My flowers are not fragrant (Vaal Velli), by M. Gopala Krishnan

 

M Gopala Krishnan

This is an English translation of short story (aptly short novel), Vaal Velli written by M. Gopala Krishan. Translated from Tamil to English by K. Saravanan. This is 39^thEnglish Translation in the Classic Tamil Short stories Series. 

This short novel has been taken from a short story collection, Vaal Velli (lit. comet). This book was shortlisted for Sahitya Academy Award for the year 2021. 

                                                                        ***

When the day’s hue and the night’s languor were found merged agreeably with each other that evening, I saw you standing at my door. I was sitting at my threshold, not inclined to clean up the flowers shed by Indian cork tree in the front yard of my house. Making its way with its tender wavy movement, the scent of Indian cork flowers was coming forward, bringing in the chilly wind which had mixed up with dull sun light and dust. The air which was hiding somewhere in a dark cave throughout the day hesitantly showed up its face at that time.  

I had never been familiar with the superlative silence of my house due to the absence of Poorani and Sitharth. Unable to bear its heaviness all alone, I came out and was sitting there. It was only at that time a star had showed up amidst bluish darkness of the eastern sky. 

I turned around hearing your hesitant foot-steps.  The light was dim and we couldn’t see our faces properly. You looked exhausted as if having travelled a long distance. The brown colour shirt soaked in sweat, dirt and dust suited your tired look.  The rugged jeans pant was sticking to your legs and the knots of laces in your heavy shoes were found tied casually. 

When I asked “Who’s that?” I later realised that my voice might have sounded slightly authoritative. Being habituated with speaking with a raised voice, I guess the voice coming out of me carries an authoritative tone like that. 

However, you seemed to be unrelenting. You said, “This is Professor Arthanari’s house. Isn’t it? I would like to meet him”. The clarity and firmness found in your voice proved that my authoritative tone didn’t leave any impact on you. I was slightly disappointed at it, though. Without changing my facial expression I continued, “He has gone out. You can’t meet him now” 

There was a tinge of doubt in your voice when you told “It is he who had asked me to come today” 

“You keep speaking without even introducing you. Don’t you? He hasn’t told me about any visitor today” I was still sitting on the steps while replying you. My hot-headedness, at that time, had actually rendered me forget even the basic decency of talking to someone by standing up at least for the sake of showing respect. 

“My name is Anand. I had a telephonic discussion with ‘sir’ yesterday. He only asked me to come today.”

As I heard you uttering your name, I remembered my professor husband mentioning your name while going out in the afternoon. As I was busy sending him off, I couldn’t get fully what he had said and then later it went out of my mind. When I came near to you, I could see you totally worn out.

Impatience and irritation had started casting slowly on your tired face. Indian cork tree flowers on the floor flew away and got scattered when you banged your travel bag on the floor out of vexation.       

My hot-head again didn’t permit me to acknowledge with a statement of surrender - ‘Anand, Aren’t you coming from Bangalore? ‘sir’ has told me about it.’ Instead, I was still impudent and told you , “He had told me that you would be coming in the afternoon. But now it is already dark” 

“Will he come now or not? If not, when will he come? Tell me. I can come tomorrow to meet him”- traces of impatience started showing up in you too now. When you asked me “You haven’t replied to what I asked”, I had a graceful inward laugh. 

“On the way, the bus I was coming by broke down a couple of times. I got delayed as I had to board another bus after reaching Salem. Is this explanation enough for you? Now, if you could give me a reply to my question, it will be of great help” 

You could also get angry like that. Couldn’t you? I am still unable to believe it even now. 

“You may speak bit slowly. He got an urgent task and has gone to Tirunelveli. He’ll be back in two days. Why don’t you please come in? We can discuss it later”. Coming down from my earlier stubbornness, I asked you to come inside. 

It seemed that you were still not confident about my sudden change of behaviour. You kept staring at the dark sky and waving tree branches. You looked at me intently. Then, you came inside hesitantly, showing not much of interest, having no other way to go and threw your body wearily on a cane chair in the front hall. 

The light from tube-light near the Champak tree in the garden wall was falling on veranda. With a mixture of light and shades, the veranda was looking brilliant with the square shaped shadows of light coming from the inner room.  When I brought cold water in a flower-painted jug, you were sitting on the chair, your fingers holding glabella. Your appearance in the lights and shades evoked pity in me and I reprimanded myself for my impudence. 

“You don’t worry. ‘Sir’ has made all the arrangements. You can stay at the guest house. You could enjoy butterflies tomorrow evening. You can visit lab in the morning with ‘sir’.”

I explained you all the arrangements made with an exquisite enthusiasm in order to get you forget your fatigue.

After drinking cold water, you looked relaxed a bit. Your eyes were amiable now while looking at me. Perhaps, you might have been happy at seeing the arrangements that were made with the precision of hospitality.

“I was standing helpless for a minute as it was getting dark.  I was indeed worried as I would have to go out now and didn’t know when I would be back to complete my work. I am sorry for my words that might have sounded rude.” Your voice had greatly changed now.

The chillness became more intense. It was a pleasant evening-wind one could experience only in Coimbatore. Dark. Chirping of insects. Overwhelming fragrance of Indian cork flowers. For the first time I noticed a tinge of feminine grace in your face with one week beard. The eyes and the moist lower lips had made you irresistibly attractive. Your dirty appearance had started gaining its appeal slowly. With a cursory sharing of information till the attender of the hostel arrived in, our meeting had come to an end that day. I kept on watching you walking on the red sand path in the darkness with your heavy shoes making strong imprints on it. 

When I came inside after putting the light off in the veranda, I turned to the big mirror involuntarily and looked at myself once in it. I was shocked to see me wearing a night gown. I had been standing in front of you, talking that long even without having an inkling of shame. I felt embarrassed. Even now, while writing this sentence, my cheeks get reddened. It is the same night gown I am wearing now. But the shyness which had engulfed me earlier is not doing its tricks on me now.  

…

Next day morning, it had rained. Only when the servant maid arrived in at her usual time and pressed the doorbell with a milk pocket in her hands, I came out of the house. The scent of rain’s dampness was still around in the air. The foot prints you had left in the red sand track were found filled with rain water. The shoe marks left by your heavy boots also carried the remains of rain. I sat in front of the chair where you were sitting yesterday night. The sun light was dim and languid. Enjoying the chilly wind that fondled my face, I closed my eyes, leaned backwards. 

My lips were humming the songs sung by Jensi (A yester year singer in Tamil movies) without making sound. “Maalaiyil yaaro manathosu pesa…”(As someone is talking to my heart in the evening…). Later I came to know that the song was your favourite one too. ‘Is it that important of a task for a man to wander from one place to another like this just to take some snaps of butterflies?’- This question hit me all of a sudden. Those who come to meet Professor Arthanari would be like this anyway. Wouldn’t they? It had been eighteen years since I got married to him. There is a difference of eleven years between us. No one knows about the scheme of fate- when and how it brings people together. I was not in a position to have my own views when I was convinced with his eligibility that the professor was a gem of a human being working in the agricultural college. The remains of tears of my previous love affair had still not dried out from my eyes. If I think about it now, I feel immensely stupid. Truly, the professor is a gem of a human being in certain sense of understanding. He would spare time for me only when he found time after his interactions with plants, students, butterflies and his Pentax camera were over. Sometimes only during an accidental arousal of chemistry that might have been caused by chilly wind like this and its dampness in his body, he would remember my youth. He would come in haste, take everything off, and finish off in no time. He would disappear in his world after placing a strong kiss on my forehead. It still remains an unresolved riddle for me as to why he has not taken interest to show me even a bit of the patience and elegance which he shows while taking the pictures of Monarch butterflies sipping the nectar in the fully blossomed yellow Dalia flowers and tactfully handling of lenses in his Pentax camera. Everyone lives in their own world. You could also be one of such men who had come here leaving his wife behind in this rainy, early morning gifted with the blessings of the day and serenity of wind. Couldn’t you be? 

Suddenly, I got angry with you. What sort of a man are you? Catching butterflies! As I was unduly irritated at that time, I didn’t even think of either meeting you or showing interest to know about you. I got up, went inside. 

