‘Why don’t you douche yourself?’
‘Don’t worry, sweetheart!’ she said patting my cheek. ‘I’m on the pill and I will be as long as I’m with you. It’s not much fun with a condom.’
I kept feeding the fire. We spent the night on the carpet. We made love three times.
Molly shook me awake. It was broad daylight. ‘Somebody’s banging on the back door,’ she said as she picked up her clothes.
‘It must be the servants. By God, I’ve overslept.’ As she ran to her bedroom I got into my dressing gown and hurried downstairs to let the servants in. ‘I went to bed very late,’ I said by way of explanation. ‘I’ll have my morning tea in bed, give memsahib hers in her room.’
I ran up and unmade my bed to make it look as if it had been slept in. I knocked on Molly’s door and shouted, ‘Morning tea. You want it in bed or will you join me?’
‘I’ll be out in a second.’ When she came out, she had washed her face and was full of pep, singing, ‘O what a lovely morning, O what a lovely day.’ She greeted the bearer and the cook. She beamed a mischievous smile at me and asked, ‘And how are we this morning? Slept well?’
‘Sleep of the just. Only fucked out.’
‘Mustn’t use bad language,’ she admonished, raising her index finger like a school marm. ‘Say thank you ma’am for a very pleasant evening. And what’s the drill for the day?’
‘I’ll be off to my office in an hour. The driver will bring the car back for you. His name is Jivan Ram. He’ll take you round the city or any place you want to visit; shopping centres, monuments, museums, picture galleries. He should pick me up from the office around six.’
‘You know what? I’d like to go with your cook to get things for dinner. This evening I’ll cook for you.’
I spent the day in the office. My mind was not on my work. I kept going over the night’s love-making with Molly Gomes. I kept yawning and wasn’t paying attention to what my staff had to say. At lunch break I ordered soup and a sandwich. I told Vimla Sharma not to put through any calls or let anyone in till I asked her to do so. I stretched out on the sofa and fell fast asleep. I had three hours of deep slumber. I washed my face and rang for tea. I was much refreshed and went through the correspondence, signed letters I had dictated. By six o’clock I had cleared my desk and was ready to go home.
Molly was upstairs. As I went up, I heard loud music being played on my stereo with Molly’s contralto in full flow. It was some kind of opera. It was not one of my cassettes, I had’nt got to the stage of appreciating operatic music. Molly heard my footsteps, toned down the music and greeted me from the top of the stairs. She bowed low and exclaimed, ‘Welcome home, Mr Kumar! I trust you had a good day at the office?’ She courtesied again and asked, ‘How do you like my new get up? I bought it this morning.’
She was dressed in a salwar-kameez with a bright red dupatta thrown about her shoulders and a red bindi on her forehead. ‘I thought instead of looking like a kaala Catholic memsahib from Goa, I should look like a Punjabi Hindu shrimati when I’m in the company of Shri Mohan Kumar.’
‘It looks very nice on you,’ I replied. ‘I expect anything you wear looks nice on you. You have the right kind of figure.’
‘O thank you, sir,’ she replied and again courtesied to me. ‘Your cook took me to some place called INA Market. Just about everything in the world was available. We examined lots of fish; rohu, salmon, pomfret, hilsa. Also lobsters, shrimps, prawns. I settled for crab. And I have cooked it with my own dainty hands—Goan style, with a little wine. Hope you’ll like it.’
I took off my coat, tie and shoes, slipped on a woollen dressing gown and slippers. I asked the bearer to light a fire in the sitting room and put out the drinks.
‘What else did you do besides shopping and cooking?’
‘Slept—three hours, may be four. You knocked the hell out of me last night.’
I was pleased to hear that. ‘Me too,’ I replied. ‘I slept on the office couch all afternoon.’
‘Learn a lesson from that, dear sir. Like anything else, fucking should also be done in moderation,’ she said. ‘In any case I have the curse on me. I’m relieved you did not make me pregnant. So no messing with me for the next four days—unless you want a messy job.’
I was relieved. I did not want her to think I could keep up the pace of the first night every day. ‘Okay,’ I replied. ‘A four-day enforced holiday from sex. You get over your period, I’ll replenish my stock of semen. Then we’ll regulate our love-making. Not too much, not too little.’
