Cheater   The half folded Kantipur newspaper held in his left hand, Roshan reclined in bed until the pillow on his back spoke reassuringly back to him. He blinked at the shrill sound of children’s laughter playing outside. The weekday rush unwinded in the house-hold on Saturdays. And once the food was cooked, Sangita, Roshan’s wife, would take a bath before the family would sit down and eat their late Saturday lunch.   Sangita emerged from the inner room of their bedroom and made her way towards the bathroom. A bluish-white flowery patterned towel hugged his wife’s protruded hips, waist and breasts in place, preventing a spillage that Roshan would ordinarily have delighted in causing. He smiled at his own wicked thoughts while coaxing himself to focus on the second story on the page in front of him. Sangita’s feminine form blurred across the horizon of the newspaper and into the closing door of the bathroom. Roshan’s eyes fixated on the second story next to the picture of a woman wearing a saree who had won a prize for defending battered women in Nepal’s courtrooms. Roshan pulled the newspaper closer in to see if he recognized that face. It looked like…. Reading the story next to the picture, Roshan realized that the person he thought he recognized in the saree was not who he thought it was. What happened of her? Roshan looked at the ceiling for a moment, then looked to the side and cleared his mind. Roshan reached over to pick up the white porcelain cup that sat in a tray on the bed next to him. The tea cup on his lips tipped inwards to empty its swirl of spicy milkiness in Roshan’s mouth. Roshan continued to scan the black and white lines that danced about. More of Kathmandu’s local melodrama unfolded before his eyes. This was Roshan’s favorite place to be on Saturday afternoons when the sun’s straight lines streamed in rectangular shapes on the bedroom floor. Roshan was wearing his loose fitting white kurta and suruwal. His slightly oiled hair was neatly combed back. Roshan exhaled. No hectic schedule from the office today. He scraped his hand to the left, noisily changing the page. Even as he went on to scan the third Kantipur page, it was like the mistaken picture had jostled something within him. Roshan glanced at the closed brown bathroom door and thought of his wife whom he knew was running water over her body. He could hear Sangita humming a tune over the flow of splashing water. Prerna was the girl that Roshan thought he recognized in the mistaken picture. There was a time when Roshan had thought he would marry Prerna. As he lay reflecting on this he was realizing how different Sangita was compared to Prerna. What was the point of thinking about all this now? These were useless thoughts. Roshan smiled and hesitantly looked aside, trying to avoid hearing the chastisement of his inner voice.   Sangita was the girl chosen by his family. She came from a certain pedigree that ensured that she would be chaste, loyal and loving to all in the family that she was entering into. Since she arrived in the house an apologetic bride, the charm she cast was written in the eyes of everyone who met her. Tactful while sharp, without ever revealing her own dissatisfaction, Sangita would fly through the household affairs with a precision that visiting mother-in-laws wished they had in their own homes. Roshan knew that if he had married Prerna she would have been as comfortable in the kitchen as Sangita would have been in Prerna’s domain: the courtroom. Roshan had known Prerna since grade school in the co-ed that he had studied. Even in class ten, Prerna’s spirited eyes molded those around her to fit her image. Just a few jagged glances from those eyes towards any guy would chisel messages in their hearts that they would sit for hours on end trying to decipher. Roshan knew. He was one of those whose heart had been maliciously hacked. In the first real conversation that they had at a school picnic Roshan had realized that there was something raw and indefatigable in Prerna. They had talked about their favorite books and the kinds of movies that they liked. Even then Roshan could feel that there was something a lot darker and wilder that lurked underneath the shadows of her straight black hair. It was this that had called to Roshan. It had pleaded, in soft tones, to come find the beasts that haunted her. They needed to be broken, tamed and ridden, something in her seemed to cry. And there had been a time when Roshan wanted to be the man that relieved her from the chaos of her unbridled spirit. He wanted to rise up to put a harness on those out of control beasts within her. And then with those same hands he wanted to, then, put the reigns of the marriage garland around her. Roshan smiled in remembrance. Eventually Roshan realized that Prerna was the kind of girl that Roshan would love to have in a bedroom accessible near him--just not in one that was in the same house where his parents lived in. He knew that his family would never accept her. He had been pained and angry when he first realized this with a certain finality.   Sangita stepped out of the bathroom, the same bundled bluish-white package that had gone in. But now sticky bits of wet hair clamped her skin in all the wrong places. It looked like black lightning had struck and burnt her neck and cleavage. She turned to the mirror. Her deft hands moved while her fingers combed through her wet hair, untangling it. Roshan knew his wife’s ritual. After taking a bath, she aired out her hair first before turning the blow-dryer on it. Roshan wondered why wet dripping jangled and unruly black hair stuck to the fair shoulders of a woman brought out the grinning devil out from within him. Roshan’s relationship with Prerna had lasted till the second year of college. They had made love. Just never with their bodies. They had kissed. But never with the flesh of their own mouths. Their relationship had continued in the form of sharing the literature that they wrote. Love stories. Erotica. Poetry. They wrote it all. And in those writings expressed what they wouldn’t allow themselves to express physically. And they would read to each other. It was always in the same place that they would meet to read each other’s stories: in the library on the second Wednesday of every month. He would read to her and she would listen quietly. Or she would read to him, while he would run his hand through his hair, his eyes closed. He came from a Brahmin family. And she was a Chettrini. They had never overtly spoken of this, since it was always obvious from their last names. How close they had gotten despite knowing that they would never get together in marriage was a testament of their friendship and how much they shared in common. But they both knew where this relationship would end. And somehow in knowing that, it was a kind of a relief. It allowed them to be honest in their writing in a way that they knew they couldn’t if there was a chance that they would get married. Roshan looked at the ceiling of his bedroom. He bit his lower lip in remembrance. A boyish curiosity awoke in him. Roshan went to the filing cabinet to see if he still had any of his writings that he had written and read to Prerna. Rummaging through the writings done in dirty lined copy paper, Roshan picked a particular one up. He remembered reading this to her. Roshan went and lay on his bed again and put his old story in front of the news paper and started to read. He was reminded of when he was younger, he used to tuck his comic-book inside his course books and read. If his mother walked in, she would think her son was endlessly reading his English book.  