Ravens...
My head felt like a tattered cloth snagging on a barbed wire, while a desert gale and sand blew through it, ready to uproot everything in its way. Lord! it ached, this entanglement I felt inside me, while I wanted to see my plan to its end.
Why she would marry him? I still couldn't understand that stale equation. Or for that matter, why would she lie to me? To me...
Rishabh, she called me, when I was RK to everyone. Rishabh, to her alone and she was leaving too.
After the song, she'd looked at me, her eyes black whorls of fear and disgust and for a second I had liked that she didn't see through it all and was enacting to the effect of being a mere mortal, when at times she hardly let anything get to her. But, that momentary softening in me, had urged me to hug her, when there was another part of me that had wanted to shake her up into showing an outburst. Not knowing, what reaction I preferred to see from her then, I'd left the dance floor without congratulating her and walked to the bar by the side of the lawn.
I took a swig and rushed to get a taste of the lemon, feeling the welcome burn glide smooth behind my throat.
Spinning on my bar stool, I was in the lookout for a mini army to come marching in my direction. It had been ten minutes since, I had been at the bar and their deferral made me picture them going on about doing Daandiya Raas at the backyard.
For this, I could not approve her taste in men. Which hot blooded man could stand watching a stranger take hold of his bride by her waist; that too when she was in a lehenga that bared much of her skin the entire time she'd kept her arms at shoulder level during the dance. Spineless critters! Thank havens the situation hadn't been reversed. Else, I had little doubt that Binoy would not already be in his grave by then.
When another five minutes passed and no one came by, I got a large glass of water and began clearing my head for the long night I had ahead of me. While I was half way through that glass, the battalion showed up, women inclusive and that made me suspect if she was aware of their intentions.
"RK! Good seeing you here..." Binoy said tapping my shoulder.
Seriously? The only response I could think of was to blow raspberry back at him, but I found my will from giving into it.
Raising the water glass at him as a toast, I took a sip.
Their drinks were prepared in no time and all left except Binoy and another man, I wasn't acquainted with. The nameless man, moved to one corner of the bar setting, while Binoy cleared his throat to start a conversation with me.
"Did you have dinner?" he asked in broken Hindi. Bloody Hospitality! I cringed mentally.
"Its all right, we can keep to English," I said stiffly and turned in profile to face the rows of liquor bottles arranged on the corner tables.
"Well, that will make things a lot more easier" he said in a wry tone, "I'm going to be very blunt about it, RK"
"I doubt you can be little else if you want to make a point," I said shaking my head without looking at him, "Or is that your way of establishing expectation upfront so that I wouldn't break into tears at the end of our little talk?"
I couldn't tell if it was the alcohol in my blood that was making me peevish, but it seemed I had been waiting for that instant forever.
"I understand you are egging me to a fight, RK, but I like to stay out of it tonight. Not at Sanaa's place," he took a deep breath as if this was a practiced sport where opponents seldom frayed his nerves, "she told me about the scandal that has risen, but you have to give us time to sort it out. We don't want a scene here. All of us are trying to keep her Naanaji inside, while..."
I cut him off before the switch in my head would flip and a violent me could surface hearing his emasculated, boyish rants. By large, I was unduly worried I wasn't going to get his inner Rambo out of him. As part of the act, he'd to hit me first, but come to think of it, it didn't matter anymore. If he was going to escape my next ploy, I was prepared unenthused to throw the bar-stool at him.
"To give her some credit," I sighed, "I would like to think its you they are keeping down in chains from drawing my blood. Its sad, that it's not so much the case, Binoy and instead, her 65 year old Naanaji is the one who is still playing the man of the house"
He took a sip of his drink and studied me candidly.
"She was right, after all," he spoke in a sullen tone, "That you wouldn't go down without a fight"
Swiveling in my bar stool, I turned to face him, "You know what? you shouldn't have told me that. Now, I'm assuming," I shrugged as if he'd left me no other choice, but show my condescension, "you wouldn't have come to see me at all, if it weren't for her..."
He left the glass on the counter as he switched to angry french, "Ve te faire foutre, encule (f**k you, bas***d)"
Good, I thought. Not that I got what he said, but his tone conveyed that he was getting there.
But, as much as I had sought it out, I was just as unprepared when he delivered a dire blow to my cheek, one distracted moment I turned to drink down the water.
Argh! a groan and I toppled to the floor backwards, with the heavy steel of the bar-stool falling over my stomach. My muddled senses helped with handling the impact from the fall, but it was another minute before I was righted to stand on my feet and a sharp burning sensation registered around one cheek.
The other man at the bar had me leaning on him, with his hands under my arms, while he screamed at Binoy the same time, "Are you f**king mad?"
"Ashwit, you stay out of thi..." That was all the time I could leave him gallantly convinced that he still had the upper hand in the fight, for that is when I propped myself into position and took my fist straight to his nose.
With a cry of pain, he closed his fingers over his nose and balanced himself against the bar counter. Ashwit's hands circled my chest while he tried to pull me away from where I was rooted, but it was all in vain, when I maneuvered myself to hold Binoy by the collar of his Sherwani and punched him from under his jaw.
And it was no longer in me to understand where my own ire stemmed from. There was an easy satisfaction in my moves and an implicit acceptance in the aching - rendered dull from the liquor - that permeated my body. Was this all because of her? Or was it for her?
His head bobbed as he grunted, but he recovered fast, possibly from the surge of adrenaline in his system and came right at me, jabbing his clenched fist at my left rib.
I fell to the ground once again, loosely pondering that my role in the scene was over and as anticipated, he threw himself at me, deranged; his lanky mass of bones kept me from raising myself, while he held my face from ducking and sent bone crushing punches to my face.
I tasted tang of hot rust in my mouth and realized I had begun to bleed then. Faintly, I heard swears and found myself weakly smiling that Bittuji had left at the right time to fetch people from inside the house and call attention to our fight.
"What the hell have you done, Binoy?" I heard her and other exclamations that least interested me.
"Oh! Rishabh..." Again, I could make out her weak whisper, but with my eyes closed, I was unable to place her around me and her disappointment hovered about my conscious.
I could hear myself moaning and I put up a fight to open my eyes after a while. With the people still around me, I understood, I hadn't passed out for long. Or was I even unconscious to begin with? I was unable to tell. It was only when I spotted her with his head cradled in her shoulder, that I passionately regretted ever having flickered my eyes open; for, the look on her face was one of pure disdain; a grave sullenness had set into her features.
Argh! rolling about the ground in the least degree that my body allowed, my fingers thrust itself into my hair.
Her eyes...a raven black too, I reckoned for the first time, but she wouldn't meet my gaze anymore and in that hapless, unforgiving instant, I wanted to touch her face.
Although light came from afar, I didn't know how it had happened when there was darkness again, The sound of ravens soaring high into the air reached me. Only this time, they were already high up in the air and not just pretending to fly away.
Ravens...Ravens again...In the black of her hair that cascaded from that day to-date, there were Ravens and them alone.
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