acquaintance having made it Smita’s heart filled up with a frustration which only Ravi understood.
Sometimes when she looked at him unnoticed scenes from the past flashed before her. She remembered the time when her family discovered her affair. First they reasoned with her but she did not relent. Then they subjected her to a boycott. That did not work. A distant relative had seen her with Ravi in Delhi a couple of times and had followed the couple on his scooter to confirmhis suspicions. His discreet queries confirmed the fact.
On the day of her confrontation with her family Smita’s father slapped herhard. Before the slap became a beating her mother intervened in the altercation and saved her from serious damage. Smita was about to depart for England in a matter of days and had returned home by train to visit the family.
“Did we send you to Delhi to behave like a whore?” her father said to her in a fit of uncontrollable fury. Any girl who lost her virginity before marriage was a whore to him. He saw his dream of getting an NRI son in law go up in smoke when his wife broke the news of her affair.
His face darkened and sexually explicit abuses had started falling from his nicotine stained lips.
“I have heard of this bhenchod from some relatives. He is a hopeless chap without prospects. A totally useless bugger from that communist university JNU!They teach these maderchods to spoil innocent girls. This foolish daughter of yours had so many good single Punjabi men around her in Delhi and she chose a married man as her yaar. What shame! I wish she had died in child birth.”
He waited for Smita before she left for England to show her how he felt. After uttering a stream of Punjabi abuses he had turned to her,“As far as I am concerned you do not exist. Go and darken your face wherever you wish to, but never show me your manhoosface again.”
He shut himself up in his bedroom and was not among the few relatives who bid her a farewell next morning. Her mother stood helplessat the threshold and her brother sulked in a corner.She walked out with a backpack which contained a few clothes which would be useless in England. She called Ravi long distance from a public phone, managed a ‘hello’ and broke into sobs. While the alarmed pay phone owner stared at her, Ravi imagined what had happened.
He was present at the station and she collapsed in his arms without looking at the astonished passengers on the platform. Before picking up her backpack he checked her for injuries.
She never visited the abode of her childhood but she remembered every nook of that house. She remembered her childhood. Sometimes, alone, she thought of her friends and their silly dreams and games. She was amused by the memory of her neighbor’s son who had become her ‘husband’ in the games of marriage they had played as children. In her dreams the heat, dust, rain and insects of that town in distant Punjab appeared with an astonishing regularity. The smell of paranthas being made in desi ghee by her mother, an excellent cook, and taste of fresh sugarcane juice never left her subconscious.
She knew she had left her parents heartbroken. In the deepest recess of her soft heart this woundfestered for an entire life.
Almost an epoch later the news of her father’s death at eighty-seven reached her.The news arrived in a formal unfeeling sms sent by her brother. She read the message, shed a tear alone and behaved as if nothing had happened the entire day.
Later she sought comfort in Ravi’s arms.
She told him of her father’s death as he held her tight.
They talked for a long time about their shared past. She clutched him hard wishing him immortality. She had turned her back on her family for a life with Ravi. Yet regrets clouded her mind on days when she felt depressed.
She would survey the sick rooms on the ground floor and her heart would contract in fear. “Did I bargain for this in life” she thought to herself in silence.
Sheremembered the studentswho had boarded the flight to England with her. Some returned briefly for work to rub salt in her wounds. She forgot those who returned. Her regretsfortified her present rancor. The lives, loves and successes of others appeared larger than life to her and no psychologist would have blamed her for thinking so.
Ravi would return from futile meetings with potential employers to find her silent and restive.
She would sulk and refuse him sex.She was depressed and he understoodeverything in silence and guilt.
Occasionally disgust overwhelmed her and the possibility of another lifemade matters ugly.
The half dozen suitors she had rejected in Oxfordtortured her mind. She remembered the candle light dinners, wine and the gift of perfumes arranged by men, Indian and Foreign, bowled over by her long wavy hair, textbook face and tall slim figure.She felt their hands on her waist and their wine tinged breath close to her lips. If only she had yielded to the temptations! She imagined the handsome faces and strong bodies of those earnest men and a storm gathered in her breast.
Then she spent her anger on the man she truly loved.
