Teeny tiny yarns

A slice of life

That is all she wanted- a hand to hold. There was one which held her waist. She waited for it to loosen its grip while she searched for what she wanted. And she waited...

Meanwhile, he waited for her to look at him, just once and he knew she would know. He waved but she didn’t notice; it seemed she was looking for something else. Yet he waited...

              



                                                

There was not a moment to lose. He lost her with every second of the clock. She stumbled through the dark, moving away from him...consciously... He fought tooth and nail to find her and he finally did.

This cycle went on and on. She always tried to run, he always found her back, but he never could reach her...

It was a dangerous thing to do. Training a machine which has no mind of its own is something, training something which can think for itself is something completely different. She trained him to be perfect. Perfect for her; perfect for her social standing, perfect to meet all her needs. So meticulously and subtly had she done the entire thing that neither did he or even she realise it. Everything was planned, perfect. She made one small mistake- she forgot that he had a mind of his own. She forgot that this mind defined him- the man she had fallen in love with.

He was oblivious of the fact that he had been trained. All he knew now was that his life centred round her.

One fine morning she came to him and accusingly declared, “I cannot take it anymore. You are too perfect for me!”

She gently took a sip from her glass of wine and closed her eyes and slowly replayed the moments of her passionate love-making, that she was engaged in a few minutes ago. She felt the entire thing all over again. It had been years since she had felt this kind of satisfaction; it was never this good with her husband.

A vibration from her phone jerked her out of the reverie. She took the call, “Yes baby, I am going to be home in an hour and then we can go for our anniversary dinner.” She hastily got up, put on her clothes, gathered her stuff and headed for the door. She paused for a moment on her way out. She looked back at the bed once just to catch a glimpse of her sleeping peacefully, before leaving.

Fed up with her demands he walked out of the room into the small balcony. He noticed the potted plants which hung from the railing which she had grown with so much care. The cool wind brushed against his face. It helped him to cool down a little bit. He wondered how the relationship had become so tiresome. Phone calls every hour, constant allegations that he did not give her enough time, how alone she was...God! Wouldn’t it be a bliss if she just shut up and went back to her own place? Go back to her own life...”her own life”...he wondered what her life was now. Who did she have apart from him? There had been a point in his life too when he had no one. She was the one who had found him and taken care of him then. She had patiently listened to all his complaints and provided him with everything that she could afford with her meagre income. He even remembered her doing extra shifts just to pay for his education. She, a single mother, had transformed a street urchin into a “well-bred” and “educated” gentleman.

He slowly went back inside the room. She lay there wrinkled and almost senile with age, yet her eyes still had the warmth which he had caught his attention when he had first seen her looking at him. He curled up beside her and whispered, “ma...”....A tear rolled down the wrinkled face....

Utterly confused and puzzled she looked at the woman. She was repeatedly shouting out something at her. Gradually a few others joined her too. All of them were roughly about the same age. Clad in clean and perfectly pinned sarees, they seemed to be shouting at her for doing something grievous. She racked her brains to figure out what she had done...last time they had raised the same raucous when she had had to entertain a client at her home. They alleged that it spoiled the reputation of the para...The same para which stayed mum when a drunken husband raped his pregnant wife. It was a para of bhadraloks, the same “educated” bhadraloks who chose to ignore such an act- it was a matter of the household, after all! “We are outsiders, how can we intervene?”said some, while others simply denied having any information regarding this. She wondered what was more important to the mohila samiti- the reputation of the para or the fact that she was an escort by profession?

She had always stayed out of all the events that the residents organized from time to time at the para. Imposed with a strict restriction to not enter the puja pandal she had no other option but to sway to the beats of the dhak from her home. She consciously avoided any form of interaction with any resident. She wondered what she could have done this time to enrage the dangerous congregation of women again...Uff! She pulled out the head phones from her ears and tried to figure out what the entire thing was all about. It seemed that her neighbour Ramen “babu” had been caught circling around her house the previous night by his wife. They complained that her profession was raising a finger at the residents of the para, the bhadraloks of the para were finding it difficult to live with such a woman around. She had to leave, they demanded. She knew she had no other option but to change her place, again...