by Nillu Nasser
Once dry, she slipped on a floor-length nightdress solely for the purpose of darting across the corridor to her room whilst preserving her modesty. She had always been a prude, more so since her accident.
A shuffle outside the door alerted her to her mother’s presence. Nowadays her father avoided taking the stairs more than once a day. Age had wreaked havoc with his knees. Jaya sighed. She didn’t have time to lurk in the bathroom. The party started in less than an hour. She unlocked the door and came face to face with her mother.
“Food was good today, Jaya. Your father enjoyed it. Next time boil the potatoes a little longer and it will be perfect.” There was always an adjustment to be made to please her mother. Sometimes Jaya felt the criticisms stemmed merely from a lack of conversation, a way to fill awkward silences. “You are off gallivanting today, also?”
Jaya nodded, squeezing around the older woman in the cramped corridor. “An after-party. I must get dressed, otherwise I’ll be late.” She made her escape, disappearing into her bedroom. Over her shoulder came her mother’s parting shot.
“Ruhi’s parties are always so wonderful. Will there be any real stars at your party?”
Exasperation overcame Jaya. She had been too generous. However she might try to pretend to herself, her mother’s wounding of her occurred so often, it could not be accidental. She twisted to face the older woman, pinning her with her gaze, intent on unveiling her true colours. “Do you always have to be so cutting? What did I ever do to you?”
Her mother lifted a painted eyebrow in surprise. “You took my youth,” she said simply. “And you never left.”
Tears clogged Jaya’s throat. She refused to allow them to surface. “You think you gave the best years of your life to me?”
“Yes.” Her mother drew herself up to her full height, seeking to intimidate. This time she would not succeed.
“Funny, that, because I feel the same.”
“How dare you! A daughter respects her elders.”
“Because elders are usually kind and wise. I don’t see any of that in you.” Jaya spat the words, determined that they found their target. She wanted her mother to understand that anything she had given, she gave because she wanted to, not because it had been demanded of her. “I’m a good daughter. Not because of you, but because of me. Because of who I am. I stay here not for you, Maa, but for Papa, and what it would do to this family if I left.”
Her mother unleashed a bitter laugh that reverberated between the walls. Downstairs, her father had turned off the television. She imagined him in the stairwell, straining to listen. “Oh, you think he’s a saint? Well, you don’t know him very well then, do you?”
This was why she didn’t battle her mother. No good ever came of it, no wins to buoy her. It remained a joyless struggle. “Whatever you say, Maa. Like I said, I’m late. Don’t wait up for me.”
“I won’t.”
Jaya turned on her heel and shut her bedroom door, quietly, with infinite control despite the raging sea of her emotions. She leant against it, coaxing her breath to return to a normal pace. Eventually, she dressed for the party.
Firoz greeted her with a warm hug. Jaya sank into his arms and breathed deeply of the incense burning behind him.
“I wasn’t sure you were going to come. We’re halfway through already,” he said, helping her with her bag. She had changed out of the lime salwar kameez she had worn to the party at Tara, but her make-up was heavier than she usually would have worn to paint.
“I left as soon as I could,” said Jaya. She had left as soon as possible without offending, keen to avoid a brooding Ravi drinking in the corner as if on a mission to blot out his evening. She couldn’t be sure, but from across the room his expression had seemed jeering when it was directed at her.
Jaya shook her head to dispel the memory. It soothed her to be in the bright light of the studio after the dark confines of the theatre, where the smell of wine and spirits filled the room. Here, the incense cleansed the air. She was not compelled to speak to strangers and silence was welcome. Firoz had already set up a workstation for her.
She kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” He floated over to a student, stretching out his arms in front and cracking his knuckles as he went.