***

It might be four ‘O clock in the evening that day. The wetness of rain in the previous day morning was still there on the tracks in the garden. I was getting ready to take stroll in the botanical garden. Taking a turn on left from the mud track from my house leading to Maruthamalai Road, and then walking half a kilometre from there, would leave me at the entrance of the Agricultural College. Or after walking a small distance in the mud track behind my house and then taking a left turn, one could see the garden beds queuing up, primarily meant for experiments. Each garden bed would carry the English names of tests to be carried out on them. The students allotted for each one of them would come in the evening and jot down their observations along with taking pictures, if required. At the end of the track, there was an iron fencing. Next to it, was there a cotton field. It was also meant for experiments. Beyond it, going past another iron fencing would land you at the entrance, the left side boundary of the horticultural garden. This entrance was not meant for “public use”. Only people like me who are associated with the college could use it. When we were newly married, the kind hearted professor used to take me along with him occasionally in evenings. Within the first two days, I could understand that he didn’t even know how to engage a woman in fun walks. It seemed that he had planned those outings like his college projects, i.e. we had to leave our house exactly at five in the morning. At ten past five, after reaching the garden we had to sit on both corners of a pre-designated bench there for ten minutes. We could either talk or prefer keep quite. Exactly after ten minutes, he would get up, signalling me to leave that place. There were occasions during our initial days of going out together when I used to tell him ‘we can spend some more time here’. During those rare moments of my demands to spend some more time, he would become completely restless losing his temperament. After that, he wouldn’t be able to speak normally. He would keep changing his legs, finger-comb his hair unnecessarily, and wipe his face with his palms. Those were the days when I found it extremely difficult to understand his nature. He had brought me here uprooting me from somewhere unknown. But now, he was the one with whom I ought to nurture my roots. Those were the days my roots were totally lost and they were looking for some support. Along with it came my youth that seemed to have been aroused lately with its share of taste and thirst. But he would be busy finishing off everything in next five minutes as if none of these had mattered to him.  He would then start walking, telling “let us leave, It’s already dark” without even looking back to know whether I rose from the bench or not. As I had got accustomed with the evening strolls these days, I would leave the house at half past four in the evening, no matter he accompanied me or not. 

Wearing my sandals, when I raised my head, I heard your footsteps. 

“Good Evening”- you greeted me with a smile. The smile on your face with the shine of freshness attracted me. Only after seconds I greeted you back, I remembered my morning anger on you. A camera bag was slinging over your shoulder, just like him.

“It seems that you have started your task for which you had come here” I couldn’t figure out why I got that much annoyed at that time. 

“Yes…pleasant weather. It was raining in the morning. Wasn’t it? We both, I and butterflies are immensely happy. I feel refreshed. I had gone to ‘sir’s lab. Wonderful it was. He seems to have metamorphosed himself into butterflies. Envious collection of species. He is a genius. Had he been with us, it would have been better” 

You were speaking with an undying enthusiasm and the mercury of my annoyance kept shooting up.

“Good…you seem to be devoted to your work and teacher. Now, why coming this side?” 

“Since it is evening, the sun light will be yellowish and the cloud of butterflies would come swarming. So I could capture them in pictures. ‘Sir’ has told that butterflies would be visible like waves if I walk a small distance just behind your house this side”. At the every moment itself I could see your eyes searching for the ‘waves’ of butterflies. 

“If your ‘sir’ says something, definitely it must be a true. You may find them if you walk this side” I showed him the way with my hands like a direction marker. You stood hesitantly, visibly surprised at my words. 

“Please don’t mistake me. You know well that I am not familiar with this place. If you don’t have any pressing work, would you mind guiding me?” When you beseeched me, I could see the shade of your feminine grace gathering up.  I have to appreciate your impudent way of asking anyway. I thought of denying. However I decided to walk along with you as I realised that my innermost intuition had turned against my wishes. 

You were happy with my acceptance. You took out the dark green colour hat from the knee-pocket of your jeans and wore it. An embroidered panda bear at the tip of the collar of your pale yellow shirt. Similar Panda bear in the front side of your hat as well. 

The Indian laburnum leaves waved with ember-red hue in the piercing yellow sun light. The pebbles arranged neatly around on the mud track were still retaining the moisture of rain. 

We started walking on the lengthy road behind the house leading to the forest college ground. It was nearly four and half kilometres. In order to avoid vehicular traffic, the road was left unattended as mud track. One could travel in that road either by bicycle or by walk. Thickly grown trees on its both sides were providing good amount of shade. Mast wood, neem, tamarind and Indian laburnum trees were standing in a row. Fir trees were found here and there. The sound of rolling dead leaves shed by trees in the gush of winds resembled the roar of waves hitting sea shore. After half of distance, the track turned towards east. Beyond the boundary of horticultural college, the track was lying ahead up to Murugan hills. One could reach the hill track connecting Perumal Temple through this track. 

After the track took turn on left, the number of trees and aroma of plants became dense. While I was walking in slower steps, keeping my hands across on my chest as my soft grey colour sari fluttered in the wind, you asked me, “are you interested in the world of butterflies?”    

I felt laughing. I laughed more than required in order to tease you. Setting aside the streaks of hair falling in the front, I told you “Who wouldn’t like butterflies? But after getting married to your professor, I developed some dislike for them, a bit though”. 

You kept walking disinterestedly looking up the clouds carrying the crimson colour linings on their edges as they were getting ready to disappear in the evening sun light. It appeared that you were not impressed with my reply. 

“Each butterfly is a feather of angels. 

Each butter fly is a petal shed from rainbow. 

Butterflies are the blessings of this earth. 

Flowers become colourful because there are butterflies.  

Plants get impregnated as there are butterflies.

The world will be a desert if butterflies are not there. 

The world will become a black and white photo without butterflies”  

You were walking, reciting this English poem very calmly. At a distance the Murugan hills along with its ranges cloaked in white clouds were shining in dark green colour. It wasn’t very cold. The scent of the air was inebriating as if it was the fragrance of flowers infused with the aroma of earth. 

When you recited the poem, your face was looking tenderer. A desire to get closer to you grew intense. We were only alive in the whole world at that time, that moment and a feel of delight, ecstasy as if it was created only for us.  Now, I feel that it was the day and time I truly experienced happiness. Now, the track became narrower where only two persons could walk, thickly shaded with darkness and ran through tree branches. Thick bamboo bushes around.  

“I don’t like to see bamboo bushes in green. Bamboo should be brown in colour. It should be with dead leaves and tiny thorns visible clearly” You told at that time.  

“You like everything dirty like your jeans and shirt that you are wearing for four days without being bothered to remove and wash it. Don’t you?” – When I laughed, you smiled back looking at your pants. While crossing bamboo bushes, the sound of brook was heard. It was a wild brook active only during rainy season. Sometimes, its speed with copious amount of water wouldn’t allow anyone to cross it. There were occasions, the flood in the brook used to become so wild enough even to uproot bamboo bushes.           

You became enthusiastic at seeing the beautiful bamboo bridge erected across the brook. It was a small bridge with a slight upward curve in the middle and waist-high hand grips on both ends. The rain water was flowing like broth made of red sand. There was a big Peepal tree on the other side of the brook with a beautiful platform around it, made of stone. At a short distance in its rear, there stood a British era traveller’s bungalow, majestically with tapered saffron coloured roof, glass windows and elegant wood works. Your hands touched the camera reflexively. I could see the magic of painting drawn in you by the rain-bathed trees, Bamboo Bridge, water flowing in red, Peepal tree standing tall and an archaic building standing behind under the pastel yellowish sunlight.  

I sat on a bench under an Indian Mulberry tree, seeing you disappear in solitude with your camera. A railroad worm with yellow dots drawn on its back was crawling slowly. Mulberry flowers and wood jasmines were found scattered all over. I too tried my best to withdraw my attention from you by diverting it. I tried to recollect the names of trees and flowers that came on my way. I couldn’t take off my eyes from you when you were busy taking pictures of Bamboo Bridge and British era Building in different angles by tilting your head and body on one side squatting on your kneel.  I wasn’t bored despite it was more than half an hour. No sign of sulkiness of waiting either. Had your professor made me wait even for five minutes to get attentive in his work when I come out along with him, I would have started walking on my way.   

I heard you calling me ‘Madam’. I didn’t realise for seconds that it was me who you were calling. You called me waving your hands. You were standing near the bridge. As soon as I understood that it was me you called, I felt a rush of shyness and urgency flowing in me. Thinking of being careful in making my walk look natural, I was actually running towards you totally in contrast to what I had thought.  

After saying a cursory sorry for making me wait, you asked me to stand on the bridge. With the Peepal tree and Saffron colour building at the background, how many more times I could have enjoyed that picture in which I was standing in a grey colour saree with my hair strands at the corner of my left ear fluttering in the meek wind and my left hand placed on the bridge. You might remember it, I think. Others used to comment that I look beautiful. Only after I saw me in that picture I understood that I was indeed beautiful.  

You captured me in pictures more in numbers and in different angles, with different back grounds. Without uttering any word, I stood for poses as you demanded. Smiled. Tilted my head on one side. Walked. Sat. While I recollected all those memories of being a toy controlled by your hand strings through those pictures, I was both coy and amazed. When you tried taking a picture of mine keeping me bend down to see my face on the water in the brook, I asked you “I guess you have come here to take the pictures of butterflies. Haven’t you?”  

