A
Nameless Entity
Her chiffon dupatta swirled with the rhythm of mid-summer breeze when she sat
by the flowing stream in the middle of the night. Unusually tonight, she put
her red lip colour on which everyone thought didn’t suit her like she sat by
the stream at this hour where she wasn’t allowed at odd hours. She sniffed the
smell of his perfume on her wrist and tried to remember his touch.
When he took those first few steps towards me,
they got me confused; what would that possibly mean? She thought and the next
moment she was in his arms, her head on his chest. I can’t exactly remember the
length of the time for I was lost nowhere, somewhere I had never been before. I
squeezed into him, I could feel his heartbeat and the warm sound of his breath,
the rise and fall of his chest; it was surreal since I was oblivious of the
existence of such humanly yet very heavenly experiences. We didn’t talk at the
time, the both of us were silent - lost in the moment. I touched his hair, his
lips and his eyes; had always fantasized about the feel of the touch. With his
plum, pink lips he caressed my cheek so softly that I could even sense the fog
of his breath on my skin.
“Can’t
we be like this forever?”
“No…”
She
got a push so hard and a gush of breath out of her mouth woke her up. She was
panting then and the rest of the night after.
She
had never felt the touch of a male on her body before, however this might not
have been a real exposure though she still regretted to have never experienced
it earlier for – I waltzed in a dark whirlwind of emotions floating in every
single vein of my being – she loved the flow of emotions so that she recalled
the dream time and again by the stream in the starless night with red lips; supposedly
put a fragrance on her wrist to be his.
Dreams
were all she could have…
***
Days after
when she was taking a shit, she thought, while forcing the thing out of herself,
why is that I can’t touch the opposite gender when I feel like touching? Why
can’t I have the feeling in real life, the one that I dreamt of?
Perplexed
for days, she finally reached the conclusion to find answers to all her
complexities. Contended that she was, decided to try everything that anyone had
ever stopped her from doing.
Or….
touching?
***
Baba jan was having his usual siesta when she crouched beside his bed,
slipped her hand under his pillow and carefully pulled out a pack of cigarettes,
picked up one and put the rest back as if untouched. She crawled out like a
millipede and climbed up to her usual hiding place amongst the trees, shaded by
leaves. Held the thing to her face, examined it.
After all those years of my life, she thought,
today I’ll explore the secret to not puff it off in the air because they never
stop talking about the hazards of smoking.
Lit a
matchstick and burnt the edge of it.
A day before she stayed to work in the fields
longer than usual so as to observe her father smoking, now mimicked him
accurately, almost like a monkey with two brains that observes intricate
details, yet this one not only studied deeply but also questioned them, however
with one brain.
Tried to smoke it out of her mouth like him
but couldn’t, even though she had postured herself like his and yet it didn’t
work out as she had imagined it. Nevertheless, the thing burnt out till the
other end and she felt nothing, nothing much to be forbidden from smoking it
out.
Nasty rules! All made by them for no good
reason. What’s happened? She questioned. Nothing! Yet they would babble and
babble about the hazards.
***
She’d
regularly sit beside the stream and stare at the flowing water for hours, lost
in thoughts. The stream was her brooding nest where she’d contemplate about
what not for hours at end. In this moment, issues, questions and disturbing
ideas were bumping against each other in her brain.
Tonight,
she was thinking of the divine being.
It got chillier than before while the trees
made a cry when wind swiped past them.
God
doesn’t want us to smoke or touch men or go bareheaded. I don’t understand, she
tried to find answers on her own, who God actually is? Why would God be
interested in my dupatta or my touch if he has to run this entire universe, let
alone the earth? Baba never hugged me, Bhai doesn’t like me but they never talk
of what God has to say about this! If God is so concerned about what I do then
why don’t they talk of God’s opinion over Baba’s doings?
Her
brain twirled back in time to the days when her parents would fight over her father’s
extramarital relations, when her Baba would have intimate and still have, she
thought, phone conversations with women while her Ammi wasn’t home but she was to hear all of it.
The most disgusting thing, she imagined, for
her to digest even to that day was when her Baba chatted on Facebook with women,
pretending he was on to something very important when she had his Facebook
password and could read the entire conversation while sitting at the other end
of the couch.
Huh,
she loathed, Baba thinks, I can’t say when he’s working on women and when he’s actually
working!
Someday,
I’ll ask God’s opinion about it too.
***
The
next afternoon, on her way back home from fields, she let her dupatta slide
away from her head and shoulder, let it rest on
her chest, held between her arms as the thoughts of the night before still
resided at the back of her mind. She experienced nothing unusually bad but a
certain sense of joy, a sense of freedom was there.
