One day later.
Muggy evening. Intermittent drizzles. Our second encounter. Café Mondegar. Bombay.
Your feet graze against mine under the table. The glutinous jukebox makes music out of coins. The waiter places a six-glass pitcher of beer between us. You pour a glass each and move the pitcher aside. You spread regions of your life across the mug-ringed table. Your fingers serve as a compass, guiding me through twists and turns.
Until you reach an intersection that brings us back to the night before.
‘I was surprised. I didn’t expect it to lead to where it did,’ you say.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ I reply in between sips of beer.
‘Well, I’m not the young buck I used to be.’
‘When was the last time you were spontaneous like that?’
‘A while ago. I was in New York. She must have been a few years younger than you.’
‘How old would that make her?’
‘She must have been about twenty-eight, I guess.’
‘I turned twenty-three three weeks ago.’
Pause.
For a while I debated whether to ask about your age. I tried to decipher from the clues I’d been given; the salt-and-pepper of your beard and your hair, the lines across your brow, but I couldn’t hazard a guess. Perhaps it was better not to know.
‘I’m fifty-three,’ you say.
‘So what happened with the girl in New York? Why didn’t it work out?’
‘She couldn’t get over the difference in age. She let me go.’
Pause.
The waiter sets a plate of beef chilly fry on the table, followed by a plate of stuffed mushrooms.
‘It’s good to be in a place where not too many people know me,’ you say.
(I’m flummoxed by that little piece of dialogue. I didn’t know then who you were. Later I’d understand. Then I just saw you as exceedingly interesting and eminently fuckable. I didn’t know of your fame. I knew you had talent. I’d seen your exhibition months ago in Delhi. Those stunning black-and-white photographs you’d taken when you were even younger than I am now. That self-portrait in a room you’d once called home, your eyes all droopy from a trippy, purple-hazed night. The cupboard behind you is unlocked, but your body is open and inviting. You’re looking into the lens inside-out and outside-in. I remember looking for you in each image but you seemed elusive. Evasive. Nomadic. Wanderlusting between spaces, observing, living on the fringe between the world of the living and the realm of the bystander, peeping through a hole, as it were, with wonder and surprise, and capturing in perfect compositions the miracle of the familiar, the ordinary.)
We finish our beer. It’s time to leave. We hail a cab. I should have taken one myself, and headed to my home at the other end of the city, but I step into your cab instinctively. It doesn’t strike you as odd. We sit in silence, smothered by the monsoon breeze. You light a cigarette. I reach for your left hand.
Sparks.
‘What are you thinking?’ I ask, expecting some romantic retort.
‘I’m thinking about how I need to take a piss!’
We’re now in your room. You take your much-awaited piss. I sit on the edge of that beautiful, four-poster bed and await your next move. You walk past me, take off your shirt and dive into bed. I’m in media res. I’d slipped my sandals off and was about to lie down beside you when I heard your half-order, half-plea.
‘Massage.’
With that single word you tow the line between one-night stand and lover. It’s more than I’m looking to provide.
Fucking is fucking, there’s something definite about it; the certainty of destination. Fucking depends on the emergency of lust. A massage, on the other hand, demands a profound understanding of the body. You want more than a quick run-through of the connections between limb and torso and muscle and bone. You want more than precision. You seek the kind of touch that can brand itself permanently in some way. The sort of touch your muscles will remember.
I am not prepared for this.
I fake ignorance.
‘It isn’t my forte,’ I lie.
‘I’ll instruct you.’
You direct every tiny move like a backseat driver. You tell me where to pause, where to punctuate, and how; where to stress and where to glide over; where to linger and where to stay, and for how long.
I follow each instruction. As I knead your flesh, I am inspired by it. Your back is smooth and clear, the skin soft yet taut, betraying your age. With each fresh contact I find myself growing moist. I want to focus on the pathways, which, if pressed precisely, will relax, but I’m distracted by the rush of blood coursing through your body, inflecting the undercurrents of my bloodstream.
You drift into a genre of half-baked sleep.
I take liberties with your body. Lips replace fingers. I kiss all your delicate by-lanes, your short cuts, the highway that is your spine, and the nape of your neck. I peck at your ear lobe and lick the edges with the softness I otherwise reserve for wild strawberries.