Molly had cooked a wonderful meal: the mulligatawny soup was as peppery and hot as it should be, crab as succulent as I had ever tasted it, caramel custard (which we Indians are stuck on because it was the dessert of the Raj days) tastier than that made in the States or in England. I complimented her. ‘You seem to be good at everything.’
‘What exactly do you mean by everything? We are only talking about food here,’ she said with a laugh.
‘By everything I mean everything—including you know what.’
‘I’m not dense. I also stitch my own clothes and I can mend a fuse. Living all by myself on a limited budget I have to do everything myself.’
We sat by the fire for a long time. She chatted away merrily about her life in Goa, her parents and brothers, nephews and nieces—all with Portuguese names: De Souza, De Mello, De Sa, Miranda, Almeida and so on. You would have thought Goa is entirely Portuguese Catholic. ‘As a matter of fact, Hindus outnumber us,’ she informed me. ‘Also much richer than us Catholics; millionaires like Salgaokar, Chowgule, Dempos and a dozen others are Hindus. Rich, rich, rich. Big, big houses but no style, no class, no fun. We enjoy life: drink, dance, sing, and eat well. They just make money, worship the tulsi plant and visit the Mangesh temple on holidays. Though they outnumber us we have many more cathedrals than they have temples. Christians attend mass more regularly than Hindus do puja in their temples. We look down on Hindus and don’t intermarry with them.’
‘So you look down on me and will never marry me because I’m a Hindu.’
‘Don’t be silly! I didn’t mean you! You are different.’ She leant across and kissed me on my nose.
Since Molly was out of action and we had to do more talking, I asked her casually, ‘Your name sounds more English than Goan or Portuguese. How’s that?
‘It’s a short name they gave me when I joined the nursery class of a convent run by Irish nuns. At birth I was christened with a name a yard long—Maria Manuela Francesca Jose de Piedade Philomena Gomes. Try saying that in one go and you’ll be out of breath. Molly is short and jolly. I like the name. Will also go nicely with yours if you decide to make an honest woman of me. Senora Molly Mohan Kumar. What do you think?’
I did not want to pursue that line of thought. Much as I was infatuated with Molly, our only bonding was based on lust, and lust loses its frenetic pace as soon as the partners slip wedding rings on each other’s fingers. Molly sensed my unease and said with a light laugh, ‘Not to worry, love, I have no desire to change my name from Gomes to Kumar.’
After a pause and a sip of Scotch I dared to ask her the question which had been uppermost in my mind: ‘How old were you, Molly, when you lost your virginity?’
She was, as usual, sitting on the carpet at my feet. She looked up, transfixed me with her large eyes and snapped, ‘Why do you want to know? If you tell me how and when you lost yours, I might tell you when I was deflowered and by whom.’
‘Okay,’ I said. I had no problems talking about my sex life, and if it made her less angry about having to talk about her own, so much the better.
It turned out to be a pleasant evening, as we recounted our past. I told her about Jessica Browne.
‘What did she look like?’ interrupted Molly.
‘Complexion much like yours, coffee and cream. A lot taller, athletic. She was a tennis champion. Full of beans …’
Molly interrupted me again. ‘Did she make the first move or you?�
��
‘She did. We’d been going out for some days, holding hands and kissing. One evening she asked me to have a drink in her digs. We’d had a drink each when I complimented her on her figure. “Want to see what I really look like?” she asked, and before I could say yes, took off all her clothes and stood stark naked before me. She slowly turned around to show me her behind as well. I had never seen a naked woman before. I tried to grab her in my arms but she pushed me back and said I couldn’t till she’d seen what I had hidden behind my clothes. I took off my clothes, and she gasped at the sight of my tool—she didn’t notice my flat stomach or my broad chest. Nothing, just this!’ I made a face and slapped my crotch. Molly giggled and patted my member lovingly. It was fully roused and straining against the fabric of my trousers.
‘Did you make love?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How many times?’
‘All through the night. Four times, I think, with short intervals. I was twenty, she was a year older. But enough! Now you tell me about your first time.’
