Akhil Sharma - An Obedient Father

Later that day I told myself that I had been slightly dazed from sleep and that this was why I had left her hand on my crotch. But my mind was adept at reducing its presence when my body did something shameful. I do not remember whether, before this, I had seen Anita in a sexual way. Probably I had, because I wondered what it would be like to have sex with nearlv everyone, even children I saw

in the schools I went to. But I am sure that, before the afternoon when Anita touched me while the election results were announced, she had held no special attraction for me. Anita was not a pretty girl. Her hair was dry and short, and she had a round, thick face and a large nose.

One afternoon, a day or two after Anita's hand first fell on my crotch, I played a game of tag with her in the courtyard of the house where we then lived. We laughed and bounced about as I dodged Anita's lunges. But as I swayed in front of her, I kept positioning myself so that when I did let Anita touch me, her hand might brush my penis. One of her dives to tag me finally pressed her open hand against my penis. I felt such a shock of pleasure that I became perfectly still. The mineral flavor of lust filled my mouth. Anita also stopped. She looked frightened. I immediately realized that I must not let Anita associate anything bad with touching me, so I laughed. Our game continued for a little while after that. Then I went off and masturbated.

The pleasure and relief of masturbation was so strong, I knew right away that I would repeat this game. My conscience did not bother me. I reasoned that Anita was not being physically harmed. I was also not damaging her emotionally, because the games hid my intentions. Nor did I wonder when or where the games might end. They would continue till they came to some quiet and natural conclusion.

Games of tag or hide-and-seek, during which I tried getting Anita to touch me, became common. We usually played these games on the roof of our house after I had returned from work. The sky might be fluttering among shades of purple, and the nearby roofs were always crowded. Sometimes people watched us play: Anita trying to tag me and me hopping, swaying, shouting challenges, just out of reach. I would become giddy from the excitement of waiting, and after a while became so distracted that I sometimes got tagged by mistake. Anita and I played till we lost our breath from laughing and running. Then, because I wouldn't let it be any other way, we stood a foot or so apart, trying to pat each other and jump away

before being tagged back. Occasionally Kusum, Rajesh, and Radha came upstairs and read or talked or played games, pausing every now and then to watch us. I was so confident of the game's camouflage that before all these people I touched Anita's thighs, the backs of her legs, and sometimes, rarely, her chest. The fact that I was able to do this before so many people confirmed that I was not doing anything wrong.

To win Anita's love, I bought her coloring books and taught her magic tricks. To make sure nobody wanted to examine the oddity of a grown man playing these children's games with such intensity, I tried winning over the rest of the family. I began taking everyone to dinner and a film once a week.

In the beginning I felt no shame for what I was doing, because I was not harming anyone. As time passed and the games continued and the touching became more and more obvious, shame entered me and, settling, strengthened. Every night I had dreams of humiliation, of people catching me with Anita. When I saw a rooster picking at a pile of dung, I wondered what he was eating. Around this time I also began imagining sucking the penises of powerful men.

But I understood the connection between what I did with Anita and my shame the way a lake understands the connection between the cloud above it and the reversed image bobbing on its waters. In my imagination I saw our games as discrete and static, events which occurred once and separately, not as part of a developing pattern. This sense of things meant excuses came after I had already started on something. For example, if Radha and the other children were downstairs, Anita and I would begin on the open roof and then move to the storage shed. Then the shed door would open, as if on its own, and we would walk in; then it closed by itself There was no difference between being in open sight and being inside the shed.

I remember the first time I put my hand between Anita's legs. We had moved into the shed and were standing less than a foot apart, tagging each other with our fingertips to try and make the other "it." I pretended to reach for Anita's chin and dropped my hand to

her crotch. Anita's underwear was moist with sweat. The surge of excitement was so great that instead of touching her and removing my hand, I just stopped. Anita stared into my stomach, and I looked at the thin rectangle of light surrounding the closed door of the shed. For years after all this, anything, a bathroom's moist doorknob, could suddenly make me feel her underwear almost soaked through and the smooth boniness beneath.

I had at one time promised myself that if Anita ever appeared to understand what I was doing, I would stop. Now she reached out and put her hand on my penis in the shed. When we were together, she thrust out her chest. But I reasoned that since I was not harming her physically, the only danger I posed was to her mind. And this was not my responsibility. How could I be held accountable for the way she interpreted what I was doing? There was not that much difference between what I did and a father who makes his children sing before guests at a party.

Instead of worrying about Anita, I tried to seal her mouth. I told her that I often thought about killing myself and that she was the only happiness in my life. I often complained with an air of fatigue about Radha's indifference and the dreary hard work I did to support us.

In all this, Anita seemed increasingly cheerful and outgoing. She no longer hid when strangers came to the house. Her schoolteachers remarked that she was showing more interest in her work. I taught her the basics of palm reading and she would offer to read any guest's hand. Anita now argued with her mother. Radha's and my neglect must have stunted Anita to such an extent that even my tainted attention was relatively benign.

I have no doubt that Anita loved me during this time. When I returned home from work, she came immediately to me and took away my shoes and asked if I wanted water. We always ate dinner sitting side by side. Sometimes I found myself feeling a strange, potent combination of fatherly and amorous affection for her. Occasionally we had dinner alone on the roof, and then, if this odd love was with me, the moon felt like a private light.

The whole family was happier than ever. A stranger would have been charmed by the ease with which we bantered, the rituals of picnics, movies, and contests of joke-telling and singing. Radha, who had withdrawn into religion, began to involve herself again in the children's lives and in our plans as a family Radha had a beautiful voice and she sang to us nearly every night.

Whatever was allowing this happiness stopped working once Anita began spending the night in my room. For a long time I had wanted this so that I could fondle her without the fear and hurry which I always felt in the shed. One evening I said to Anita, "Why don't you sleep in my room?" I said this during dinner, with the whole family around us. We had been joking and laughing and I wanted my idea to appear as if it had occurred spontaneously and was a product of the affection we were all showing each other at the moment. Anita looked surprised, but no one else appeared to notice.

During the two months Anita slept in my room, the first night was the only one she stayed on her cot the whole night. I placed her cot next to mine. That first night she came into my room and sat down at the edge of her cot. I shut the door. I would have locked it, but it could be bolted only from the outside. I was excited and nervous. When I turned around from the door, Anita was leaning forward with her shoulders curved in, looking like a bird in winter. My eagerness, which had been laced with doubt, turned to self-disgust. I gave Anita my little transistor radio and left the light on through the night.