It was late. He sat on his bed and turned his shiny new ring round and round on his finger, looking blankly ahead of him at nothing in particular, and then, by chance, at the date on the wall calendar: the 14th of February. The Marathi TV people - flouting all Sena warnings - had been going on about Valentine's Day to their captive weekend audiences: cards with hearts on them and red roses and chocolate and dinners in candelight with girlfriends. He remembered a programme he'd watched tiredly one night a few months back, alone and unable to sleep, on some foreign channel, about where the custom had originated, and how, in that woman's opinion (she had a lot of opinions) it had degenerated into a respectable excuse to sell lacy thongs (what was a thong?) and sex toys. Lace, sex toys, cards, coloured candles, chocolate - all that seemed so far removed from his own life, the chawl, the garage, the endless desperate race to make ends meet, and now, this, this loveless new engagement.
He'd never been one for speeches, letting his hard work and his caring speak for themselves. And not everything about the culture that sent cards and roses appealed to him. But a day allotted, a whole day in which to declare or affirm one's love in words, to spoil a special person, to feel special oneself, without diffidence or embarrassment, without fear of his mother's anger and greed and jealousy crashing down on them like a vengeful chandelier let loose by a ghost in some old film.... And at the end of that day, wonderfully, to make love.
God. Never to have loved or touched a woman, and then to love one woman so desperately, yet never to touch her. He looked down at the bed he was sitting on, the bed on which he and Archana had never slept together. Here he was, with all his hopeless yearning. And there she was, where he had so often thrown himself down after a hard day, her slim and gracefully curved body stretched out on the living room divan, promoted there from the hard kitchen floor by that dreadful fall. On the living room divan, instead of here, where she should by rights have been, on his bed, by his side. She would never have bought lacy stuff; he almost smiled to himself. (Whatever a thong was.) And the pav bhaji place they used to be able to afford would never have coughed up for candles. He must create a more real fantasy. One in which he steps quietly into the living room, to where she is not asleep, but sitting up too, her arms clasped around her knees, looking out at the moon. He walks to her and she, hearing his careful steps, turns around to face him. He takes her hands in his and as she gets up, he draws her to his body, and lays his face on her hair and her cheek, innocent enough pleasures, but ones he has never known. They stand that way for long moments, savouring each other's closeness. Then she feels the tug of his hands, and her eyes are questioning but trusting as he pulls her gently towards the bedroom door. He knows that in real life he would never betray that trust, never allow himself to be pleasured for just one night with her and then leave her to lifelong regret and remembrance. Yet now, in this half dream, he leads her into his room, and shuts and locks the door. And she is standing by the bed that will soon be theirs, not turning away from him, or glancing shyly downwards as he might have expected, but breathing more deeply than usual, and gazing steadily at him, unafraid, unashamed, ready.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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