A mild jolt on your face. In seconds, gaining your composure, you replied “I am doing only that. Ain’t I?” with a naughty smile on your rounded, fleshy, nicotine stain free lips. As the gentle breeze flew across the bamboo bushes at that moment, you had noticed the first waves of butterflies fluttering. With an elegance of fingers crawling over strings, they moved floating, flapping their wings in the air. Different colours followed one after the other like waves, flapping their wings. Without patting my eye lids, I kept watching the ecstasy that was visibly spread across your face. Your lips kept on chanting something like incantations and fingers kept on clicking the camera incessantly. It was in that cozy, wavy wonderful twilight, I think I had started falling for you. O! My dear friend! When I remember it even now, I could feel my cheeks getting red, pulsating. 

Despite the waves of butterflies were found nowhere around now, you did not move away from that place, waiting there still as if hoping that they might come back again. Sometimes ago, in such a similar situation I had witnessed the waves of butterflies. The professor used to explain me enthusiastically what types of butterflies they were, how they would select flowers to eat honey and how long they would live etc. But it sounded nothing more than an attempt of a professor who was trying to dump his every knowledge to a female research scholar. Neither any stupor of conversing with his lady love in the twilight nor any poetic appeal was found in it.  

As darkness started engulfing us, you packed your camera, kept it in the bag safely and said, “let us return to the hostel”.  The remains of ecstasy and the mild sadness of having to discontinue that musical strings abruptly were still visible on your face. After walking a little distance ahead, you started talking about butterflies.  

‘Those butterflies belong to a genus called Common Crow. One could see them all throughout many Asian countries. Shiny, dark brown colour wings with beautiful white dots like seed beds at their edges. While flying in the bright sun light, it would shine with the colour of flame tip. They are in the habit of assembling at one particular place before making their move from one place to another in groups. They have a habit of searching flowers with broad petals”.  

I was least concerned with the details you were narrating. I kept walking, watching the moves of your body sideways. At some places, we walked in close proximity, almost brushing each other. While crossing the puddle of water a couple of times, you assisted me holding my fingers. The softness of your hands stuck with my fingers like Mehandi. I shuddered within the very seconds I brushed against your shoulders. Alas! The day became dark in no time.  

Dimmer rays from the tube lights afar fell on the road hesitantly, though. You took out a big torch from your bag. Being not sure whether it was due to dark or cold, I was walking closely brushing past you. Suddenly I was preoccupied with a momentary longingness for your loving hug. But you hadn’t still come out of the lessons taught by butterflies. I was astonished at my dilemma that on one moment I wanted to go back home at the earliest and at the same time I expected that the road should never come to an end.   

Well before I came out of my dilemma, we found ourselves reach the entrance of my house. The chillness was more now. I climbed on the steps, opened the door and went inside. It was only at that time I turned back, looked at you. Keeping the torch in the bag, you looked up to me. Your face was brighter, jubilant. Both of your eyes were restless as if they were stuttering after scooping up the movements of that golden moment. It seemed that you were struggling to say something to me. With your hands moving, lips shaking you were trying to say it. Unable to have control over words, you stammered. I stood there, enjoying your predicaments. I wasn’t sure whether I actually thought that you would come inside even without being invited.  

“Nothing….I…am…unable to say anything. Do I have to thank you? I am not sure. It was heavenly….” Holding up that moment in your eyes, you glanced the branches of trees in the dark and said, “You may please go in. Let me resign to my room”. Then you turned and walked away.  

All of a sudden I felt that I was fully exhausted as if all the delights I had till then had now got totally drained out.  Frozen, as all my enthusiasm got drained out, I stood still watching you walking on the red sand track like a shadow. The chilly wind hit the curtains, whirling. Unable to bear the burden of myself, I closed the door with a bang, went inside and lay immobile.  

I didn’t know how long I was lying there. The entire house was in dark. I didn’t even like to open my eyes. Your image which waded through darkness had got me broken internally, severely to bring in pain in my chest. I hadn’t experienced such an excruciating pain ever in my life. Amidst an intense feeling of crying, there was a hardness which obstructed me from crying out. I was overwhelmed with an intense desire to have you, to keep talking to you, not to compromise your proximity for anything and to have a privacy with no one around other than us. Your face, your smile, your exuberance, your body movements and the softness of your palm which I had seen in that day evening were queuing up, filled in me and made me shudder. Now I could very vividly understand your scent which I inhaled during those moments when I stood close to you and walked along with you. At the very moment I understood it, I was filled with a rapacious pleasure. A sudden impulse of hugging you at the very moment itself…a shiver…I rolled over…over again. I got up, opened the door. I thought, for a second, to come to your hostel room only to be stopped by questions: ‘Is it possible? Even if it is possible, is it right?’  

The cellular phone emitted light and rang. Its bluish lights and ring tone through the darkness were all the more irritating, but it was still ringing. It was from professor. He told something. I too spoke something else. After talking to him, my restlessness was lessened. 

I switched the room lights on, filled a glass with water from the jug on the dining table, came to the hall and sat on the swing. I sipped the water drop by drop slowly, very slowly. Anxieties got subsided. I started gaining my composure.  

‘What sort of a stupidity is this?’, I reproached myself. ‘Who’s this chap?’ It was only today I got to know about him. That too for some a couple of hours. Other than this rudimentary introduction, what else do I know about him? Where does he belong? What is his name? What sort of a person is he? Without knowing any of these, how could my heart long for such a slip? Is it love or lust? Chee….what a stupidity it is!’  

At one point of time, I couldn’t control my laughter. I laughed aloud and kept on laughing. I used to laugh like this when Poorani and Siddharth were sitting nearby.  I used to play more enthusiastically than them, cherish those moments, crack jokes and laugh. It was only today I laughed like that in their absence.  

I changed my dress. It was a thin night gown in crimson colour. Since the food cooked for lunch remained there, no need to cook for dinner. I was not hungry either. Your thoughts came over my mind again as I started mixing rice with my hands. “What are you going to have for dinner?’- leaving this question aside, I swallowed the food in haste and kept the leftovers on plate. An inexplicable fear. An urgency of escaping from something invisible. Switching the lights off in the hall, I closed the door and came to the cot.  

“Unnidaththil ennai koduthen …ullamengum alli thelithen…uravinil vilaiyadi…perum kanavugal pala kodi…(I gave myself into your hands…I sprinkled your thoughts throughout my heart…playing with the relationship…the dreams I get will be in millions)- my lips were murmuring these lyrics reflexively.  

My eyes could capture you during those micro seconds when I pulled the curtain of east side window of my bedroom. My heart was filled with a sudden gush of ecstasy. An enthusiasm to call out to your name. I closed the curtain swiftly. I felt a shiver passing all over my body. 

A warmth felt across my feet. I disbelieved myself for a second. Did I really see you? Possibly not. I opened the curtain slowly and peeked through it again. 

When the agriculture college boys and girls were playing in the basketball ground located in between my house and your hostel in the evening with zeal, at times I used to watch them sitting on the steps in viewers gallery. You were sitting on the top of those steps and was writing something on a notebook keeping it on your lap. ‘Was it a dairy? Or were they just day’s notes? Or else were you writing your impressions about me? Some of the letters you wrote to me later are still lying idle along with my saris. I was audacious in expecting even at that situation that what you were writing must be a letter addressed to me. Sometimes, the sodium vapour light fixed in the evening at the time of games would be left burning till morning. That day too, the yellow light was strewn all around the playground.    

Once again the same flutters in me! It pushed me to an extent to make me believe that all the clarity I had just gained were all meaningless. I stood in front of the mirror, coiffed my hair into a horse tail and made a bun. Picked a tinge of face cream and applied on my face.  Splashed “Forest Flower” onto my body in mild dose front and back. I was unable to see my own face in the mirror. I was shy. My cheeks were shining and the lips were lustrous with softness of moisture.  

I came out of the house after locking the door. The Indian cork flowers were found strewn around like stars. The scent of those flowers increased my palpitation. No matter how so far I tried controlling myself to walk slowly, I came almost running.  I had plans to bluff in front of you that I had come to the playground just out of my routine night stroll and I should fake an astounded face on seeing you there as if our meeting was purely an accidental one. Struggling to keep my palpitation under control, when I entered the fenced compound wall of the ground, I was engulfed with a fear again. “Should I go back?’, my mind stuttered. You were wearing a dark brown colour sweater and light brown colour night pant. You must have noticed me in the yellow light that fell across that big ground. I was still standing at the same place. You climbed down the gallery steps, came towards me.  

“Why….are you here at this odd hour?-no sign of any amazement in you. You sounded quite normal.  

“I came here just like that. I don’t feel sleepy at this time. I could not while-away my time too. Hence decided to take a stroll here. After coming here, it was purely coincidental that I met you. When I was about to go back, you had noticed me, I guess”. I had had brooded over this statement many a time. With no sign of insolence or assumed importance that was found in me earlier while speaking to you,  I spoke that sentence with a dash of shyness and hesitation and an elegance of feminine gentleness which I had never possessed earlier.  