Already Jaya felt better. She settled herself on a stool and ran her hand over the blank canvas. Then she picked up her palette and squeezed out some colours from the tubes stacked neatly at her easel. The brush felt at home in her grip and soon she was lost in her creation, light strokes of her brush already creating something new. Art as therapy. She wanted to paint her own future. Purples and greens and yellows found a home together on the page, and Jaya discovered her evolving spirit there. She didn’t want to suffocate under the burden of familial duty and male whims. There, in that moment of clarity, she remembered Ruhi’s words about love, and decided that love didn’t have to be sacrificial. It could be strong and demanding. She could take. Forty-five minutes later, when Jaya studied her canvas, and the creation that had intuitively emerged under the guidance of her hand, she recognised a self-portrait, beautiful in its hard edges and strong bright colours. To hell with duty. It was her turn.
When class was over and she did not hurry home, Firoz questioned why. He sat cross-legged on the floor, his bare feet dirty, and patted the space next to him. Jaya joined him, not minding when her skirt rode up to reveal a flash of her patchy skin. She would find no judgement here.
“Your parents won’t be waiting for you, Jaya?” Firoz stretched to one side until his upper body made a crescent, mirroring the moon outside.
“They can wait. It’s been a long day I am too tired to move anyway,” said Jaya, leaning into her friend.
“Let me hail you a rickshaw,” said Firoz. “You look exhausted.”
“I’m enjoying your haven. Just a few more minutes.”
“I like having you here, you know that. There’s no rush.” Once, Firoz owned a small apartment. Now, he lived in his curtainless studio, sleeping on a tuck away mattress, the stars twinkling through the vast windows. The smell of the paints comforted him, she knew. His nights here were dreamless, wholesome. His studio felt more like home to him than his apartment ever had.
Jaya glanced at her friend, pensive. “I get now why Ravi showered me with attention. He could see me coming. I think he saw me as someone vulnerable. Someone left on the shelf, who might sleep with him. I mean—” Sarcasm coloured her voice. “I’m lucky to be thrown scraps, right? Ravi is younger, handsome...”
Firoz harrumphed, his brow creased in disagreement. “Didn’t sound handsome to me. Especially that dress sense. A mustard shirt? Not that I can talk.” He indicated to his luminous yoga pants.
Jaya laughed.
“Besides, you can’t know what his intentions were. Sounds to me like drink might turn the prince into a frog.”
“You don’t need to spare my feelings, but I love you for it.” Jaya stood to fetch them a cushion each from the cupboard where Firoz kept his overnight belongings. Exhaustion was less a creeping problem than a crashing wave. She threw Firoz a cushion and collapsed onto one herself. “Do you ever wonder if you’d be happier in a relationship? I was reading the other day about how unmarried men and women have shorter lives. They have worse mental and physical health.” She shrugged. “It makes me sad. It seems so unfair.”
Firoz settled himself on the cushion, a square of emerald and crocus yellow. “You know me, I’ve never had time for generalisations. We all need interaction but I enjoy my solitude. I take care, eat healthily, nourish my spirit with art and yoga. I have dear friendships.” His eyes twinkled at her. “What more does a person need?”
“Unconditional love?”
“Is there any such thing?
“I don’t know.” Jaya paused. “I fought with my mother tonight.”
“It’s always fireworks with you two.”
“It’s going to be awkward going home.”
“She�
��ll be asleep, I expect. You can stay if you like. I can make us some fresh puri in the morning.” He gestured towards his electric stove.
Jaya smiled. “No thanks. I’d never leave.” Firoz’s world view refreshed her in its simplicity. He wore his identity like a flag for all to see. He made no excuses for who he was. Neither did he demand or offer respect based on age, status or gender. “It’s always like tiptoeing around a bed of nails with her. She’s not like that with everyone. Only with me.”
“I love you, Jaya,” said Firoz, “but you know, it’s almost impossible to live up to parental or romantic ideals.”
“So it’s my fault, then? I disappointed her?”
“No. Maybe she disappointed herself, and simply tried to transfer her expectations to you. It’s your choice whether to accept them. It’s almost certainly too late for your mother to change, but you, you can change everything. You just have to want to.”