You stir. Turn over. I press my lips against your lips and return to your ear lobe. I’m crouched over your body. I can feel the stir of your flesh rising to greet me.
‘I have to go. It’s late. I shouldn’t even be here,’ I say.
‘You can’t get me all turned on like this and then threaten to leave.’
So I stay until I’ve satisfied myself. Until you’ve ravished me with the bulk of your lust.
‘Spend the night with me,’ you say.
‘I wish I could. But you leave tomorrow. I’d rather we don’t get attached.’
‘Let me drop you half-way then.’
You do, until the Peddar Road junction. You ask the cabbie how much the fare would be and pay him in advance.
Five days later.
Delhi Airport. Baggage claim. Failed attempts to quieten my brain.
Why am I here? Is there any wisdom to this trip? What sense in prolonging a goodbye, delaying it, deferring it?
You were supposed to be a one-night stand. A bookmark. A ten-line poem in my grand anthology of lovers.
But you had more sinister designs.
I had every intention of relegating you to memory. In fact, just before what should have been our final kiss in that black-and-yellow taxi in Mumbai, I’d looked you in the eyes, smiled and asked if you’d remember me after the spell had been lifted.
I cannot remember your reply. But I suppose I’m implicated too for I messaged you the next day, on an impulse, saying, ‘I remember you already.’
You responded with a phone call.
‘Come to Delhi!’ you said.
‘I will, when I find the time. I have other loose ends I need to tie up there in any case.’
‘So why not come now?’
‘I’m not exactly good on funds at the moment. First job. First month. Still to receive my first cheque.’
Pause.
‘Won’t you be back in Bombay for a day or two in another two weeks? Some opening or the other?’ I say.
‘Yes, but that’ll be too touch and go. We won’t have the luxury of time.’
Pause.
‘What if I subsidise your fare?’ you petition.
‘I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. Once bitten twice shy, like they say.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, my ex once paid for a ticket for me to visit him, and after we broke up, he wanted his money back.’
‘I wouldn’t do such a thing.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
‘Maybe you can do something in exchange. Maybe you can write about my work.’
‘Go on.’
‘You said you like it, maybe you can write to me and tell me why.’
‘That seems doable.’
‘How soon can you get here?’
‘This weekend? I can leave the office early on Friday and take a flight.’
‘Let me speak to my agent.’
Your next message contained a PNR.
Absurd. Flying out to see someone I’d only fucked twice.
‘Do you remember anything about our first night?’ I asked in reply to your email.
‘It’s all a blur. Maybe that’s why I’m asking you to come.’
Delhi Airport. Baggage in hand, I stand along the edge of the road, waiting for you to pick me up. I feel like one of Bukowski’s women. Fortunately, you’re much better looking and not half as alcoholic.
You swing by in your Gypsy. You’re dressed in a dark blue cotton shirt. You look gorgeous, the salt and pepper of your beard contrasts against the deep hue. I dump my bag in the backseat and get in. You hit the accelerator and we’re in motion. It’s an old car. You’ve had it forever, I can tell. It makes a grumpy sound now and then, but is steady nonetheless. I cannot imagine you in any other kind of car. I notice for the first time this habit you have of occasionally stroking your beard when you’re driving.
‘Welcome to Delhi,’ you say when we reach the first red light and you follow it with a quick kiss. My body blushes.
I remember why I came.
A year later.
Foggy evening. My third visit. Single malt.
The details escape me. I was inebriated. But at some point you tell me about your relationships with other women, your travel companions with whom you shared a bed without feeling the urge to indulge. It suddenly strikes me that I’m a complete aberration to your narrative of lovers past.
‘Why was it different with me? You slept with me the first night we met,’ I reminded you.
‘I was very attracted to you. Maybe I shouldn’t have,’ you said.
‘You mean you regret it?’
‘I didn’t say I regret it. Just that it was probably not the right thing to do.’
You were supposed to be a one-night stand, a bookmark, a ten-line poem in my grand anthology of lovers.
But you refused to play the part. You weren’t interested in temporary delights. You took charge and steered us into unchartered waters. Despite the distance between us, despite our separate lives, despite our individual penchant for solitude, we stumbled into this black hole, this point of no return, this movement from lust to love, from body to being.