The sentence you uttered after that was the one which had pushed towards a total collapse in the person who was already on the verge of collapsing any time. It seemed that even some ordinary words spoken at the moments of tenderness of love shall become extraordinarily alluring and intoxicating.    

 “You are looking pretty”, you said.  ‘t’ was nearly silent as your pronunciation sounded American. I must have been shy, stuttered and tottered. I couldn’t even understand what had happened. All the activities of this world had made your words resonate in different frequencies in me again and again. The playground in yellow light, the grass beds at its edges, empty seats, the sky with morning stars and the piercing chilly wind-all became one either into a magnificent darkness or a swirling gush of light.       

It was only your words that called me and brought me back to senses again.    

“Sorry…I felt so…hence told you. Please don’t take me wrong”  

Now I smiled at you. I was overcome with an intense desire to tease you again. “How come could that statement be right after praising me beautiful? Does that mean that I am not beautiful?” 

“You are pretty…I shouldn’t have told you that anyway. I meant only that”  

“You can very well say that. Nothing wrong in it”- Telling this, I looked at your eyes intently.  

It looked as if you had tried to swallow your own words. However you regained your composure in no time and smiled at me as usual. That smile deserved thousands of kisses. Thief…the thief who had made my heart bruised with his smiles. Can you believe that the Indian cork tree standing at the entrance soaking in the wetness of my kisses thrown into the air, is now blossoming only with kisses?  

“I don’t think that I would be able to sleep today. My mind has been edgy since evening. That I why I have come here. I have watched many such migrations of butterflies earlier. In the western mountains, at Mukkuruthi, and at silent valley. Other than this, I had seen more of them in the African forests. I have written enormously about it too. Today, apart from butterflies, I have been disturbed more by something else other than these. It could be either this splendid backdrop of mountains or this rainy weather or those waving bamboo bushes or the wild brook and the bamboo bridge standing strong above or the British building. Or is it anything other than these? I am not sure. Yet, it has left a big wound in me. More it pains, the more it gives me pleasure. An injury that should be left without getting it cured and reducing the pain it gives.” You kept on narrating as you walked. You were a clever chap. You were an expert in being selective: which one should be told in detail and which one about which you should not open your mouth.  

“Anything else?...” It appeared that I must ask you the missing part of our conversation shamelessly which you had intentionally omitted. Mustn’t I?”  

Getting mildly angry, I told you, “What else then? That old peepal tree, broken cement bench, reddish brown rain water and the rubbish floating on it and the broken plastic bucket. Isn’t that right? It could be any one of them. You can find it out what it is when you think about it lying on your bed in your room.” 

You smiled at me. You kept laughing as though you were wholeheartedly enjoying my anger.  

“Was it such a fun that it makes you laugh like this?” It was only at that moment I had started addressing you in singular.   

“O…my goodness! What an anger! You would burn me into ashes. Wouldn’t you?”  

“Anger? Why should I be angry? Why should I be angry when a man blabbers getting crazy about butterflies? It was just your fantasy”  

We reached the entrance of the house as we were talking. Neither did I stop nor hesitate, opened the door and got in. You were standing at the entrance, looking up to my face, hesitating to enter.  

“If you are so busy finding out the cause of your edginess, you don’t have to come in. You may leave now. If not, you can come in”  

You removed your sandals and came inside. Looked around once. Finger combed your hair and sat on the single sofa on one side. It was five past eight that time. I closed the front door.  

“Have you completed your dinner? Or have you forgotten as you got immersed in watching butterflies?” 

Remnants of my anger were still there in me. I was very much aware that you couldn’t have had your dinner. When the cook from the hostel kitchen came to arrange your dinner, you were not found in your room. He might have been busy sitting in front of television thinking that he could attend you if at all you required anything. 

“I didn’t forget my hunger. I haven’t taken food either. It didn’t feel it, though. Person like me won’t get sumptuous meals on time while going into the forests. Your professor must have told you about this. Mustn’t he? If we get something, it will be our day. If not, we used to reconcile that we can have it whenever it is available. It is as simple as that. Only when you leave your brain and mind empty without any work, you will start realising that there is something called stomach”  

When you were talking, I remembered the words of professor on food- ‘If you give importance to your stomach, the brain will become blunt. So drop something inside stomach just to keep going so that your work is not disturbed’ 

“I don’t need all these anecdotes. Do you need something to eat now or not? I will be highly obliged if your words are used in brevity.” I gave out a mild infuriated cry mixed with a hectoring tone, annoyance and anger. I felt like pinching your patchy, bearded cheeks.  

“It is okay…okay…I am not that hungry. If you have fruits and some milk, it will do. If possible, serve it hot with some pepper and turmeric mixed into it”. You were sitting amiably now. It was a moment when our hesitations and unfamiliarity were nearly absent. They were those insatiable moments when we started coming closer to each other by stepping out of the fake screen under which I teased you till then with my words. You feigned your surrenders to me with smiles.   

I brought some pieces of apple and Sapota on a plate. You removed the seed from Sapota and put them into your mouth.  

“It will feel like eating sand if you eat it along with its peel. Won’t it?” I asked you as I was boiling milk in the kitchen.  

“I do like that anyway. Eating with its skin will counter balance the overstated sweetness of Sapota.”    

I felt laughing at your hunger – It chose to be selective in consuming fruits with some specific purpose. I brought boiling milk so that I could keep you wait till it got cold.  

“Your professor called me. He asked whether you had arrived in. He told me to take care of you without any complaints”. Having stressed those last words, I looked at your eyes trying to penetrate them.  

“Yes…Yes…he called me too and enquired about my stay. I forgot to tell you. He told me that he might get delayed by one day”. 

I was sure that he might have told me about it too. I didn’t hear him properly due to my state of mind at that time. I was happy to know it from you that he wouldn’t be able to return as he had planned. Poorani and Siddharth would come back only in the week end.  

“I came here as I wanted to meet ‘sir’. Now I don’t know what to do next if his arrival is delayed like this.” You must have told this to me intentionally. You spoke directly looking into my eyes with a hope that I might get angry at hearing it. 

“Get up…come back here again only after ensuring your professor’s presence here. I picked up the milk tumbler in my hands and showed him the entrance door.  

“Give me that milk. Let me have some strength to think deeper”, you extended your hands to me.  

I laughed. I laughed shamelessly. I was standing enjoying the movements of Champak tree visible through the window till you completed drinking milk. You came, stood near to me.  

Both my body and mind became tense. My laughter got frozen and lips had started shivering. Night was very thick outside. Stars were shining throughout the expanse of sky as much as one’s eyes could see. While watching them a meteorite descended with a trail of light and disappeared. The lengthy road was lying silent under the tube light. Both of us remained silent; keenly watching each other’s nearness and palpitation with fear and curiosity. I didn’t look at you; you didn’t look at me either. Yet we, both, were devouring each other with our penetrating eyes. “Yes…here you are…you are about to reach me…I was waiting with a tremor as if you were going to pull my left hand fingers quite slowly with your silky fingers.           

Without batting your eye lids, you were staring at the darkness outside and said, “Night is the path of indefinite light”  

That single sentence evoked an unfathomable misery in me. I couldn’t understand why you had uttered that sentence. 

“Each night is an opportunity. 

We never allow those opportunities. 

Each night is a touchstone. 

We only assess others with it. 

Each night is a mirror. 

We never see ourselves in the mirror.  

You kept on speaking, clearly though. I didn’t think of intervening you to say anything.  

“Night has two ways - one is for life. Another one is for death. Those who are conscious opt for death and those who sleep opt for life” 

I couldn’t bear that anymore. I shook your shoulders.  

“Anand, what happened to you?”  Despite my shaking you didn’t come out of your trance and didn’t take your eyes off from darkness either.  

“Don’t be afraid. It’s nothing…Something I had read long ago. Just remembered.” You sat on the cane chair. I stood there staring at you.  

“I have got experiences of staying in the dense forests for so many days. Truly speaking, forests will be lively only during nights. During day it actually sleeps”  

The night of forest was shining in your eyes. Sitting just in front of you I liked watching your eyes. I never experienced such a loneliness even in my own house. Hostel attendant’s wife who came here yesterday night to help me might return at any time now. A kind of discomfort worried me and I thought she shouldn’t come that time.  

You looked up to the wall clock, rather casually. The time was about to be half past nine. You got up, told, “Time is up…Take care…good night” and left. I did not even raise from the chair. I didn’t stop you either.  

“Good night” I told unenthusiastically and sent you off at the entrance door. When I was about to close the door, you came to me again.  

