Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay

The condom made a sad plop on the floor next to the bed. As he turned over Sartaj had the sensation of time starting to stir again. He lay on his side, put a hand on Megha’s stomach and watched his fingers move with her breathing. She had an arm over her eyes, and he blinked hard, trying to read the set of her chin. He could feel the throbbing of his own heart. She turned to him suddenly. “We must be mad,” she said, but there was no sadness in her. She smiled and touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. “I have to go.” He watched her walk across the bedroom, past the white wall with its filigree of shadow, and he knew he would remember this image forever, this person, this shimmering body moving away from his life. From the bathroom he heard the sound of rushing water.

Sartaj was no longer angry, or despairing, but as he lay on the sheets he was possessed of a certain clarity, and he could hear the world ending. In the huge distances of the red sky, in the far echoes of the evening he could feel the melancholy of its inevitable death. He ran a hand over his chest, and the slow prickling of the hair was distinct and delicious. He got up, walked into the bathroom. Megha was standing under the shower, his blue shower cap on her head, and was lathering her stomach absently. He took the soap from her, led her by the hand into the bedroom, to the bed. He had her lie down on her back, and smoothed away the soap from her body with his fingers. He bent his head to her breasts, and found cool beads of water and underneath an evasive smoothness. He tongued the nubbly brown nipples and she stirred under him restlessly. As he trailed down her body she tugged at his patka. It came off finally and with her fingers in his hair he put a hand under one knee and lifted the leg up, away. He heard her breath, sharp, and as always the close curl of her labia against each other, under the soft slope of black hair, was once more strangely unknown to him, familiar and yet astonishing. He kissed her thigh, in the crease, and there was the lush smell of her, round and full and loamy in his nostrils. The flesh to the centre flushed and trembled and thickened under his tongue. In and into the sudden salty heat he lapped, hungrily, following the twisting trail of her shakes, losing sight of the secret and finding it again. She held his head and moved him and herself to the place she wanted and then away from it. His fingers dabbed and stroked through the folds and in the plump fluttering confusion there was time and its thousand and one tales, first flirtation, vanilla ice-cream eaten dripping from her fingers ,and a Congress election poster outside the restaurant window while they quarrelled and he clung to none of them, they drifted and vanished and he sometimes himself and then vanished, his tongue moved and his lips and his fingers under her bottom, and then he heard her rising cry, and he knew she had her right index finger in her mouth, biting. Finally she drew him up and kissed him, licking his mouth and fingers. This time he put the condom on himself. They moved together and the bed creaked under them. His body bent over her and he looked back over his shoulder at their tangled shadows, rising and falling, and then down at her and at their hair mingling. He bent down to kiss her, and when he came away she was crying. With a groan he touched her cheek but she put a hand on his wrist. “Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” And so he went on. In the twilight she raised a hand to his mouth and he could see her tears. And so then a moment when everything was lost, but her.

Afterwards it was dark and they said barely a word to each other. At the door she raised her cheek to his, and for a moment they stood like that. When she was gone he shut the door, and came back to the sofa, and sat on it, very still. He felt very empty, his mind like a hole, a black yawning in space, and he searched desperately for something to think about. He thought then of Kshitij, and his mother, and his father, and the boy’s anger, the resentful line of his shoulders, and Sartaj began as if from a great distance to see a shape, a form. He sat on the sofa and thought about it. Outside the night came.

*

“ Alacktaka .”

The word hurt Sartaj’s ear. His heart was racing and he had no memory of picking up the phone.

“ Alacktaka .”

“What?”

“We found out for you what it is.” It was Shaila, and she was whispering with great excitement.

“Who is we?”

“Me and my friend Gisela Middlecourt. We went to the library yesterday afternoon.” Then there was the sound of a struggle. “Gisela, stop it.”

Sartaj waited for the giggling to subside, and then said, “Why are you whispering?”

“Listen,” Shaila said. “We’re sort of interested in things to paint lips with.”

“You are?”

“Of course we are,” Shaila said. “Be quiet and listen. So we wondered what alacktaka was. Gisela said we should look in the Britannica. It wasn’t there. Then we looked in the Oxford. No. Then we thought, all right, the Urdu-English dictionary, which is down the reference shelf, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Sartaj said, resting his head on his knees.

“Obviously you don’t. It wasn’t there. So then the Persian-English dictionary. Still no. Then we found the Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Ety, Ety-mologically and Phil-lolo-gically Arranged, by Sir Algernon Algernon-Williams, M.A., K.C.I.E., and Principal A. S. Bharve, published 1889.”

“Shaila, what’s the point?”

“You’re not grateful in the very least.”

“For what?”

“ Alacktaka. Page 232 of the Sanskrit-English dictionary. Alakta , rarely Alacktaka. Red juice or lac, obtained from the red resin of certain trees and from the cochineal’s red sap. Used by men and women to dye certain parts of their bodies, especially the soles of the feet and lips.” Now there was another bout of stifled laughter. “ R . 7.7. Mk. 4.15. Km. 5.34.”

“What’s that?”

“ Rig Veda 7.7. That’s a reference. Sister Carmina told us. Do you know what Km. is? No, I’ll tell you. Sister Carmina didn’t want to tell us. It’s the Kama Sutra , which she says isn’t in the library. But Gisela’s parents have a copy which they think is hidden away on top of their shelf. We looked it up. It’s there, Chapter 5. Advice to the young gentleman, man-about-town. After your morning bath you put on balms and alakta , before you go out. I’ll read it to you.”

“Shaila?”

“What?”

“Don’t.” Sartaj was staring at the top of his own head, which he could see in the mirror on the wall. He was wondering what Chetanbhai Ghanshyam Patel put on in the morning. What was his aftershave? Sartaj rubbed the skin on his wrist, under his kara , remembering again the heavy silkiness of the Rolex. Where was Chetanbhai’s copy of the Kama Sutra?

“Why are you quiet? Are you thinking? What are you thinking about?” Shaila chirped into Sartaj’s ear, very interested.

“Never mind what I’m thinking about,” Sartaj said. “You put that book back where you found it. And don’t read any more.” He could hear them laughing as he hung up.

*

Taking a deep breath, Sartaj plunged into the swamp. Above, the morning sky was low and dark, heavy with black clouds. The water came up fast to his thighs and then to his waist, and he clutched dizzily at the reeds to keep his balance. Things moved under his feet and the water lapped against his shirt, but finally he was able to take a step, and then another. The surface of the water was covered with a foamlike scum, and there were rags and drabbles of paper stuck to the reeds. After another step the thick green plants closed behind him and he could no longer see the buildings across the road. He was trying to make a circle but he could no longer tell where he was.