She shouted regretful words to Ravi in the bedroom. “You wanted a career in this godforsaken country. Where is it? Tell me. We should have stayed back in England. I would have found something. But Shravan Kumar was not willing to do that!” Her words evoked an image of Shravan Kumar carrying his father and mother in two baskets slung across his shoulders and Ravi felt the burden of his parents, one each, perched on his shoulders, weighing down on his heart. He felt small then, very small, bowed and somehow slogging on in his life. He felt guilty for not being able to shrug them off to lend Smita a shoulder to rest her elegant head on, and angry with her for expecting it. True, instead of roses he had given the love of his life a house with the stench of urine and the pervasive atmosphere of failure. In his hurry to drive away such uncomfortable feelings he used what he thought was his best weapon. Intellect.
Ravi’s attempt to reason with her in such moments only worsened matters. She did not expect argument, only a nod and perhaps a hug of gratitude. How could he know? With those twofrom his pastsitting on his shoulders he could do little? Both were unhappy creatures breathing their sighs into his existence? Ravi knew of Smita’s loneliness but was too caught up in domesticity to do something about it. Smita was not the kind of person who demands attention but nonetheless enjoys it when she got it.
“Wish I had never met you. Wish I could unwind my life to the time when I had not set my eyes on you. How I hate myself for having led my life the way I did,” she would continue.
She berated him in harsh words for not finding a footing in a third world country he had chosen. He would be excoriated for having lived a life of missed opportunities.His copper face would darken. He would leave and walk aimlessly on the colony’s roads for hours. The locality was dotted with brick sheds in which the workers lived, cooked, slept and procreated. Their emaciated children with large bellies and snot filled noses crawled on the streets and spilled over into the parks. The men and women toiled during the day. At night they drank and sang themselves to sleep as he walked around them. He loved their frank smiles, supple bodies and oily hair. He smelt the delicious food they cooked. He wished he was them. He knew they were happy. He said as much to himself sometimes laughing aloud thinking he was going mad.
Her loss weighed on him. He too had not gained anything from his love but did that matter to her? He would never ask. For in her insane anger she may have said that she did not care how or why he failed in his life. He would not ask when she was sane and loving, he dared not spoil it all for himself.
People saw him talk and reason with himself using his hands. The workers’ kids made fun of him and called him names running after him for a distance.
He smiled at them and walked till there was nowhere to go.
Fortunate were the days when they made love while the neighbors slept and the sleepy guards blew their whistles in the dimly lit empty streets. In that intimacy everything was forgiven. On some moonlit nights a breeze blew through the room bringing a heady smell of jasmine, harshringar, madhumaltiand shirish blossoms. The Aravaliswere covered by native trees and shrub. An occasional panther or wolf had been sighted by the lucky hikers in the hills. Partridge was secretly shot with twelve bore guns by ex-armymen fond of shikar. Then the forest was alive, the roads went to sleep at night and patients with bronchial ailments migrated from Delhi. Thewheezing patients swore by the fresh air. The first inhabitants were the Westoxicated tea garden types who had wasted their prime in Assam. They missed the gardens and the servants and overcame their loneliness by organizing nostalgic parties. Their offspring had migrated to the West.Some were in Singapore or Australia unwilling to return. Gifts from these placesmade it easier for the older generation to tolerate the stuffy life in a false American suburb.
Men took their dogs on walks in the expansive fields early in the morning. Sometimes they strayed close to the defecating poor. Later the proletariansremembered how the ‘jungle’ vanished.Gone were the free firewood, berries and spaces for shitting.The jungle and fields had reminded them of their ancestral villages in UP and Bihar. Once, a retired self righteous Brigadier out on his morning constitutional kicked a laborer in his crotch. The emaciated man stood no chance. Caught with his pants down he died after suffering terribly for two days in a local private hospital. The workers staged a demonstration before the area police station. Finally the unrepentant Brigadierwas jailed by a judge known for his fairness. No one knew whether this happened. The news was probably producedby hearsay. Nobody reallyread the story. No one saw the demonstration and doubts remained.
Soon people became preoccupied with other rumors.Half eaten corpses in the hills were found by workers.Women were abducted and raped. Cars were waylaid and their occupants looted. Murderers were caught red handed disposing off their victims. One day the residents of the city realized that the prefix, millennium, had been added to the name of their city. Twenty years later the nomenclature would assume an ironical twist.Thecondominium infested town becameGurugram.