“Loneliness is also like a forest. One will be afraid of it in the beginning. More you get to know about it the more you become one of it. Once you enter the forest, there is nothing called night or day”  

Before I asked you what it was, you pronounced the last part of that incomplete sentence with a stress like an oracle: “Professor is a very good man. He is also a forest man”   

I struggled to reply to this statement. After closing the door, I was at ease. For a long time, I was rolling over on the bed, tremendously confused. I was confused as I had proved you transparently what I was. You were a very clever man, a capable artist who could draw a picture of a woman with help of her one hair strand. I was feeling proud to think about you.  

Thinking of calling you, I crawled upon your number a couple of times in the cell phone, but didn’t dial. Perhaps I was hoping that you would call me. The night was getting longer and longer.   

****

I must have fallen asleep only in the morning. I got up and went to the entrance only after the servant maid pressed the calling bell for long time. I had a mild head ache and my eyes were burning due to heat. Body was hot. I went again to the bed, lay there and closed my eyes as I wanted to avoid thinking about you. I took a pledge not to meet you that day. I took bath and changed my dress thinking of going out of house. Only after I brought my car to the main road, the question hit my head where to go. I turned the car on right as thought of visiting Maruthamalai. 

I parked the car at the foothills and started climbing up the hill by steps. The weather was sunny and moderately cold. The green cover of vegetation gleaming in yellowish light of the sun descending upon the folds of mountain was soothing to eyes. The steps were rough crying for renovation. Four-pillared open halls were found here and there. Short cuts through trees. The screams of peacocks were heard from other side of the hill. Squirrels hopped on the steps and disappeared in short bushes. The near absence of human beings was comforting. Once I reached that particular open hall where I usually prefer to sit, I felt crying. A tall beech tree was standing nearby. A piece of wood which might have been chopped off long ago was lying near to it. It was shining like a granite stone due to its persistent exposure to rain and sun light which provided sufficient space for two persons to sit on it comfortably. Monkeys were jumping from the open hall to the beech tree branches, swinging. An old monkey got terrified with my presence and started screeching, displaying its teeth to me. An enthusiastic small girl in a short frock, with her anklets tinkling, was climbing up, holding up the tip of her frock.  The sound of a mountain bus coming up carrying passengers from below was heard. Butterflies sat on cowslip creepers bloomed with orange colour petals. They looked bit smaller in the pale yellow tinge. Their too condensed yellow tinge on their wings could stick to fingers even at a mild touch. Had you been here, you would explained everything about them such as its genus and how far they could fly.  

Am I afraid of you?  

Or am I afraid of myself? 

Tears welled up in my eyes. While each butterfly flutters its wings merrily, I just closed my eyes.  

From where am I hiding and why am I hiding? Am I that weak? What have you done to me? I do not even know what your impressions are about me. Perhaps, wasn’t that it is me who has been fantasising about you that you would hug me with love if at all I lose control of myself and thus hug you? Am I being torn by lust even after giving birth to two children? Cheee….I had never been tortured by anything of this kind till now. I never even asked question whether I actually understood what it is or got it when I wanted. I never yearned for it either. Can everyone understand the limits of everything? Neither could one say it is the end nor accept what it is.   

No one knows which branch of bamboo could become a flute with the flowing wind. Does he? Sound of terrified monkeys jumping onto the tree branches. Crunchy crackling sound of dead leaves crushed under the feet.  

“Now you may open your eyes”. I was stunned, opened my eyes.  

Was it you?  

Yes. It was you. You were taking my pictures with your camera. Grey colour half sleeve sweater. Blue jeans. You looked fresh without two days beard on face. What sort of a miracle was it? Were you some celestial Yaksha who could appear in front of anyone at the very instance of remembering him? Or a Gandharva with a camera in hands! I was tongue tied. I kept watching you, still unable to come out of my shock.   

You came near, sat beside me. You took out water bottle from your bag slinging on your shoulder, opened its lid and brought to your mouth, but without drinking it, you gave that bottle to me. I was not certain whether I wasn’t thirsty or hungry. I simply nodded my head in refusal. After drinking water, you kept that bottle once again into the bag and became busy taking photos of a worm sticking to the bark of wood. Still unable to believe your arrival as real, but yet couldn’t accept that it could be an accidental one, I remained frozen in disbelief.  

A group of women in yellow clad was climbing uphill chanting mantras. Some of them had either Karagam or urns covered with yellow cloth on their heads. Some of them carried Kavadi on their shoulders. That group seemed to have at least ten persons and exhibited a synchronised walk and chorus.  

“Are you troubled with my presence here?” you asked me, very lucidly.  

You seemed to be aware that I wouldn’t be able to reply to it either with yes or no.  

I got up, ran from there through steps. It was a shyness of having revealed myself to you to an extent of enabling you to assess me. It was a state of ecstasy of having found a man who could understand each move of my mind.  

I was waiting near the car impatiently till you arrived. I was unable to stand. Was it due to hunger or thirst? Something of that sort was actually increasing my palpitation. Once you got the car keys, I was at ease a bit. I was dead sure that I wouldn’t be able to drive the car in my volatile condition. I was sitting in the front seat near you. I was scared to look at your face. However I could see that you were smiling and enjoying all my anxiety and nervousness. 

As I got down at the door, I ran inside, drank a lot of water, and panted, walked restlessly from kitchen to the hall and vice versa. Kept the window open. Opened the stacks of newspapers, folded it, sat on the swing and moved slowly to and fro.  

I heard the footsteps, closed my eyes. Thousands of jabbering inside. The darkness spread its spectrum and the band of light pained in my eyes. You had come inside, took off your shoulder bag and kept it on a tea table near the television. You must have seen me closing my eyes, sitting on the swing.  

“Are you hungry?” 

 Your foot steps were nearing me. Now I hastened speed of the swing.   

If you came past the flower pot directly, you were likely to hit your knees against the swing. Yet I swayed the swing faster. My eyes were tightly closed. The swing didn’t hit you. Where had you gone?” 

Suddenly the swing stopped in the air. While coming down after going up in the rear, it was caught up in your hands. I could hear my heart beats vividly. The swing came down slowly. The very moment my legs touched the floor, I felt a lightening striking on the back of my neck. Your hands tightly cuddled my body which fell without my control. A tight grip which I yearned for to hold me forever in life. A tight hold which brought about a moment of existence that squeezed out the soul and body together. You had drowned me with your kisses right from my neck.  

It was on that day during daytime, I could identify who I was. You made me understand the pleasures and pains which I had never experienced in my life. You never appeared to be an unfamiliar man to me. You celebrated me so gracefully like a person who had been friendly with me ever since I understood what I was and accepted my crassness and qualms. It was that day I had the pleasure of taking rebirth; it was the day that caused mirth of blossoming. It was a fulfilling moment that my birth had been redeemed.  

In one afternoon when you were sitting on the swing with my head on your lap, I said: ‘When I saw you first I feared that such thing would happen for sure. What kind of a relationship is this? What sort of bond is this?’  

You too wondered and said something which I couldn’t understand.  

It is not accidental; it was decisive. 

At the same time felt that it was a continuation of something endless. 

You were moving in some part of the sky in some direction

I was swimming in some river in some space 

I, who knew about you

You, who know about me

Had never met before this. 

But, your scent is very familiar to me.

You were very certain about my taste too.  

There was no indifference in our touch 

There was no stumbling in our embrace. 

There was no rehearsal in our kisses. 

With an irrefutable certainty

With a full-fledged freedom

We gave ourselves to each other. 

We became complete. 

No emptiness in mind after that. 

No confusions in eyes. 

A cosmic occurrence predefined at some point and somewhere

Had got consummated at that moment. 

Just like an arrival of a comet.  

As you kept running your fingers into my hair, you recited it as both a poem and babble of sounds. I felt that my life must come to end by that time itself.   

After a long time, I played Veena that day. Despite not touching it for years, the moment my fingers touched its strings, I was overwhelmed by its cadence. I brought myself back with a gentle caress of strings. The rays of afternoon sun were falling on the windows of the rear room.  

You were sitting on an easy chair, kept watching me absorbedly. My fingers gently played the strings and increased only the humming. As your eyes had arrested my being in me, the Veena became one in me.  

Sticking to my body, the moment it was caught up with my fingers, I started playing that song. During those days when I used to play Veena, I had never kept my Veena aside without playing that song.  

“Sinnanjiru kiliye…Kannamma…selva Kalanjiyame..”(O small parakeet! My dearest...aren’t you my treasure of wealth- Subarmaniya Bharathi’s famous poem)  

My eyes were closed. Dance of my fingers. Darkness everywhere. Frenzy of soul which touched the splendour of ‘honey that was dancing’ (Honey refers to the person in the poem)…An elated state of mind as if I had witnessed the Veena playing by itself.  

You hand touched my forehead. I opened my eyes. You were sitting beside me. You were looking at me with your eyes wide open, fixedly, filled with delight. I kept the Veena aside, with tears rolling down my cheeks.  