Why do
they make her cling it to her head and around her neck as if they’re about to
strangle her with it. There was no harm felt in not taking it the way she was
forced to since forever; she argued within.
Gradually,
it turned into a routine; letting her dupatta slide and not worrying about where.
She would wonder if God would react, now when she refuses to do what she had always
been taught to do.
One
fine day, on her way towards the fields, with bright sky and glistening water
of the stream; she walked with the usual mantra of letting her dupatta slide away.
Her brother caught her…
She
was unable to move after he left, felt a narrow creek flowing through her nose,
when touched; it was red. She could still feel his feet thumping between her
legs and his grip on her hair. After lying there, in the fields, with numb,
question-less brain and static body throughout the day; she screamed at the top
of her voice by the time in the afternoon when she’d let the thing slide to her
side.
When
she got back home, her Ammi saw her about to open her mouth to question that
condition; she yelled, “Is that what God would do when I don’t follow the
mechanized rules you thrust upon me?”
***
After
a couple of days, when she felt better enough to move, sat beside the stream
again in dark, surrounded by insects creaking at her. Once more, she decided to
try another forbidden thing of men by, they say, God.
The next
day she didn’t go to work in the fields. Her hands hurt after collecting
flowers with thorns to be grown in the garden, when inquired about skipping
work for the day.
At Zuhur, she picked up her Baba’s phone
the moment he left for mosque and sent his present girlfriend – as they changed
from time to time – texts like, “Randi,
Kameeni, Kanjri stay away from this man. Don’t you have a husband of your
own for as I know you do have children! Or you don’t have a husband at all and
got them from men who serve your needs!”
Deleted the sent messages, put the phone back
and left unseen, unnoticed.
***
“Who
messed with my work? Who came into my room? Who touched my phone?” Baba howled
like a hungry hound.
Complete
silence was observed in the house during such times.
He called
everyone in and questioned them all one by one like an investigation officer
who calls culprits alone at different times trying to break them. However, Baba
playing that role for a petty work as that, sickened her.
As expected everyone refused to know about anything
that had happened to Baba’s WORK. This time, they actually didn’t know anything
but even if they did, no one would agree to succumb to the tyrannies of the man
whose ever loving work, if was meddled with.
***
The
door to her room burst opened at night when she was asleep. Baba got her by her
pigtail, threw her onto the ground, dragged her like a sack and started
thumping her as one thumps to kill a stingy insect that is ready to inject its
venomous tentacles into our veins.
“It
was you, wasn’t it?”
“Mmm…”
Struggled to find her voice, in the meantime was awarded with yet another kick.
“Only
you, of all in the house, know how to operate WhatsApp. It was you, wasn’t it?
You
dare to touch my belongings again and I’ll cripple the shit out of you so you never
walk into my room again with those legs!
You
prostitute!” He hissed at her and stormed out of the room.
“I am
the prostitute?”
Her
eyes wide open staring at heavens beyond the ceiling as if she could see that
was unseen and unquestioned.
***
Ammi
massaged her belly with warm oil and said, “What’s got into you? You were a
nice, obedient girl who always obeyed her elders. Never uttered a word against
that I taught you. Why are you bent upon self-destruction? God would be so
unhappy with you, do you realize that?”
Unable
to speak or move before, she suddenly jumped with electric strength and red,
bloody eyes held her Ammi close to her face. She held her so tight that she
almost chewed Ammi’s arms with her beaten hands.
“So
that’s what God does when I don’t follow my elders, elders like Baba?
***
Now
she desperately waited for herself to feel better once again, ready to attempt
yet another stunt.
The
moon that night was beaming with a red tint. Everything was vividly visible
under the light of the moon with a tint of its red.
Ammi
was right, something did get into her…
***
She followed
him today to find out his place of abode. She did realize that he was elder
than her, probably too old for her but she was contended to feed her fantasies
as she was sure death could engulf her at any part of any day then why not, she
would enthusiastically ask herself, experience every forbidden thing that God
said and man implemented.
Later
in the night, she knocked at his door.
“What
are you doing here? Your father would kill you if he found out that were here.”
“I know.”
She was calm unlike the water of her running stream.
“Will
you fuck me?”
“What….!”
***
She held the spot between her legs, cupped in both
the palms to keep it warm and let the pain go away somehow.
By the
stream, under the tree, she sat in the starless, fogy, silent night, declared:
“Now I
know who You are, God!”
She
slid towards the stream, let the cold water touch her feet. Before she crept
her whole into the water asked:
“Come
and kill me God, I broke another law of your man.”
As she
swept with the flow, she aspired to be anything but a human.