On days Ravi fell asleep, straightening his back after a trying day.His erection woke him up soon. The desire surprised him. He lay awake for hours immersed in memories which had shaped him. He dreamt of Smita,a young woman with firm breasts and long beautiful arms.
Now she lay next to him exhausted and drained of desire.
He never told her what he thought of the past.
Their story began years ago in central Delhi at the marriage reception of a cousin of a common friend. Before this he had seen her as a quiet young high school girl on some occasions. She wore simple Punjabi suits as only a Punjabi girl can. Her hair was long, waist slender and shoulders slim. They had conversed briefly and he liked her. The thought that they would make love one day had not crossed his mind then.
He joined her at an empty table with a plate of foodin his hands. He fumbled because the move had been deliberate.He sought her permission with some hesitation to share the table. “Remember me” he had said to start a conversation. She had turned sideways and looked up. She took in his clean cut appearance, blue blazer and grey pressed trousers. Their eyes met, a message was exchanged and she said yes. Her voice was soft and pleasant.He noticed she had grown into an attractive lady. He saw her in a silk saree for the first time. It was rich green, the color brides wore at their weddings in Maharashtra. A thin woolen shawl was draped across her shoulders casually. A simple elegant leather purse rested on the chair next to her. He smelt a perfume full of possibilities.
Hestared, enchanted, atthis enigmatic distant cousin of his estranged wife. She was looking at the dance floor where inebriated couples had lost all inhibition. He found her regal in comparison with the vulgarity which surrounded them that night. Her delicate perfume contrasted with the spectacle they both watched in mutual agreement. She sensed his presence and read his thoughts.Hiseyes were focused on her slender arms and long dark hair she carried knitted in a thick braid which fell on her long slim neck. She blushed. He imagined her in his arms, nude and willing.
The delightful moment passed. She looked into his eyes and a faint smile flickered on her lips before she turned away her face. She had read his thoughts and he fumbled. He regained his poise with difficulty and asked her about coffee.
“I love espresso after dinner” she replied looking straight at him. He brought her one and enjoyed the coffee etiquette she displayed. He savored the sight of the delicate fingers twirled around a spoon with which she mixed a little sugar in the coffee. He wanted to drink coffee from the cup which her lips caressed.
“May I drop you somewhere?” he asked her after some hesitation. He wanted to prolong the interaction.
“Don’t bother, I came with some friends and they will drop me to the hostel. Thanks nonetheless” she replied with a smile.
Soon she left in a car crushed between some friends. He felt jealous of the boy who sat next to her. Before the car vanished in the dark she turned and looked at him once. This encounter left a longing for her in his heart.Somesleepless nights later, with the receiver in his hand shaking, he called her hostel. He had acquired the number from a friend.
“She is not available today” a female said after making him wait for ten minutes.He heard loud giggling in the background. He hurriedly put down the phone feeling like a fool.His courage deserted him.
The following week he called on three evenings and was about to give up when she came on line to receive the third call.
“I wondered whether you care to have some coffee with me” he said quickly in a quaking voice afraid of his confidence collapsing once again. The woman had done something unfathomable to him.
“Are you okay? I heard you have been calling me. The whole hostel is talking about your calls. Will you take it easy?” she said in a voice laced with mild irritation. He heard the words with his heart in his mouth. He was about to apologize and hang up when she said yes to coffee.
Next day his Enfield motorcycle was parked outside the college known for its attractive girls.Some had lovers in other colleges. Away from home the girls made the most of Delhi. Some moved to post graduate degrees and careers in teaching or government. Some joined the NGOs and others became political activists. Smita’s parents lived in Ferozepur.She had studied in a strict convent school in a Shimla. The departure for the conventafter she finished class eight was preceded by a family conference dedicated to her future. The dispute was settled by her grandfather who doted on her. He had wanted a ‘proper’ English education for her. Her father was the son of a retired school teacher. He had cleared his matriculation with great difficulty and finallyopened a successful chemist shop with his brother who had a pharmacy diploma. His graduate wife taught Math and Hindi in a local government school. Smita’s younger brother, her only sibling, went to a local English medium public school.
As a school girl Smita had been attractive but her complexion was not fair by Punjabi standards. Her mother, a native of Lahore, had ruddy cheeks. Smita’s complexion was held against her by her parents and this often made her feel worthless. She was prone to examine her complexion in the mirror many times day. A trait she passed on to her daughters.
