We need to breathe

She told me this story when we were walking by a lake. It was not a special lake – just a lot of dull water in a hole. We were not holding hands and I thought that made the walk more intimate. If I had taken her hand in mine, it’d have had a sweaty, pulpy texture because we’d been walking for a long time and it was hot.

She said: “When I was younger, I once stepped on a crab while hiking. We were walking through a forest – it was one of those forests within the city, you know, a protected park thing, but really once you were inside it, it was a forest and the city didn’t matter. We’d been walking for a while and it was raining – a thin, fine rain that cleans you but doesn’t soak you. I had a blue rain-jacket on and when I bit into its collar, it tasted of tired plastic. We were climbing up a small pathway and there were these crabs scuttling along the ground in front of us. They were small and brown and had a polished look about them. I took great care not to step on them.

A First

My first story to be published by someone other than myself.

www.bullmensfiction.com/STORIES10/Nair.html

God

Sachin Tendulkar savours reaching his double century (c) Associated Press

Sachin Tendulkar savours reaching his double century

What can you say? What can you really say?

The Night We Saw Shehenshah

This is what I remember about that night:

I was twelve and lived in a house that had one bedroom and one living room; a narrow passage connecting the two which I would string with the staccato rhythm of my growing legs while furiously reading for some upcoming exam; a kitchen that was impossibly small but allowed for mock-sparring with a sibling (one point for every jab that lands, no knock-outs allowed); and a bathroom and a toilet facing off with each other, not backing down, separated by a conciliatory wash-basin that in my memory is powder blue ceramic but might have been porcelain white. Or grey.

Swimming Lessons

What she remembers from when she was ten years old, when she went to learn swimming, is this.

The pool was a murky green shade, as if the water had been filtered through a moss-sieve. Five feet deep at one end and twenty two feet at the other. Was the slope gradual or were there steps? The idea of steps under water flashed an unbidden image of a giant shark wearing swimming trunks, walking on its tail, carefully making its way across the length of the pool.  She loved water and she couldn’t wait to learn swimming.

Peace-keeping

He was a small boy but a strong boy, was Velu.  When he was eight, his arms were cords of steel and his fingers had the grips of ancient hooks. He climbed trees as if they were vertical roads and he split open coconuts with his hands (and sometimes cracked them with his teeth). He was a strong boy, was Velu.

His mind was a million tiny fireflies and they buzzed and flitted about with easy electricity. And yet, because they were in his head, and you couldn’t see into his head, even when it was dark, they didn’t know his head was full of fire-flies. So they told him he better get ready to join the army because that’s where it was at, for him. After all, not everybody could split coconuts with their hands.

Security

Her preferred post-coital activity is to pant, to suck in air with urgent greed. He wonders whether her mouth is open with her tongue hanging out. But he is glad to not have to know what she looks like right now – they only make love in the dark. Thankfully, she’s not one for cuddling.

He rolls over to his end, reaches out for the more traditional dessert, a cigarette. He does not un-roll back fully, leaving a little more space between them than when he started.

The freshly created strip of bedding between them is the border fence that protects him. This column of thick, white, springy comfort is what keeps this marriage secure.

War

She burps, a burp full of longing and satisfaction, then regards me with an un-shy grin and says, ‘Excuse my French’. She is wearing shades that blend in with the smooth, dark skin of her face and if I didn’t know better, I’d think that the shades are her eyes, they are so smooth and black and large and all-seeing.

She leans across the table and tells me a story from her childhood. When she was twelve, she stubbed her little toe hard against the iron leg of a table while pacing around in the dark. She stumbled into the living room where her mother and sister were watching television. She collapsed into a lonely chair and told them about the injury and how it was hurting badly and she moaned softly. Her mother continued to watch her show and then turned to her sister and said, ‘Looks like she’s really been hurt.’ Her sister, ten years old then and stuffed indiscriminately with baby fat, replied, ‘Yes, it does appear so.’ They went back to the show which was about a melodramatic family with the mother dying of ovarian cancer. The son had just told the father that he was gay and they had hugged. She whispers to me, ‘It was as if I was not in the room. It was as if they were conscious of my pain but not of me.’

I look at her in cool contemplation. I tell her that wars are known to have been fought, floods are known to have swept entire cities under water. Once, an elephant contracted a sudden bolt of insanity in the streets of Ernakulam and trampled three children under her feet before she was shot to death. It took them seven bullets to bring her down.

Her full-lipped mouth regards me with a bitter, mirthless smile. She slips one shoe off, slides her chair back, rocks it on to its two hind legs with precise precariousness and lifts her left foot on to the table. Her little toe is grotesque to behold — crooked, misshapen, a mangled lump of brown flesh and white bone.

‘This, my love, is what war looks like’.

You Don’t Take Names

You have turned forty now and that forces you to turn around and go back and see what slipped through the gaps between years.

You go back to the city — his city. You rent an apartment for a month that is a five minute walk from where he used to live. With you. The apartment is functional but the view is terrible. There is a door-man who appears scruffy and uninterested but when you walked by him last night on your way in, he leaned towards you to wish you good night and you were surprised to find that his breath smelled like how your tooth-paste tastes.  

Twin Moons

Stroman first saw the moons when he took Lisa’s blouse off. He did not call them moons when he first saw them; they were merely identical crescent-shaped crimson discolorations at the tops of each of her breasts. He was distracted by their dark lustre — enough to stop wanting to furnish her body with respectful kisses like he intended to – and called Lisa’s attention to them. She stood up from the bed, turned to the oblong, full-length mirror by its side and in the half light of the fading summer day peered at these new scars.

***

It all began with love as these things usually do. Puppy love, perhaps, but embellished with a carnal flavour. These polarities are not irreconcilable as anyone who has fallen in love at the age of twenty or under will tell you. Stroman was healthy, handsome and wholly gullible. Lisa was pretty, voluptuous and entirely lustful. Apart from a minor digression from convention — Lisa was an inch taller than Stroman — theirs was a match fused with abundant reserves of natural potential. They kissed on their second date, went further and farther on the fifth. When opportunity presented them with an empty bedroom to host their seventh date in, they grabbed it with fumbling hands, wobbly knees and plenty of heavy breathing.