‘Oh, all right,’ she relented. ‘I was fourteen, still at school. Of course, I knew the difference between boys and girls. I had many male cousins and even as children we used to show each other what we had between our thighs. The boys were great show offs. They’d show us how far they could pee. Once in a while they’d show us their erections and boast how they could “puncture” our pussies with them ramrods. I could not wait for that to happen—a dirty little girl I was, you see. But it wasn’t one of those boys who finally did it to me. It was my own uncle, my mother’s younger brother, a good twenty years older than me. Beast! Took advantage of poor, innocent me.’ She laughed as she said this, but it was a mirthless laugh. ‘Anyway, it happened one afternoon when he came to call on my parents and they were not at home. I was still in my school uniform—short frock which ended above my knees, barely covering my thighs. He kissed me, as he always did, but this time on my lips. He sat down on the sofa, pulled me onto his lap and started kissing the back of my neck and my ears. I could feel his prick getting stiff and large against my bum. He began to fondle my breasts, then squeeze them roughly. He was all out of breath. I knew he was up to no good and should have stopped him. But I was pretty worked up too by now and let him go on. He put me on the sofa, pushed my frock up and pulled my panties down roughly.
‘Then he fumbled with his trouser buttons, managed to get his fat dick out and shoved it in me, all in one go. He was an impatient man. It hurt and I screamed in agony. He pulled out after a few violent thrusts and spilt all his gooey stuff on my thighs. He made me promise I wouldn’t tell my parents, or they’d kill us both. Of course I didn’t tell them. Dirty little girl, as I told you. I didn’t even tell the padre at confession. I told nobody. You’re the first person.’
‘Couldn’t have been much fun,’ I said. ‘When did you first have sex that you enjoyed?’
‘Enough for one evening,’ she replied. ‘When you tell me about your other women, I’ll tell you of the men in my life.’
The fire died down. I went downstairs to urinate in the garden (I noticed I could still ‘pee’ quite far) and bolt the doors. I came up. Molly had her arms outstretched above her head and was yawning with her mouth wide open. I tickled her armpits and hoisted her off the ground. She squirmed with unconcealed delight and kicked her legs in the air. I took her to her room and dropped her on the bed. I kissed her on the lips and said, ‘Good night, and sleep well. Keep the door open, just in case I change my mind. I’ll keep mine open in case you get frightened being alone in the dark and want to cuddle up with me.’
That night we slept in our respective beds. I was up at my usual hour to let the servants in. I had my morning tea alone as Molly was not in the habit of taking bed tea, then read the papers. I was reading my office files when she came out. She sensed I did not want to be disturbed and quietly went back to her room.
It was odd that though I had no pressing desire to have sex, I wanted Molly to be around. I knew sooner or later people would begin to gossip about us. Molly was far from her home, so it would not affect her. Delhi was the capital city of gossipmongers and my new lady friend would provide plenty of fodder for my nosey friends. I decided to ignore them and take Molly out with me wherever I went. Whose life was it anyhow?
On some excuse or the other I started leaving the office an hour earlier than my usual time. I would send Jiwan Ram off and come home to take Molly out for a drive. The first evening she asked, ‘Aren’t you earlier then usual?’
‘I thought I’d show you some of our parks. They are at their best this time of the year—full of flowers. They’ll be gone in a few days.’
She got into her grey skirt and walking shoes. I took the route from India Gate through Rajpath upto Rashtrapati Bhavan, then the side road to the Ridge and on to Buddha Jayanti Park. There were lots of cars and scooters in the car park. As we entered the garden we were welcomed by masses of bright red salvias on either side of the pathway. Then there were beds of violets and cosmos. I did not know much about flowers, nor do I now, but I liked going to Buddha Jayanti because it was a large spread of undulating lawns and clusters of the same kind of flowers in every bed. It also had trees planted by visiting dignitaries with plaques bearing their names and dates of planting. We walked hand in hand down the leaf strewn paths that run from one end of the Ridge to the other through a forest of flame trees: the flame tree in flower is a sight for the gods.
Molly knew a lot more about the flowers and trees than I did and loved showing off her knowledge. After an hour of strolling around she turned to me and said, ‘I’m tired. I shouldn’t be doing so much walking when I have the curse on me. I feel damp and dirty inside. I need to change my pad.’ We went to the restaurant in the park. She went to the bathroom to clean herself and change her sanitary pad. By the time she came out the waiter had laid tea on the table. I had ordered plates of samosas and patties. I knew she had a healthy appetite.