She spoke of all thisand more during their first date in a cafe near the college known for its coffee and sandwiches. After coffee she gathered her dupatta with a grace which made his blood surge. He imagined her walking to school in quiet Ferozepur, her long braid swinging from side to side. She would have appeared striking in a tight salwarkameez. Tall and lissome, hethought.
After a fortnight he held her strong and shapely hands for the first time in a cinema hall in Connaught Place. While she watched the film, he watched her. The fortnightly meetings became frequent and the kisses they shared longer. After some months their journeysbecame raging torrents of lovemaking. Her passion in bed surprised and invigorated him. The more she made love to him the more he desired her. When he did not have enough of her he dreamt of her.In his dreams he saw every mole and blemish on her body.He saw the tiny beads of sweat on her face as she thrust against him.Bedding was unnecessary to the impassioned lovers. They cavorted on chairs, tables and on hard uncovered floors. Three years reckless passionpassed before she left for Oxford on a prestigious fellowship.
Before her departure they met in their favorite south Indian restaurant in central Delhi. She had to move on with her secrets hidden in a painful heart.He would stay back to live an empty life. She was the future, he the past and he said as much to her. The future was not supposed to tag behind the past.
“You will be a rage there and many men will fall in love with you. Much of what happened between us was not supposed to be. In England it will not be difficult to forget me. Three or four parties and I shall be history to you” he had said to her in jest as they departed. Experience told him how things had turned out for some friends. Some friends had girlfriends who got fellowships to study abroad.The girls never came back or returned to marriages with businessmen. Within a fortnight of the tearful farewells and a last session of love making the boys were dropped like hot potatoes. One short nondescript man from Uttar Pradesh had become the boyfriend of a tall shapely upper middle class south Indian girl.He was heartbroken and contemplated suicide. Fortunately his friends, including Ravi, knocked sense into him in time. Later the man settled down in happiness with a buxom divorcee coveted by several men on the lookout for an easy lay. The lady brought an eleven year old daughter into the bargain to the delight of the step father.
Unable to look into Smita’s eyes he had turned away.He focusedan empty gaze on her reddish brown hair through which the late evening sun was visible in the distance.
A long pause ensued and the waiter removed the used plates. Another waiter brought the coffee. The waiters knew their menu by heart.
“I don’t know whether I should go. I do not even know whether I am capable of doing a phd at Oxford. Everything has happened so fast and I just applied because you prodded me to. I took the GRE also because some of my friends were sitting for the exam but I have chosen England over the USA. If you ask me not to go, I shall stay back and work in Delhi even if it means resisting my parents’ pressure to get me married. We can shift to a different city but I do not know what you will do with your marriage” she had pleaded in response.
She turned to him before stepping into an auto-rickshaw.
She held his hand and he kissed her on the neck unmindful of the auto-rickshaw driver. Ravi felt her close to him.Her scent entered his soul. He smelt the MysoreSandal soap which she used every day till it was replaced by Pears when the summer ended in October. He saw her straight nose and the small mole on her upper lip. Her lips were pink and she had never worn lipstick in his presence. He knew her lips became moist and red in his company.
She was simple, graceful and down to earth with only one flaw he thought wistfully.
She would never stop loving him.
Of late her family had mounted pressure on her to marry a businessman in Patel Nagar who ran a successful export house of Kashmiri carpets and shawls. Without telling her they had placed a classified marriage advertisement in the newspapers of Delhi which, they knew, she did not read. They were comfortable in the belief that on Sundays their daughter had more pressing academic things to do than read the only newspaper which was delivered to the college hostel. The response to the advertisement had overwhelmed them and their hopes had soared. After all which Punjabi trader in north India did not want to marry an educated attractive Punjabi girl with an assured monthly dowry at the level of the salary of a class one government officer and pension thereafter for life ! The respondents to the advertisement ranged from lawyers to shopkeepers and even the occasional small scale industrialist.
The hopes of the family soared and her younger even brother briefly dreamt of an imported sports car. He imagined the faces of his jealous small town friends as he drove the car in his dreams.