The laure gurkha soldier, Praveen, had just returned from the going overseas. He had been away from his wife for over a year on a United Nations peace keeping mission. In the evening, once all the guests had gone home after all the celebrations from welcoming Praveen at home was over, the couple found themselves together in their room. Nirmala turned her head to look directly into Praveen’s eyes. “Yes I know you’re a gurkha solider,” her eyes seemed to say, “and I know that I am married to you. But does that automatically mean that you are worthy enough to be the man of my heart?” Nirmala knew what kind of woman she had to be to prickle her husband up. She watched him mockingly while putting her hands on her hips. Praveen looked at the shivering bangles on Nirmala’s wrists. He observed her unmoving pensive hips. The fragrance of her perfume enveloped the air around them. He was acutely aware of her presence. Nirmala’s eyes were filled with a gentle scorn as she visually rebuked his pusillanimity. Praveen breathed heavily, enjoying what his wife was tossing at him. He himself couldn’t understand why this lit the fire of his desire. Nirmala and him had played this game whenever he came from overseas. It is one thing to be ordered around by a drill sergeant, but for a soldier to be mocked in his own home by his wife, and that too for not satisfying her sensual needs, that was too much. Perhaps that is why it turned him on. Nirmala’s mouth curved in a humorous frown ridiculing him. She slowly blinked her eye in a noticeable way breaking her locked vision to his eyes. Nirmala stepped forward to walk away. But before she could get away, Praveen’s hand clamped on Nirmala’s wrist. Nirmala found herself spinning around and facing that which she was walking away from. The figure in front of her looked up into her eyes with a smug look on his face. She broke away from his grip to walk away again. But this time she found an arm around her waist gently but strongly and swiftly guiding her back. Her calves bumped against the bed behind her. As she lost her balance her arms went up and she fell through the air and bounced on her back on the soft bed. Beautiful silky hair tossed around her and licked her slightly perspiring face. Her saree became slightly disheveled as it loosened around her body. Nirmala’s heaving chest escalated and descended with her breath. The perpetrator kneeled besides her. His towering body and slightly tilted face looked at her with tender amusement. He smirked at her futile attempts to get away from him after all that teasing. Nirmala lay motionless. She looked at his face. She could see herself through the expression in his eyes. He was humorously pitying how helpless she looked from where he was kneeling. “Rascal,” she thought, and smiled shyly. Praveen looked at his bold and enticingly beautiful wife. “There must be an angel that looks out for girls like you when I’m not here,” he thought. There was an energy—an aura around his wife, like nothing really could get to her. She could take a stand like few women he knew could. He couldn’t imagine that anything could enter into her private personal energy without gaining permission from her searing eyes. Praveen, in his moments, wondered whether if even the winds and the sun asked her permission before touching her clothes with their selves. Praveen reached down and kissed Nirmala. It was full and meaningful. The kiss seemed to empty out the contents from the room. He drew himself back. She looked downwards in coy silence. That simple kiss seemed to scream of a vacuum in the universe. It drew the speechlessness out of Praveen. They lay next to each other, their bodies touching, but unmoving. When there was nothing else to do but break the stillness with sound, Praveen said, “I was thinking of other ways your lips might be engaged...” Nirmala’s eyes opened a pop and smiled. “hmmmm…really now?” Praveen: but then who am I to tell you how you should use your lips... Nirmala: I don't know... you tell me. Praveen: they are your lips...how can I tell them what to do? Nirmala: you can't tell lips what to do... they just do... Praveen: I can only take the tips of your lips with my own and appreciate them for being a part of your whole mouth. And saying that, Praveen reached over and kissed Nirmala on her slightly parted lips. Roshan stopped reading. He now remembered the conversation that he had with Prerna after he read this story to her. He had thanked her. He had told her that he needed to talk to people like her at least once in a while to share his stories. Prerna had said, “Oh, so I’m just people now? And you only want to talk to me once in a while? And why's that?” Roshan had looked into her eyes and replied, “Because I like being naked. And with you I can be naked without having to violate myself by taking my clothes off.” Sangita laughed and said, “Eh hajur, why are you sitting there smiling reading the newspaper? Have your stock investment prices gone up or what?” Roshan was suddenly self-conscious that his face was betraying his emotions. He sat up quickly, startled. His mind moved fast. “Oh I was thinking about how I was going to enjoy the lunch that I’ve been smelling all morning,” he said. Sangita’s smirkish smile revealed that she knew he was lying, “So are you coming down to the kitchen or is your stomach going to be content by sitting up here and sniffing the food I cooked?” “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Roshan said he folded the story between the newspaper. He slid forward as the bedcovers got dragged by his buttocks. He put his feet down and reached into the rubber slippers parked underneath the bed. Following her to the kitchen, Roshan watched as Sangita’s blue patterned sari danced in ghostly shapes as she bounced down the stairs. Roshan’s face lit up. He would send the kids off to play and would make passionate love to Sangita after lunch. But this afternoon while his hands and fingers would do the talking on Sangita’s body, Roshan knew that he would have his eyes tightly shut.   Last edited: 12-Oct-10 09:41 PM