SS: Anthapura - Part 18 Upd - Apr 19th - Page 47

I remained seated on the floor, a book in my lap while I clicked the pen every few seconds or so when the words wouldn't come to me. Hell! I was no seasoned writer to direct a continuous stream of my thoughts onto the paper. Besides, I had read enough novels to know any word wouldn't do.

Every word, it was said, was chosen with a purpose; an intended destiny - it directed a course in the reader's mind. And I looked down at the few sentences I had managed to write and found more ellipses than words on the page.

Rolling my eyes I wrote a wisp of words whose tail once again appeared elusive. My fingers wouldn't budge from an apprehension that my writing would bleach the color off their love. That I would diminish their love to another dime novel; or even worse that I would reduce the grandness of it all in their view.

Enough said that the dilemmas of a writer are unrelenting and infinite.

It was then I heard the taunting click of her heels, its derision echoing against the emptiness in my head.

"Will he be able to finish the wall in time? How long will it be before he can get working?" she asked appearing nonchalant.

I looked at her while she gauged the unfinished artwork. Feeling my gaze fixed on her she turned to me.

"And you don't even make an effort to hide that you keep tabs on him." I said while I got to my feet and walked to where she stood.

"And why would I do that? Didn't you know? Love stinks," she said with a shrug, a hint of sarcasm glinting in her eyes, "a whiff of our past is always in the air around us."

There was only mockery in her tone without the bitterness one would expect.

Folding my arms, I asked, "All this for the man who hadn't even taken you out for coffee?"

She didn't answer then and continued examining the blueprints that Prithvi had kept rolled on the table.

"Wouldn't you?" she said after a while and looked at me from under her lashes as she spoke, "If you were married to him in more ways than you ever would be with a mangalsutra and rituals and people to bear witness to your wedding?"

I was somehow jealous from her statement and it made me angry. I had not experienced their kind of love, but this negative emotion surging in me, I had certainly not expected it at any length.

"You didn't even know if he loved you at first," I snapped and softened the same instant, allowing for some doubt, "if what Shiv told me wasn't an exaggeration."

"Hmm! now let me think," she said pulling herself up on the table, "You see him in class and at once, you notice a watchfulness, a censure, a warning, a pre-occupation at first. His voice rings deep in his chest as he lectures with a peculiar indifference that is not normal by any standards. Everything is so insignificant around him, so below his stature to deem any attention at all. But, you know what you are to him in the smallest response you manage to evoke - a physical movement or a change in the emotion in his eyes. A slight turn of his gaze that follows you as you turn the hallway."

She smiled softly with a secret cognizance, reliving the moment she'd described and I slowly shook my head in disbelief. "So you watched him watch you? Really, Mitra?"

"Fine!" she sighed, "then does kissing me like a ruffian such that I had to stay locked in my room for nearly two days count?" At this my eyes took on a look of surprise and she continued, "Because he drew blood and left me with a swollen lip."

This detail was one I hadn't expected. Lord! Perverse or not, I could vividly picture their profiles set against a moldy dark library; tumbling books and her back pressed against a shelf.

Argh! Where did all the active indecent imagination come from? And just like that, the words in my head felt unstuck.

"Don't let your imaginations run wild," she added quickly as she if she'd peeked at the imagery in my head, "I cornered him first in the library and with every intention to incite I kissed him on the lips."

With that revelation, I realized that she'd intended to clarify that it wasn't him who had initiated the kiss. Though I hadn't pondered on that fine point, I had had no doubts it was her who had begun the kiss.

Not that he wasn't capable of such brashness. Somehow, the act didn't fit the Prithvi I wanted to write about. Good lord! I thought; since when had I become decisive about the characters I was hardly familiar with, let alone Prithvi himself.

"And..." I found myself drawling with the keenness of a five year old at a book reading.

"I told you, he did kiss me back," she said with an abrupt lack of will to share anything further. To me, it didn't make sense that she would hesitate then after having spoken about their first private moment.

"If I'm not wrong, there is a but in there somewhere." I said sensing that there was more than what I heard in her statement. "What happened then, Mitra? I prompted her softly to speak again.

"In any other relationship it would have been the beginning of their happily ever after from there on," she started after looking away for a bit, "at least for a while. But, Prithvi knew me; knew what we would get into if he had just been responsive to that kiss."

So, there had been more? I concluded and she affirmed the same without needing to ask her on that front.

"For that one moment I tasted all of his madness," she said with an aching that made me want to drag her out of the finality she thought she'd reached in her life. "His dogmas and his rebellion. The man he was fighting not to be day and night for my own good. However brief, he did open up to me."

"He scared you." I said training my gaze on her and the sharp flip of her head towards me confirmed that I had already offended her.

"The problem is I could speak about him, about me and about us for hours," she swept her hand in a vehement gesture to encompass everything around us, "but, you.would never.know." she said carefully enunciating every word, "the temporary insanity that I enter when I'm with him. A senselessness with an attuned awareness only to him."

Closing her eyes momentarily, she said in a whisper, "it's my own."

The animosity was gone just as soon as it had come, taking mine too at the sight of her helplessness. All though, I was sure neither of us would ever confess that we had left our anger that had been uncalled for over each other's stand on the subject. Not to mention that mine was utterly irrelevant, when I had no reason to hold one.

"You would never know this affectation," she scoffed and her voice grew with a slight show of arrogance, "nor could you or another woman bring about a grain of anything similar in him.

Was it this audacity of their love that never gave them a reason to possess each other? I wondered, or was it like how Shiv had put it? - fear that their long angst filled foreplay would come to an end?

"Too bad!" I said in retort. "All this impudence didn't give you enough courage to fight for each other. Or let you move on and have a life of your own." She didn't respond and instead, turned her chin in the direction of the window.

I couldn't help but judge her then. "It only makes me curious what your husband makes of your pointless obsession."

"Husband?" she made a face. Crinkling her eyes, she questioned back as if I was suffering from a sudden loss of sanity, "What husband?"

"F**k!" Was all I could manage, finally uttering the one word I had never spoken in public.