Smita’s friends in the hostel, when told about these developments, turned blue with envy. Most of them came from families where the custom was to get girls married after they graduated from college. When she refused the offers the family became angry and the brother was, in particular, incensed because he had already shared some of his vicarious dreams with his close friends in school. After a brief period of alienation they reconciled with the prospect of her settling down abroad, they imagined with the aid of some jealous relatives, she would find a match far more suitable than a mere Delhi based businessman. After all what was Patel Nagar compared with New York or Washington? With an NRI son in law their prestige would grow to unassailable heights.
He had watched the back of the auto-rickshaw for a long time till it became a blur in the evening haze. After she was gone he felt alone and vacant. As the late September evening turned into a long night he turned away from the greatest happiness he had felt since his childhood.
For the next two years he tried his best to repair a broken marriage. His efforts were wasted on a woman he loved but did not desire.
He and Rachna had drifted apart soon after a marriage from which sexual desire vanished too soon. His wife never reconciled to his past. Rachna was a complex person who loved him but tried hard to ignore his presence in her life. She married him after a brief sexual relationship but felt embarrassed of her marital status in public.
A few weeks after their marriage she had made a statement.
“You left nothing for me” she said referring to his pre-marital sexual life.
“I did not know that you would come into my life. Or else I would have saved my virginity for you” he retorted making matters worse.
As time passed she denied him sex as revenge for the good time he had had with other girls before meeting her. Her regrets made her frigid and she failed to see the rising frustration in him. She thwarted his desire and in time turned to other men she found more glamorous in comparison with him. She also came under the influence of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary simultaneously.
Some years after his failing marriage Ravi returned from a conference in Goa from where he had written love soaked letters to her.
In Goa he had met Rukhsana, a tall well built Muslim girl from north India at the conference. His Urdu bowled her over and they began to flirt on first day they met. He instinctively knew Rukhsanawas willing and both of them had gone swimming together on the Bagha beach where white women with glorious breasts walked by topless and Indians ogled at them. Rukhsana was not in a bikini but he saw her excellent body through her wet chikankariclothes. They shared two bottles of wine. Later, at Donna Paula, with the evening breeze ruffling her curly hair Rukhsana had unexpectedly kissed him putting a long slim tongue into his wine smelling mouth.
They were at a secluded spot. “Let us take a hotel tonight” she had whispered to him with her hand on his risen desire.
In the dimly lit air conditioned hotel room she undressed and wrapped her long legs around him feeling his desire between them. He licked her soft dark salty nipples planted on firm shapely breasts which he feltsuperior to the white breasts they had seen on the beach. A number of thrusts later she collapsed in his arms and he felt her fluid on his erect cock.
He stopped short of taking his pleasure.
Spent and surprised, she looked at him with satisfied half open eyes. “Sorry” he said and unpacked his life before her. For an epoch thereafter he felt regretful of this brief promising encounter. Many years later he learnt from a common friend that Rukhsana was settled in Ghaziabad and managed her indigent husband’s successful carpet export firm.
He imagined her wet clothes, Donna Paula and that night in a hotel in Goa with the pious name Santa Maria.
In Delhi he found his wife cold and stiff. He understood everything a few days later when his sister told him in confidence that Rupali was seeing a casanova in the circles and this affair was the hottest gossip of the season.
He did not write to Smita for weeks after she left for England. He had dropped her to the airport to see her disappear among the group of excited students heading towards security. The next morning, after a restless night, he was a heart broken man. For days he did not write to her.He did not want to distract her from the freedom England gave her for the first time in her life. He waited for a letter or a long distance call but nothing happened. She did not write.
She called only once. He heard an excited conversation in strange accents in the background. He suddenly felt alienated from her.
“How are you?” he sounded foolish.
“Fine, and you?” she replied munching on a snack.
“Doing my work in the archives these days” he explained in a choking voice.
And that was it. She had moved on quickly, he thought with a gut wrenching feeling.
In between trips to the archives and libraries he wrote her a short letter some weeks after this conversation.
Dearest Smita,
Don’t mean to intrude, but life has lost all meaning. Our memories torment me day and night. Your image maddens me. Your moles and skin I shall not overcome ! I cannot live without you. I don’t know what to do? I feel disoriented all the time.
Do write a sentence in reply.
Please advise,
Yours,
Ravi.
Everything in the city reminded him of Smita and at night he lay alone dreaming of their love making. His only relief was to confide in his childhood friends Dheeraj and Vijay who understood everything. They had seen him grow into a man since childhood. They were practical and tolerant. He knew everything about them and they knew everything about him.