Chapter 28
Soraya told him, “Tomorrow is the day. The day I am free, and you are also.”
Akash had longed for his freedom, but now it had arrived, he wished instead to rewind time. It was so final. This woman didn’t belong to him. She was majestic, still in flight. How brightly she lived. He could not bear to see her wings clipped, but she did not flinch from the plans she had laid out, the ones she had been considering even before he reappeared in her life. Soraya embodied glory in her surrender. Her courage and her determination to protect Arjun shamed him. She wanted nothing from Akash, except perhaps comfort. She understood the loneliness that arrived like an unwelcome guest in the final throes before death, and she had chosen Akash as her buffer. Bulbous sorrow grew at his core at the unfairness. It looped around him, lending heaviness to his limbs. He fought to keep his sorrow prisoner, unwilling to burden her with its weight.
Sometimes he caught her fleeting glances underneath thinning eyelashes, assessing him, wondering if he would carry out his side of the bargain, stay at her side until she was gone. It pained him that she didn’t have full trust in him, although she was right. His mind never strayed more than a step from Jaya despite the final journey of the mother of his child. How eager humans were to project themselves into the future without perceiving the gifts of the present. His sojourn with Soraya had been a blessing not only for her, but for him: to collect his thoughts, plan his way back into Jaya’s life, a place of safety where his body and mind could grow stronger, a chance to get to know his son and say goodbye to a woman he had loved.
She knocked on his door at eight in the evening, having spent the day with her family. He recognised the gentle rap of her knuckles, muffled by the heavy wood. She entered, her face a pale moon against the indigo of her sari.
“I’ve said my goodbyes. Leela is asleep, and Muna is tired.” Her voice caught in her throat, a stumble that she sought to hide. “Arjun is at the restaurant. He won’t be back until the early hours.” Her distress played out in gentle waves across her face that she tried to control.
He alone knew the secret she carried with her and as a result, he felt even more bonded to her. Akash held out his arms. “Tell me what I can do.”
“Hold me.”
He folded her into his arms and it was more than an embrace between friends. He could tell, could feel in the chemistry between them, the stillness of the air, the slow sensual movements she was making against him that she wanted more. He responded, first hesitantly, catching her lip between his, sucking gently, wondering all the while if this was a betrayal of Jaya. He wasn’t sure. It felt like a goodbye. Like gratitude for the dying woman’s belief in him, for the gift of their son.
He moved to the window to draw the heavy curtains. They blocked out the fading light and a new world opened up inside the Red Room. He returned to Soraya and they melted into each other. He poured all his gratitude and love for her into his touches. Farewell, brave woman, his mind called out.
After countless years without touch, his movements felt unpractised. He eased her onto the bed, folded back the bedding and drew it over her with infinite care. Her bones were fragile birds underneath his calloused fingers. They tangled in each other’s limbs, but Soraya grew frustrated with her sari. The material stretched out, a barrier to the human contact she needed.
She caught his face in her clammy hands. “You don’t have to do this for me.”
They both needed to say goodbye. “I want to.”
She sat up, a gradual lift to ninety degrees, his hand in the crook of her back to aid her. She stood and walked to the door, smoothing her hair, and for a moment he thought she was going to leave.
Perhaps that would be for the best. He thought of Jaya. He thought of Soraya’s physical weakness. Are you even strong enough for this?
She locked the door and turned to face him. The red tones of the room brought a pinkness to her cheeks that relieved his worry. Her expression was solemn. Her eyes pierced him, candid and unrelenting. She flicked the light switch off.
Off came her sandals. Light spooled through a gap in the drapes and found her silhouette. Her movements jerked. She was not without pain. He opened his mouth to stop this madness then heard her take a deep breath, sensed rather than saw her smile in the shadows. He froze, entranced, while she unpinned her sari at the shoulder. His memory of Soraya’s naked form was confined to twenty years ago.
“Hold this,” she said, handing him the corner of the fabric.