I nibbled at a samosa; Molly polished off the rest. The sun went over the ridge and a deep shadow spread over the lawns and flower beds. People began to leave as it had also became chilly. ‘Time to go home,’ I told Molly as I paid the bill.
We got back to our car. ‘Are the other Delhi parks like this one?’ she asked as I took the homeward route.
‘Not as large but equally beautiful. Tomorrow I’ll show you the Lodhi Gardens. There are several beautiful monuments there.’
The next evening I again left office an hour earlier and took Molly to the Lodhi Gardens. I parked the car near the side entrance of the India International Centre and we entered the park through the turnpike facing the ancient mosque with a dome shaped exactly like a young woman’s bosom with a nipple on top. Bauhinias were in flower; choryzias were shedding their petals. This time I told her gently, ‘Molly, no holding hands here. There are likely to be people who recognize me and they’ll be curious to know who my lady friend is!’
‘Right, boss, no holding hands. Respectable distance will be maintained.’
We went across the park to the tomb of Mohammed Shah Tughlak, to the green house and then back, round Sikandar Lodhi’s fortified mausoleum and on to the India International Centre for tea. We stopped for a while by the lily pond. Six blue water lilies bloomed amidst a lot of flat brown leaves. Every one who came to the Centre first paid homage to the lilies. One chap who had the audacity to piss in the pond in broad daylight was promptly expelled and his membership cancelled.
I ordered tea and cakes and found a table for two. The place filled up. A few people raised their hands in greeting. A fellow I knew came up to our table. ‘Long time no see,’ he said eyeing Molly. I knew the bugger was more curious to know who she was than why I had not been around for so long. I introduced her. ‘This is Dr Gomes. She’s on a short visit to Delhi.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Molly taking his hand.
‘The pleasure is entirely mine,’ said the nosey bastard. ‘And where have you com
e from?’
Before she could answer, I interjected, ‘Doctor Gomes is from Bombay. She’s staying with friends in Delhi.’ The fellow wouldn’t move, so I decided to be rude and shake him off. ‘See you sometime,’ I said and turned to Molly.
He took the hint and returned to his table.
Back in the car, Molly said to me: ‘You’re as straight faced a liar as I’ve ever met. Dr Gomes from Bombay staying with friends in Delhi! Indeed! Only I happen to be Molly, the masseuse from Goa, staying with Mohan Kumar who wants a new woman to fuck every two days.’
‘Not days but months,’ I said leaning across and kissing her on the ear. ‘And you perhaps for many years. You are just the kind of woman I’ve been looking for.’
‘Thanks a million.’
She switched on the car stereo. I had cassettes of both Eastern and Western music. She put on Beethoven’s Emperor concerto at full blast. For a change she did not want to talk but listen in silence and perhaps ponder over what she had let herself in for. I left her to her thoughts. Perhaps I had hurt her feelings by lying about her. What else could I have done? I would try to explain it to her later.
When we reached home she ran up the stairs ahead of me and went straight to the kitchen to see how the dinner was coming. With the Mug cook’s broken Bengali-English and her more than broken Hindi, they managed to say a lot to each other. She even managed a dialogue with the bearer in the style of the Ango-Indian memsahibs of Hindi films. In two days she had won the hearts of my servants. And mine.
She joined me at the fireside. I poured out drinks. ‘How did you like Lodhi Gardens?’ I asked to get her talking again.
‘Beautiful! We don’t have anything like it in Goa. No parks, only old Portuguese forts and cathedrals,’ she said screwing up her face. ‘But we have beautiful beaches—dozens of them, and a clean, warm sea. You can lie on the sand soaking in the sun. That’s what most foreigners come to Goa for. Our spoilsport police don’t allow them to expose themselves in public, so they lie stark naked on the hotel lawns, on their backs and then on their stomachs, roasting themselves like we roast chapatties. Their white skins can’t take too much sun, so they smear all kinds of lotions to turn brown without getting sunburnt. You can tell who has exposed himself or herself completely and who hasn’t. Those who have, turn brown all over; those who covered their boobs and pubes have bands of pale flesh on their breasts and bums. They look funny, like zebras,’ she laughed. ‘You don’t get much sun in your house, only in the garden. You should do some sun-bathing. It’s very good for your health.’
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