The humming of Veena was still resonating in every inch of that room.  

“It is enough…relax dear…relax” you pulled me towards you and cuddled me against your chest. You kept caressing my hair. You often kept kissing on my head, forehead and fingers.  

I was lying on bed, submissively. I was blossoming, maturing and shedding in some unfathomable depth as if neither would there be consciousness nor any rebirth thenceforth. I was floating in the sky embellished with the colours of butterflies. The whole body shuddered as it became a spectrum of colours, hit the limit of sky, bloomed, and completely jubilant. A stupor which I had never experienced in my life.  

What did you do with me? When I woke up, I was very much tired. You gave me a hot tea, asked me to change my dress and get ready.  

When we stepped out, the day time had gone long ago. We were walking on the road illuminated by tube lights. A gentle breeze flew over, stroked our faces. The Gurkha who was on his way to the university entrance gate for night shift duty on his bicycle waved his hand enthusiastically at me, and said ‘Salam Maam sahib” and left. He would sit at the entrance gate till the vehicular traffic becomes thin. He then would start singing his favourite old Hindi songs after eleven in the night. His voice was heavy, accustomed with singing. When I told you how beautifully he used to sing ‘Gora Kaagaj’, we had come near to a Cannon ball tree.  

“Why did you sing ‘Sinnanjiru kiliye’?  

“It is my most favourite song. That’s why I sang”. When I said this, you caught my hands and pressed them with yours and said, “You too love this song?” You told that you hadn’t heard anyone playing Veena till that day and added that I was looking more beautiful while I was holding Veena. 

As we walked some distance ahead, you enquired about my children. 

I was talking about Poorani and Siddharth. We walked along the road around the campus, the road running along the basketball ground and finally reached home. When I described my fears that Siddharth’s penchant for watching insects and beetles was actually unaffordable one for me, you told that it would be surprising if only I hadn’t been afraid of it. ‘It is a wonder to see children having taste for becoming environmental scientists, bird watchers and photographers. But it would still be a wonder if parents could identify that talent in their children and nurture them. You were happy to see his collections in his room and photographs he had kept in his computer. You were astonished to see the varieties of insects, beetles and birds he had seen and notes he had written about them.  

You seemed to be just another Siddharth. The same enthusiasm. The same inquisitiveness. 

I had to get you pushed away from that room forcibly. You asked me to let him choose his way he preferred. You were stern in your voice too while suggesting that I should refrain from throwing him into regular herd when he was very certain about his chosen path. I remembered the moments of scuffle with the professor while discussing this matter.  

We were very much hungry. You preferred not to go out when I asked you and spiritedly entered the kitchen to cook instead. Before I returned after changing my dress, I saw you chopping off randomly picked carrots, beans and other vegetables. You asked me to prepare dough for making Chappathi. When I asked you from whom you had learnt to cut vegetables that smaller, you boasted that you belonged to the genealogy of King Nala. (Famous for his cooking skills). Then you started bragging about your accomplishments in cooking- how you spent three days with just four pieces of breads and a radish in Ghana, how you came alive from the jungles of Chile just by munching the tips of some exotic greens and how you were admitted in a hospital for taking glucose drips after consuming a banana like fruit when you were hungry as you became dehydrated in three days after eating it.  You made the kneaded dough into small balls and gave me a palm size, circular form dough as if it had precision cut by a compass. You had a lot of things to speak about anything. You could speak about the procedures on how to make Chappathi softer; you could speak about the bonsai trees on the window dais for half an hour without taking a breath; you could enlist the persons who all had sung Sinnajiru Kiliye song in different tunes.  

Only when I was cleaning the kitchen after having meals, I asked you about you.  

You delved into thought. You closed the dripping tap. Picked one cardamom, put it into your mouth and sat on the fourth step of stairs leading upstairs. I sat on a Diwan on the side of wall and stretched out my legs.  

“People say Salem is my ancestral place. But what I all know about is only Bangalore. My father and mother went there in search of livelihood along with labourers deployed for carrying sand when the Krishnaraja Sagar dam was constructed. They started with a small Idli shop, slowly started textile business and now they had grown to an extant of having house and lands in Bangalore’s Upparpet. I could remember my mother’s face whereas I could remember my father only in photograph. I had never seen him. Even before I turned one, he was no more. The money he saved also went along with him. My mother started idli shop again to rear me up and my elder brother. While studying in second class, one day a French man came to our shop incidentally to take a snap of my mother who was sitting with idli pot. Looking in short beard and a half trouser with a camera hanging around his neck and a cigarette in lips, he asked my mother permission to take a photograph of her. He bought some hot idlies and tasted it. He enquired about me who was, at that time, doing homework and my brother was washing the plates. That was it. He gave the amount for idlies, looked at me with some keen interest, and then left. He came back there after two days and showed the photographs he had taken. He asked my mother whether she would be able to send me along with him. My mother was crying helplessly but took a strong, painful decision. She refused to accept money from him requested him in tears not to allow her son to beg under any circumstances and then sent me off along with him. I was unable to understand what it was all about. I boarded the car, waved my hands at her receiving the wetness of her tears on my cheeks.  

Your voice stammered, soaked in agony. Your eyes were searching for the face of your mother who bid you adieu helplessly.   

You told that you couldn’t still understand that incident and then cried inconsolably. 

I couldn’t fathom those emotional outbursts buried in you for so long. You kept weeping. Putting you on my lap, I was searching for words to console you. Would men cry? Would there be this much misery crept into the interiors of someone’s psyche? I was astounded, oblivious of my being, and endearingly stroked your hair. You became an infant on my lap; I became your mother who was trying to comfort you. I placed my kisses on your salty cheeks. I brought you back to life from your tears. I got you frozen in me and made you forget everything around you. I could see the stupor of finding everything in me which you had been searching from your mother. Enormous amount of gratitude in your eyes. Holding my fingers tightly against your chest, you lay there closing your eyes. You didn’t even give me chance to adjust myself and slept very soon. Only in dawn, you told that you had never had such a peaceful sleep. 

When I woke up in the morning next day, you were not found there. You had left a small paper inscribed on it: “Have a sound sleep! Dawn will be waiting for you. Let me pay a visit to Anuvavi” with a Panda bear drawn below. A clear, slanted handwriting with a trace of indifference in it. I didn’t like to get up from the bed; I was down due to pain and heat. Cuddling the pillows, I lay there, doing nothing.  

I remembered you ask me the types of kisses in the previous night. You listed the types of kisses as you had declared my replies wrong. Wet kiss, dry kiss, compressing kiss, sticking kiss, Thirukkural kiss, Anthathi kiss, Self-defence kiss, attacking kiss- you listed them as if they were some Annapoorna Hotel menu. I warned you not to try to get me impressed with whatever that came to your mouth. You replied it was only with mouth it becomes kiss. You added, assuming responsibility, that every kiss should be explained in its entirety. A naughty smile shone in your eyes. I pushed you away, telling that I didn’t require any such thing as it was not that important.   

I remembered everything now. A heartfelt laughter filled in my mind. You were a very clever man. Weren’t you? In fraction of a second, that question came over my mind like a wavy layer of smoke. How many more women you have enticed like this? Do you have any woman waiting for you? Why didn’t you tell me anything about it? I hadn’t asked you about it either. You had told me many things without being asked. Hadn’t you? 

The box you had brought from the hostel was kept open.  There were four or five pairs of dresses. Hats, sweater, and socks were found crumbled and looked one and the same. A diary in dark brown colour with leather case and some papers were there. In addition to them, were found some wild life magazines and lots of papers. I left all of them as such without touching them. I thought that trying to know about you through them would amount to making our intimacy cheaper.  My mind was not prepared to think anything negative about you. You never created any chance to think even in any one of our private times that you were not the one who I had in my fantasy.  

In spite of all, that layer of smoke was still cropping up.  

I couldn’t stay on bed beyond this. I called upon the servant maid from the hostel and hastened the works. I ordered her to clean the house, wash the utensils, cloths and dry them and asked her to complete cleaning front and back entrance of the house. Finished cooking too once I was done with bathing. I was even prepared with replies to give her at the instance of she asking me questions about your cloths while drying them on cloth line. She didn’t ask anything. I cleaned up the box in advance and kept it on the top layer of almirah. When she left after being tired for the day, it was one ‘O clock. As I was also very hungry, I fell asleep immediately after having lunch due to fatigue. No call from you. It seemed that you wouldn’t come. I fell asleep.  

