June’s absence itched my eardrums, more than the shrill, piercing cacophony of the traffic underneath the flyover. It created a halo of silence around me — hell-bent on dismantling the ritual I was trying to inculcate: gorging on her freshly baked, dream-filled, sweet and pungent, crispy crepes of chatter. For long and never-ending quarter of an hour.Leaning against the railing of the flyover. Three days a week.
The sun had already set in the western horizon leaving the sky pale gray. The traffic at the Maniram Dewan Road underneath was slow, and people jostled against each other on the narrow pavements while hurrying home from work or buying vegetables and fish at the makeshift market. The constellation of street lights, lit up a while ago looked like an array of dazzling oranges hung from invisible posts against the backdrop.
I missed holding her hands, for that was the physical proximity I was subtly, in many, different unspoken ways, allowed on our first date in a chilled December morning.Quarter to seven, to be specific. By the narrow, secluded alley, that opened up to Anuradha bus stop. Before she started for school.
Holding her by the waist and drawing her closer to me became customary by time we came out of Sukreswar Park on our second date, at an un-worldly tropical summer noon; she, bunking her post-lunch classes at school, with a feigned urgency to go back home, and I, skipping one sleep-enticing, incomprehensible hour of philosophy lecture inthe New Arts Building. Sukreswar Park was a unanimous choice, unfaltering like the moment when our eyes had met for the first time at Guwahati Club bus stop and made us rise in love. Between sips of machine-made coffee served in paper-cups and munching local potato chips, she talked about her two younger brothers, her dying father and an indefatigably strict mother, and I, lied about three poems I was yet to write for her.She sounded concerned for her family. She said, she was studying hard to do well in the board exams, so that she could pursue her dream of becoming an ornithologist. She said, she had to become one, so that she could relieve her family of the burden of loans they were under, owing to her father’s cancer treatment.
Deep inside the Deepor Beel, the only freshwater lake in our city,sitting on a canoe that wavered on every stroke of the oar, I had my first insightful, all-important treatise on avifauna, given Jun’s overwhelming interest in birds and birdwatching. We had made ou relopement plan, on our third date, as we gazed at the charismatic view of the lake, the hillocks far beyond and the uncountable variety of birds, while living the tenets of love in that morning. All through the ride, I held her hand and sat close to her, putting my left arm around her shoulder. The softness of her torso felt like a more delightful treatise on my sensory and motor organs. Back home, in the evening, my elder brother got curious about the fragrance of a feminine deodorant emitting from my t-shirt. I had to cook up a long, logically progressing, believable tale of after-college revelry with friends to cover things up.
On the fourth date, amid a mistimed February rain, the following year, as we stood under the road-side tea-stall, on our way up the Sarania Hills toGandhi Mandap, shivering deep down our spines, with our cold and greasy, skin-drenched bodies, she was scared. Scared to think of an explanation to feed her mother’s ears with, for themistimed wetness she had subjected herself to! Completely soaked to the skin, and perhaps mildly titillated from the casual, seemingly unreasonable, infallibly innocent touches that we exchanged in those moments – nudges, shoulder-rubs, warmth of breath on each other’s bodies, etcetera — obvious ramifications of physical proximity inspired by lust-dipped Bollywood songs, (something like a Tip, tip barsapani) the lining of her white inner, the floral embroidery of her white bra and the edges of her nipples showed up their impressionable existence underneath her white shirt (the pocket of which proudly proclaimed St. Mary’s Convent).I had to cup her cheeks on my palms, look into her hazel eyes with an intense gaze, like our Salmans and Shahrukhs, defeat the dehydrating urge of kissing her baby pink lips, and assure her that I wouldn’t leave her in that embarrassing state.
“Even if it wasn’t an embarrassing state…I wouldn’t leave you,” whizzed past my mind. We had cemented our eternal longing for each other on that rain-drenched February afternoon, three days before Archies Gallery placed their Season of Love hoardings in front of their Silpukhuri outlet, the first one in our city. Saint Valentine was also on his way for his third annual visit to our city since he was inducted into the bandwagon of love-deities a few years ago. Ma Saraswati alone, was no longer burdened with pangs of the heart on her day — Vasant Panchami, which preceded the Saint’s illustrated birthday by a week or two.So, when the rain stopped and the sun gleamed again with its shiny, silvery demeanor, we kept roaming around the streets of Lachit Nagar, until we dried ourselves up considerably to head homewards. The following morning, I woke up to a familiar, uncomfortable wetness inside my underwear.
