I sat in the chair in my ugly room which is not better than any barn. The summer is in its peak and my cave like room is hotter than any other place in the city. I had been working on the same report for many days and now I have stopped counting the days. There are files and the computer. The fan of the computer used to make irritating sound but these days I don’t know if the fan has stopped making noise or I am completely engulfed in my work to notice the noise. The fan keeps moving. I do not like the air from the fan but I hate the heat more, the fan is busier than me, it turns on at 9:00 in the morning to 6:00 in the evening. My room is poorly lit and I work like a secret agent as if my work should not be seen by anyone.
Aroma that I have known for years breaks my meditation. She was standing there, her hands pressed against the pillar in the door as if she had come to seduce me right there in my chair. My look lights her face. She has the most radiant smile in the world, at least for me. I thought I was dreaming as I had been remembering her too often these days but in dream one does not sense smell, yes there she was. It had been almost a year since I last saw her but just few moments had passed since I last remembered her. My room which width vanishes in its length had all of a sudden blessed with glory. The distance between the chair and the door must be more than three meters and the poor light would make it difficult for one to see someone at the door. But it was not any other being, it was her. I can recognize her in crowd, blind fold me and I can reach her chasing her smell, I can feel her touch, I know the touch of her hand, the delicacy of her lips as if their taste has been permanently transferred to my lips, I know the feel of her hair. She looked like a warrior princess who had just came to see a friend. In these eight years her hair were same, her lips same but her aura brighter, her face more glorious, her breasts little bigger, her body a little larger. She had been nearby the whole day engaged in a meeting with a client. She had dropped in to see me. I just came to see you, she said. As if she wanted to know I exist or not. After that evening I had never thought we will meet again but the next day she had called me as if nothing had happened. I had played with her womanhood, I had owned her body played with it, I had held her naked body with a brute force of an animal, like a beast who had caught a prey after so many hungry days. I had triumphed time that day, I had been someone I had never known. She did not resist, she submitted herself to me as if she were my slave. Had it been possible I would have soaked all her body with my saliva but no I couldn’t still I know the taste of her flesh, taste of her tongue, taste of her saliva. Many times I smell the fragrance of her breath in mine. I had embraced her body like a drowning man embraces the floating trunk. I had powered all my energy into her, every bit of it. As I laid there exhausted she had kissed me as if it were an honor for my feat. I looked at her naked body from top to bottom as if I were seeing the most revered statue in the whole universe; she did look like a statue. When I woke up she had already left, it was an early morning and my body felt like a flower but I felt guilty. I wanted to kill myself for crushing her virtue for making her impious. She had called me as if nothing had happened, she was her usual self. It had surprised me. May be it was a dream in which my unconscious injected itself no but the cut in my lips told something else. The whole room was a mess, my bed looked mess, it had her smell, there was her handkerchief in the table.
Even after that incident we met, there was no change in her but I still had that guilt I had spoilt my goddess. I forgot to call her in and she had to remind me that I had not invited her inside. I invited her in hurry and she sat there in the sofa facing me. My heart races, my blood becomes colder whenever she is around, my words betray me, my eyes become nervous and I feel embarrassed for no reasons. She always smiles as if she were mocking me, as if that night she had framed me, as if she wanted to humiliate me before myself, as if she wanted to crush my self respect but no she has never been like that. She was the most innocent girl in our entire class, may be in our entire school. Unless anyone put it straight she would not understand anything but she was not dumb. She always remained a child at least I felt so until that night. If I was the beast that evening she was a brutal lioness.
Its been years since I have known her but I still feel the same nervousness in her presence as if it were the first time I was meeting her. Only few SMSes had kept oiling our relationship even they had dropped in numbers and it was again for no reason. I still smiled at her remembrances, she still lit my memories. My eyes used to seek her in the crowd as I looked through the window of the bus. In all these months I never saw her in the road. Her face, her laughter, her smiles, her lips, her nakedness everything were still fresh in me as if they were halo that accompanied me everywhere.
I cannot say if its love, because when sometime I think about marriage she never comes to my thoughts. Possibly it’s the sheer pleasure of her body that I enjoy, bare lust. I try to see in her eyes what she thinks about me when we look into each others eyes for a long time without the need of words. I do not know if she hypnotizes me or its me who hypnotizes me. Our meetings are always brief and we speak too less. If someone were to jot down our conversation for an hour he/she would hardly fill five lines. I loose words and I don’t know what happens to her. We have never brought that evening in our talks as if there was no such evening.
She said she was hungry and wanted to go out for lunch. But she was too precious for me, I couldn’t even share her sight with even a stranger. I thought I had right to feel so but by what source I didn’t know. I said the restaurant will be pack so it will be better if I place them the order over the phone. She agreed. Now I went through the piles of papers looking for a small cheat where I had taken the number of the restaurant. I dropped so many papers in desperation. Fortunately I found the paper and ordered for a pizza and coffee. I didn’t have any topic for discussion. She was looking at my room. She looked at the walls, went to the nearby rack picked a book and placed it back upside down, she picked the small Ganesha piece looked at it carefully turning it in her hand before asking if that was a gift. I said yes and with unusual curiosity she asked who gave that to me. I said some students on which a long ‘oh!!’ was her reaction. She was behaving like a child who had come to her fathers office. I pretended to work but I was keenly observing her. There was a knock on the door and the lunch was there in the table. She sliced the pizza and we sat facing each other with just a small tea-table between us. The fan flew the strands of her hair which tickled my face. I couldn’t have slice more than one, she must have been really hungry she finished the whole pizza. I felt a brute pleasure as I watched her chew the pizza, she didn’t look at me she was really hungry. We were finished. She asked if it was time to leave, yes it was. She said let’s go as if we had already planned to leave together. I went to the nearby room partitioned from mine with a plastic sheet. It was already dark. I took a pleasure watching her silhouette against the partition as she wandered spying around my room. Soon we were in the roads. The sky had begun sprinkling water to the thirsty earth, I wanted to open the umbrella but she said lets feel the rain. As we walked our hands touched as they swing with our walk. The shop had already switched on their lights, it was like a deewali. I wanted to hold her hand but before that we were at the station and already inside the bus. It was almost empty and as always she went to the last seat and sat by the window. I sat next to her. The hair flew her hair to my face. Her hands were over my hands and I cannot say if she knew it or not. We got off and we walked together to her home. I clasped her and she raised her face but it had no fear I kissed it once, she didn’t say anything, I pasted a second kiss that was more passionate. The headlight of a car fell to her face and she ran into the dark. I stood there as if her kiss had turned me into a stone.