****

 You once told that nomads could have only lovers; they could not have wife, children and family. As you thought that it was an unnecessary burden, you told that you had not given any thought to get married. You once described about your story with an indifference of telling about a third person’s story. When you were a research scholar doing your doctorate degree at Bangalore Agriculture Research Centre, a Coorg lady who was working there as Agricultural scientist had proposed to you and despite you had refused her proposal categorically, she was mad after you. Now we were on the banks of a lake lying in the hallowed area of hill slope located two kilometres away from the road near Anaikatti. The morning light was clear in grey hue; the light which couldn’t be termed exactly as light. The wind was piercing with cold when it blew. Tall trees, dense bushes, and creepers around in thick greenish shade. Birds perching aside, were fluttering their feathers and shaking their heads. The water surface with the white layer of dews that hadn’t still evaporated. You hadn’t switched on your camera as the light around was not conducive.  

When you praised that my light green colour salwar and its embroidery were looking graceful, I told you that my penchant for dresses was in fact more before my marriage and during the initial days of my marriage and but now I had lost interest in it. It was only at that time, you had talked about marriage. However, I didn’t ask you that question which was still burning in me. It was when you knocked at the door in the evening yesterday, I got up from the bed. You informed me that you came to the house at two in the afternoon and left for lab as I didn’t open the door even after you called me pressing the calling bell.  

You told that the freedom that you were enjoying now to move to any place at any time without being sure about the next plan with a bag slinging on shoulder wouldn’t be available if you had family, wife and children. But you added immediately as if performing some damage control that all family men in this world need not be necessarily fools just because you were not like them. I was not interested to know about your opinions about the concept of family. I was indeed keen to find out the answer from your words to my singular question burning in me. As the sun light got slightly better, you picked up your camera. You had given me your binocular to observe birds. But I wasn’t interested. My mind was tired due to some inexplicable burden, slightly perturbed by something. The image of professor came through my mind, though I preferred not to offer much of a meaning to it at that time and thought about my children. Eyes welled up with tears.  

I was just a toy for the last two days. Wasn’t I? I was just an entertainment that occurred in your journey. Wasn’t I? What could be the meaning of tears and sex in your dictionary? You could possibly give explanation to this too. I do accept that it was not just to blame only you for all these. I had given space for it; more than what was required. I didn’t assess you with any scale of arguments in my mind. I just surrendered myself to you with all my soul at its real face of existence. It was only you who made it, some of the wonderful moments which I never experienced in my life, possible.  Now I feel the liveliness in my home which I had never known before.  

Even though it happened for some hours, I had felt the fulfilment of having lived my whole life meaningfully. Was that feeling fake? Was it just a fantasy? What was that we did share truly at that time? What was that emptiness that I filled in me with you and you did with me?  

A bird in grey and light blue colour with a splash of white patches on the corner of its feather perched on a small branch. The branch waved gently when it perched on it. It closed its feathers slowly and turned its head right and left agitatedly, stared, rolling its eye balls. You opened the zoom lens in your camera and took its picture, without any sound, without diverting its attention. The blue bird kept watching the water surface of lake, small circles of waves caused by leaves and flowers falling from trees, with a sense of caution.  As all your attention was fully focussed on that bird, you didn’t realise that you had approached the slopes of the lake. Suddenly the tender earth beneath gave away and you fell down and rolled down the slope in fraction of a second. I was petrified for a moment. When I yelled at you, you were already near the lake, about to fall into it, but didn’t fall in. You left hand had grabbed a bush on the bank and your right hand was holding the camera, very safely. The sound of birds flying away with noisy flutter was heard. I ran towards you down the slope, carefully, swiftly. By the time I reached you, you had come up a couple of feet above with the help of bush. You laughed at me, holding my hands. You turned to the water surface as you were cleaning red sand sticking to your shirt. The water remained calm.  

The thorns of the bushes had left your palm bruised. You complained about chasing away the birds and lamented for not being more careful. Both of us reached an Ashram nearby. Cleaning those bruises with water, I applied some ointment much to your complaints that it was burning. While sitting on a hay- spread bench under the conical ceiling, you asked me with a smile what I could have done in case had you fallen into water.   

Till we reached home at about eleven, I didn’t reply. A couple of times you reminded me of it. The gloom on my face and my silence must have got you myself proved. You didn’t insist me after that. Returning home without even speaking a word was indeed very heavy. While alighting at the house entrance, you informed slowly that you had planned to leave for your town that day evening. I went inside, without replying to it, as if I was expecting that this statement might come from you. 

You came in, kept your dresses in the box, picked up the items prudently meant for you and glanced through Siddarth’s computer screen intently for emails for some minutes. I was on the bed, lying. My heart was mindful of all your movements. There was no sound for a while. You too slept. Didn’t you? I thought of getting up, coming to you. A dumb anger. Whatever be it, you were going to leave anyway. Weren’t you? 

If it wasn’t that time, it could be either that day evening or possibly anytime next day. What could I do about it? 

 “Can we speak?” you asked me, standing near the room door. A sudden surge of outburst! A burst of cry came out as a result of suppressed anger, coyness, fury, passion, and I was weeping. My throat grew struck with something as if my breath was stopped, and I was struggling in silence at the peak of cry. You didn’t run towards to me to take me in your hands and rather waited for me to regain my poise. I was extremely disappointed at it. I couldn’t believe that you were capable of remaining silent when I cried. A realisation within me, and I rose up. Washed my face, dried it with a towel and sat. 

 “Tell me. What should we talk?” 

“We can talk about how we had suddenly lost our words to speak” you told.  

I didn’t reply to your words, and I was busy making bun of my hair and tied it.  

You spoke slowly, firmly. “If anyone had asked me a couple of days ago whether I was sad or desolate since I didn’t have anyone in my life, I would have laughed at it with a strong no and moved away with a smile. Many men and women have crossed my way in different situations, they have walked along with me. Be it a man or a woman, I never got a feeling of getting closer to anyone with whom I wanted to walk for some more distance. It will be difficult to believe if I say that I never experienced the fear of death even while meeting with worst possible accidents in different situations. But it is the truth. I was ready to shake hands with death at any time. I don’t have anything that I need to hand over to others. I have no one to whom I need to bid adieu. So, I was prepared to face death as I considered it just a next turning point in my life. But what my hand caught hold in reflex while falling down the bund of lake was not just bushes; it was my life. It was only at that time I had realised that a desire to live my life was in me. I have been overwhelmed with a question as to why I hadn’t met you earlier. It was only with you I remained what I was. You can keep me safely in your hands, attentively, without even a small scratch. I am totally convinced that such a sense fulfilment and hope had already taken root in you. You are a lively spring that I have found after a long travel of passing through the treacherous desert of life. Henceforth I am yours. It is very certain that no woman is in my heart other than you. Nevertheless you are not fully mine. After some hours, you have a different role to play. The responsibilities you need to carry out are also different.  It will be no good for both of us if I stay here henceforth. It is just my utmost happiness that I was able to find out the essence of my life, at least this much. Let me part with it. I could understand your anger, a bit though. A suspicion that I have taken advantage of your situation and your likely uneasiness about relationship that follows our parting would definitely make you angry and furious. I could understand it. What I got from you was nothing less than a magnificent boon. No one, including you, can understand what it is. I only can understand its pleasure and burden.”

You leaned against, and sat down along the wall, stretching out your left leg.  A shiver and despair in your voice, not seen till that time. I came near to you. Your pleading eyes seeking forgiveness from a mother got my stubbornness softened. I scooped you up with my hands, cuddled you with my chest and cried inconsolably- Cried till the dark smoke that had filled in my heart disappeared.  

With the gradual passing of time filled with attempts of consoling, comforting, wavering and submitting, you had managed to come out of your dilemma to a greater extent. You told me that it was easier for you to move away from me and I should also make it easier for me, and it would be difficult for me to carry those memories the way it was difficult for you to carry it, but it would be good if I could forget you the very moment you left me just like a falling of leaves. Like a sharp scalpel of surgeon, your words tasted my blood without causing pain. I was hugely restive not to lose that rare moment of being close to you. A passionate longing to relish something which I would never be able to have in future. A thirst to fill you in me as much as I could.  

As my restiveness, passion and longingness had started subsiding, a prolonged emptiness and withdrawal clouded me like a shadow. I pushed you away, in a moment of frenzy, and yelled, “You go out from here, Anand.”. Cutting you short in just two words, I returned to my room.  

Even now I get astonished at myself thinking about that incident as to how I was able to handle that moment. When you left, you stood at the room entrance and said goodbye. I didn’t come out. I didn’t have the courage to do that. 

*** 

That night was one of the most challenging ones in my life- An emptiness which I had never experienced in the last forty two years. Everything seemed to have lost their sheen and meaning. I wasn’t bothered about the pain of my body caused by tiredness. The mind was aimless, distressed without any support somewhere in the darkness. 

 Next day, it was dawn. Professor and children returned home enthusiastically. I too became active in daily chores. I went in to their world once again and fixed myself with it.  