All this happened when his parents were healthy and their possiblemortality did not cross his romantic mind.
Later he took up rooms on the first floor of a modest house in Gurgaon above his parents. At nights he ventured to the terrace listening to the wild animals screaming in the hills. Sometimes he saw jackals chasing wild hare into the vacant plot next to the house. They gave up near the wire fencein fear of the guards and the street dogs. The quarry escaped into the storm drains of the colony to resurface in the early morning to frolic on the vacant plots. As the orange dawn arrived on the khaki ridge the jackals retreated into the scrub awaiting the odd cattle carcass thrown to them by the farmers. On the dark nights torn apart by the crying jackals and laughing hyenas hidden memories of lonely nights spent in a yellow and green ‘toy’ house built on stilts in distant NEFA surfaced in Ravi’s heart. He heard the loud mowing of the paranoid red cow in the shed.He also heard the crashing of the wild mithun herd into the bamboo fence and the roar of a big cat in the distance. The mithuns and semi feral herds of enormous pigs ran wild in the area raising immense clouds of dust on dry days. He heard the snakes slither in the undergrowth between the house on stilts and the forest. Memories of being carried on shoulders by the hospital peon, who hurried behindthe party of dao carrying tribals and Ravi’s quick stepping mother to a far away valley where a young woman writhed in labor pains, haunted him forever.
The childhood memories appeared surreal to him in dusty khaki Gurgaon.
On some days when his mother had night duties his condition became pitiable. Terrified by his mother’s absence he woke up in a bed drenched in his urine. Paralyzed with fear and ashamed of his bed wetting he broke into loud sobs.He lay in bed trembling till the maid appeared.She would change his clothes and sheets.She sprinkled talcum powder on him and clutched him to her bosom.She sang him a lullaby in a language he did not understand. Only then did he slip into deep sleep again comforted by a Nepali woman whose alcoholic impotent husband snored away the sadness of his life in the outhouse nearby.
He remembered endless days filled with love and lust in the heat and cold of Delhi. It had been a city of lost loves, fleeting exchange of glances and unattainable attractive women. He thought of that shapely female sweeper, molested and possibly raped by the boys of his locality in the early 1970s. Her husband, a drunkard, was a man of many talents. He taught Ravi how to fly kites in a gale. One day he saw Ravi struggling with the kite in a strong monsoon wind and called him over.He burnt six identical holes on each of the kite with his cigarette.
“Now fly it without trouble”he said handing back the kite to Ravi. Indeed the kite was a pleasure to fly in a gale. Ravi was impressed with this demonstration of science.
When the talented drunkard confronted the molesters of his wife they beat him to an inch of his life. Later Ravi’s mother treated the man’s wounds.Later Ravi took boiled eggs and milk to him in thejhuggi at night for many days. Some years later the man became emaciated because of an illness he did not discuss with anyone. When he began to groan in pain even at night his wife approached the Doctor.His stomach cancer was detected late. He lay in bed reduced to a skeleton with flies sitting on him without fear. He was unable to eat anything his wife cooked or what Ravi brought him from his liberal kitchen. His eyes lit up when he saw Ravi outlined in the short door to thejhuggibut death was not far from him.
On the day he died Ravi was at school thinking of him.
They removed and cremated him in a hurry because he was a sweeper.Dead sweepers were not wanted in the locality and his funeral was lonely. It was believed that a dead sweeper stank more than a normal corpse. The infected wasted corpse was removed from the area quickly by the municipal authorities. No one from the locality had joined the funeral. Ravi’s parents heard the news in the evening.
“He was a good man” Ravi’s mother said.
Struck with premonition Ravi hurried back from school.He sensed the mood in the colony and ran straight to the jhuggi.He stood for a several minutes staring at the vacant folding coton which a thousand flies had made their home. No one had bothered to change the sheet with which the patient would cover himself as a protection against the flies and mosquitoes.
He smelt the incense and understood that his friend was gone forever leaving behind helpless memories. He thought of the kite. He wondered whether kites had souls in their wings.
That night the jhuggi was quiet and dimly lit. The sobs of a woman in mourning could be heard from it by the curious passersby. Late at night Ravi quietly cried himself to sleep. A few days later the jhuggi was pulled down by some vandals and the woman disappeared from the area.
Ravi’s queries about this event elicited no response from his friends.
*****