Akash held the silken threads between his trembling thumb and forefinger. Soraya spun in a circle, her arms aloft like a dancer. The garment unravelled, and fell in deep folds at her feet. She stood without fear in her blouse and petticoat, her skin gleaming in the half-light. The air-conditioning left a trail of goosebumps along her skin. He took her into his arms and covered them both with a sheet.
“You’re beautiful.” He meant it, though her fragility and pale skin struck him again.
“One last show of strength.” A hint of bitterness tinged her words.
The words of comfort which came to him in that moment rang untrue, and he knew how she loathed pretence. Instead of responding, he pulled her towards him, banished thoughts of Jaya and comforted her with his body. He took all the dreams of Soraya, which had sustained him on the streets, and poured them into loving her. No one existed apart from the two of them. It had been so long since he‘d made love to a woman that his gratitude overwhelmed him. Slowly, his nerves dissipated and he immersed himself in what Soraya offered. Not youthful Soraya, but this broken one.
She returned the pressure of his lips, and waited patiently as he fumbled with the hooks of her front-fastening blouse.
Akash didn’t need to know what this was anymore, whether it was distraction from what lay ahead, a goodbye, or an honouring of a memory. He exiled logic and embraced instinct and intuition. He dipped his head to trace his lips across the mounds of Soraya’s breasts, still encased in a nude lace bra.
Emboldened, he discarded his borrowed clothes and pushed them onto the floor. He pulled her closer and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Akash returned her touch, his fingers straying to the waistband of her petticoat. With a start, he recognised his own arousal. It had been so long since he had felt this way. Their act resurrected an ancient part of Akash, needs he had buried long ago.
He drank in Soraya’s smell, the texture of her hair, coarser than he remembered. Her mouth parted and he tasted her, taking care not to crush her with the weight of his body. He took it slowly, and it felt like an act of worship rather than a carnal desire. She gave herself to him freely. When her hands ventured between his legs to cup him, he could not hold back. He entered her, concentration on his face. The rhythm they found was not flawless but it did not matter. She threw her head back as he moved, her skin like paper, pushing against him, urging him to go deeper. Hot, salty tears rolled down his face.
They came to each other as different people this time, no longer as lovers but as if this represented a parting between lifelong friends. Youthful passion had been replace
d by the hurts and uncertainties of life, and a complex cocktail of emotions coloured their joining: anguish, regret, love and acceptance.
When it was over, the room grew large again and he honed in once more to the hum of the air-conditioning and dusk approaching. He ran a hand over his face to wipe away the trace of his tears and passed her a towel. They lay side by side, fingers entwined. Her feet were cold on his calves and he bent to take them in his hands one by one and enclose them in the heat of his palms.
After a few minutes they slept, skin against skin. Soraya fell asleep first, peacefully, without struggle. Eventually, Akash relinquished himself to shadowy nightmares, haunted by the knowledge of the knife hidden beneath her pillow, her gift to herself from the market: a gift of release.
When she woke, her hair dishevelled, and found him watching her, Soraya smiled, then addressed him, her almond eyes pools of darkness beside him. “It is time.”
Soraya changed into a simple salwar kameez in yellow, the colour of hope. Then she returned to him. Dawn came, basking the room in a golden glow, bringing with it the sound of springtime birds at the window. Akash didn’t know how long he had stayed there with Soraya, watching the first blush of light and listening to the birds as she faded away.
After some time, the mother of his son, one of the only people he had truly loved, was still. He passed a hand over her eyes to close them. He had seen her death as she’d willed it: a release, a means for her to retain her dignity and escape her suffering, heroic even. But in the cold light of day, it didn’t feel that way. There was a savagery to it he couldn’t escape.
A curtain of grief descended over him and he cried out in his selfishness, beaten by the knowledge that she was gone. He tightened his grip on her body, thinking back to a few hours previously when she had arched in his arms, willing himself not to forget the texture of her skin, the sound of her voice, the way she felt in his arms. I will never be able to share this grief with you, Jaya.