It was Poorani who found out the changes in me. She wasn’t convinced with my reasons and excuses and kept telling that I was not looking like her mother who she last saw before leaving the town. I spent time with them till eleven in the night, laughed with them, talked to them, played with them, cooked for them and ate with them. Suddenly my head spun and threw myself onto a chair. Everything around me became dark.  

When I regained my consciousness, the professor was sitting beside me, visibly worried. He told me that the doctor checked me and suggested to take rest as it was due to weakness. I was not in mood to talk to anyone. Your face, your words and your proximity all made me aloof from this world. Despite moving around with others in the house, I was living in a parallel world with you. Conversed with you. Slept on your lap. Even while cooking you came behind me, hugging me and murmured stories near my ears. While drying cloths in terrace, you made coiffure with the cloth clips. During evenings, under the shade of gently waving Indian cork tree in the front entrance, you were holding my fingers and tenderly crackled it. While being a mother to my children and a wife to Professor, I could remain what I was, what I liked me to be in the world that I shared with you.  

Now, the butterflies had become my fascinating creatures. I saw your edgy eyes in them when they fly restlessly in the air. When their wings glimmered in the sun light, I found the charm of your smile in them. When they drink nectar from flowers, I felt the taste of your kisses. As their colours flapping in the air, when they fly, breezing through the wind, I remembered our bodies shuddering, becoming one. Just like you, they were also so restless, not willing to stay at one place. Exactly like the way you left me, the very moment I thought that I had caught them, these butterflies too flew away from my hands leaving its colours on my hands.    

As the days passed, I tried contacting you through telephone but in vain. The mobile phone kept on ringing only to leave me a message that it was not reachable. No reply thereafter. The telephone number at your Bangalore address was also not functional. The way you ignored me in the beginning and then avoided me indeed rendered me suffer with incurable wounds. Those were the days I was hugely nervous and mentally tired. I tried to find out the reasons by myself for your actions, juxtaposing them so as to find a solace for myself. I tried hard to carry the burden of your indifference of not contacting me without nurturing even an element of either anger or displeasure against you. I strongly believed that everything would be alright if we talked to each other at least once.  

Like a rain after extremely scorching sun light, I received that letter from you. Usually no letter would be delivered to me at my house address. All letters would be delivered at professor’s office. But when I saw that unknown courier man standing at the door with a thick dark yellow envelope in his hands to hand it over to me, I was surprised. A clearly printed address on it. My name and house address in clear block letters. It was only after a long assessment made in confusion, I could understand the meaning of courier man’s statement that professor had asked him to hand it over to me personally. Your name and your camp address somewhere in Vayanad were found printed at the place of sender’s address. With shivering hands and eagerness, I took the stuff out. My palms were wet with sweat. The pictures you had taken were there in another envelope. They were printed in maxi size with the best of technology in photography- while standing on the bamboo bridge with my head slanting on one side, while looking up to the branches of a tree near the steps at Maruthamalai, while holding the chains of swing at home with my raised left hand laughing with all my gum visible, and while getting immersed in Veena with my eyes closed- every frame you captured showed me as different person who I am still unaware of. I was sad that you didn’t send me any of those auto-clicked pictures which we had taken together. But I could feel the presence of your aura in all my pictures. I opened your letter eagerly. You had just written exactly seven lines in a beautiful handwriting with black ink having a slight tinge of blue colour:     …

‘I believe that the words of addressing you are no longer appropriate here. I seek your forgiveness for avoiding your phone calls. I am strong in my stand that I should not allow anything which might renew the remnants of my existence. These pictures, printed only once, are completely yours. It is extremely impossible to repay the graciousness I received from you. It is just only my humble tribute. In case, if this letter and those pictures cause you any discomfort in any form, you may please destroy them without hesitation’. 

-Anand 

That letter got me collapsed upside down like a monster wave. Your merciless words made me cry. I was seriously perturbed by all your attempts of leaving me. I read that letter again and again with teary eyes. I was so devastated that I was trying to find you out in any one of those words as if you were hiding in it. I started slowly becoming someone unknown from the one seen in those photos. 

I stuffed everything into the envelope, kept it inside the stacks of saris and entered bath room. Opened the shower and stood below it. Unable to dilute my tears and angst, the water was flowing down meekly. I laughed at your confidence that you would be able to cut off your bond with me. I was surprised at your ignorance that I would carry your memories only when we meet, talk or write to each other. Your understanding about me is only that much. Isn’t it? 

Notwithstanding your hesitations, fears, and decision of parting away had given me an immense clarity. Along with it came my feeling of pity for you. What else are you doing now just to keep yourself away from me? Are you wandering in the forests having no presence of human beings? Or are you sailing in the sea day and night? Or are you walking painstakingly on the lands unknown to you without knowing its language? You fool! Our memories are like hounds. The more we run away from them, the more they would become ferocious, bounce upon us to tear our life apart frantically.  

Stay calm my friend! It is the enlightenment I got after getting tired of running.  

We can’t afford to play with these hounds for a long time. We must surrender ourselves to them without resistance. We must submit ourselves fully. They will tend to be at rest with the pride of defeating us and that will be the finest opportunity to tame it with a neck belt. They will be under our control thereafter. I don’t want to put our “memories” of those hours I had spent with you aside as an inevitable part of our daily routine. They were the days when I was flying like butterflies all throughout the flower garden. They were now mixed up with my breath, and my blood.  

I showed only two of those pictures to professor who came home very late in the night- the picture holding the swing and playing Veena, as if they were taken at the same time. I hid remaining pictures and the letter under the heaps of saris. I didn’t have the courage to display all the pictures in front of him at that time. He enjoyed those pictures very much. He tried contacting you through telephone, but couldn’t get connected with you. I was feigning, inserting pillows into covers as if I was not interested in what he was doing. 

He said that he had been trying to contact you for so many days but not getting any reply from you and you never responded to any of his emails. He said that it seemed something weird. When he told that he had invited you here again, I was dumbfounded. I knew you wouldn’t come. Yet, I felt slightly uneasy at hearing it that time. I pitied him for being an unsolicited character in our hide-and-seek game. While that pity pushed me to get closer to him, the discomforts I felt during my private moments with him had actually left me feeling guilty.  

He started coming home early and tried to share a lot with me. He requested me to sing songs in our bedroom. But it was painful to see him a loser in all those futile attempts. I rebuked him only when the children mocked at it. He kept the magazines carrying your photos open in such manner so that I could see them. When he brought a magazine to show me which carried the news of you winning a prize in a wild life photography competition, he was seriously stunned at seeing me getting unduly annoyed at it.  

I am very clear now. It is the clarity that you had left in me. The very thought about you brought a splendid tranquillity that overwhelms me with a gush of zeal. Once I experience that tranquillity, the noise and dirt of this world around me would become something unknown and leave me at once.  

No matter whether I like it or not, my life I have spent till date and the remaining days are destined to be spent only with him anyway. Children have grown up and I am also getting old. No one is lucky enough to live their life the way they want. It is just compromises which make our life sustain. Desires and dreams are purely exclusive to one’s own world, as a safely kept secret. Your arrival into my life and my discovery of myself during this interlude is nothing but a break in my long journey. It is not permanent; I cannot get contented with it. You cannot bear with me forever too. This world never allows such a freedom. If everyone’s whims and wishes get fulfilled, there would be an unbearable stampede in the regal path of this world. Even if I happen to meet you at any point of time in future, I will never identify you with our two days of romantic stint. A simple smile of recognising you as a new person in my life. That is all. I know that you could understand me well. He doesn’t know anything. I am not sure if I am capable of telling everything in a language he could understand. My heart didn’t permit me to confide everything about it to him. It is purely my and our personal matter. Do I have to explain him everything and confess my sins? Is it necessary? I don’t know. My pictures you had shot would remain with me as the pictures shot by an unknown, talented photographer. It is only me who knows the signature you have given in the light around me. You are the boon I am blessed with for just one day as a result of an era-long penance. You are my pain given by my boon. It is me who must enjoy this pain within myself. I cannot afford to share even a shade of its manifestations with others. It is completely ours, only ours. We cannot torture others surrounding us with our pains.  

There are thousands of trees in your forest. Thousands of flowers blossoming. Springs just to bless you. It is not difficult to find out a woman who could give you the pleasures which you had found in me. When you find one, may be at the earliest, there is only one thing you must do: It is just an understanding of her dreams and respecting it as much as possible. You can do it. You are capable of understanding dreams. You can find in her the ‘same thing’ that you had found in me.  

The bamboo forests are wearing golden hue in this summer and shed their leaves. No water is flowing in brooks. While crossing the bridge, the sun light is harsh.  

When the dead leaves in front of guest house entrance door get crushed under feet, my heart aches, my friend!    

***Ended*** 

Source: “Vaal Velli”, a collection of short stories written by M. Gopala Krishnan. (2018) 

Translated into English by K. Saravanan.