On the fifth date, we met at the flyover for the first time.
“We will now meet here, after my science tuitions,” she said and I agreed. Short, sweet, regular meets. Guaranteed meets! Three days a week! Every week!Better than those school-bunking, guilt-ridden dates at weird hours.She recited, in an impeccably good English pronunciation, the three poems I had written for her by then. I shuddered to think for a moment, how strenuously I needed to work to change my Eenglees to English and my sooz, to shoes. She said, she would record her recitation in an audio cassette for me. So that I could listen to my words in her voice whenever I wished.
Sharp at six, on 15th April, we met at the flyover again, on our sixth date. We had Uncle Chips and Thums Up, cut a pastry with a transparent plastic fifteen centimetre ruler, blew fifteen match-sticks to celebrate her fifteenth birthday.The first day of Bihu, our festival of spring, the harbinger of love, plenty and joy was also her birthday.The flyover was unusually crowded that day, as Zubeen was to perform at the Assam Engineering Institute ground in a few hours. People had started gathering well-ahead of time, to secure a clear view of the star singer. The effulgence of the surroundings offered no solitude and so we chose to take a short walk towards Krishna Nagar. On the way, I lit up a cigarette: my way of proclaiming that I wasn’t under eighteen anymore! She didn’t want to wait for three years. So, while on that slow, time-defying walk through the unknown lanes of Krishna Nagar, between sharing puffs from a Gold Flake Lights stick, she opened up her mind. She wanted to go to Jatinga for honeymoon, when we grew up and got married.Nobody goes to Jatinga for honeymoon! We could go to Shillong or Cherrapunji instead! Because she loved bird-watching, I agreed. Anything for our first our cigarette-kissery moment, so much like the glass-kissery moment of Amina and Nadir in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. She also taunted, I might want to grow a stubble by then, so that I looked a little matured.She reasoned, nobody would sell condoms to a clean-shaven, nineteen year old. And if we didn’t have protection, we might end up having kids at a time when we didn’t want to.
Later in that evening, after June had left for home, I took a bus to Ganeshguri. With an immaculate imitation of the confident swag and the uncanny emulation of the baritone voice of the man in the TV ad, I said “Moods please” to one of salesman in a pharmacy. The packet of ten cost me ninety bucks.
With all the exciting conversation we had on our sixth date, I was gradually inculcating another ritual, albeit, with a terrible self-censure: watching television soaps like Baywatch, The Bold and the Beautiful and Sex and the City and late night movies in English language channels. Game of Thrones was not even an embryo then! I also watched a couple of porn video tapes, but I didn’t quite like the oral stuff. The unusually long making-out sessions, in different inhuman,insane, ridiculously painstaking positions appeared to me utterly unrealistic too. But I did watch them as a studious mind does. All in anticipation of an if-we-needed-to-do-this moment.
The itching on my eardrums subsided, when she called out my name from behind.
“Come with me,” she said. I couldn’t read through her imperceptible hurry. Holding my hand…well, clasping it, kind of piercingly, she led me to the Maniram Dewan Road exit, down the spiral staircase. In a few minutes, we were at the gate of an Assam Type house behind the Assam Engineering Institute.
On our seventh date, in the dimly lit, aesthetically quiet, thickly curtained, tastefully decorated room of the Assam Type house, our kisses had all the fierce, passionate, unquenchable thirst that the best Hollywood flicks offered…the closest parallel, I could think of, was the deck scene from Titanic. The latest one I had watched. Our osculatory moves had transpired all national boundaries — French, German, English, American, Indian! In our first rendezvous with love-making, we then, out-moaned, out-paced and out-timed the actors in the porn video-tapes I had watched so far! Certain things in those videos were real!Like the hasty but skilful craft of undressing the partner.The unobtrusive perspiration that soaked our naked bodies up after the act, on that comfortably pleasant, breezy evening, was testimony to our feat. Our after-smiles, while we remained curled up in each other for about a quarter of an hour (that felt like infinity), expressed fulfilment.
“Six hundred and fifty bucks,” she said, as we put our dresses back on. And then she gave an itemised break-up of the amount:
“Two hundred for the room rent, one hundred and fifty for commuting. The rest is mine. For the first time, the pimp won’t be hanging out for his cut.”
