TS| Thirst *UPDATED* Part2 : Parched Pg 5 - Page 3

I loved it - the imagery is so evocative and their feelings for each other are so raw and they both can't hide it - I really really felt for both of them and you have the characters down to a T

All in all superb - waiting for more!

Loved reading it.

Waiting for the next part.

The sound of her heart, breaking upon hearing his confident no across the phone, wasn't loud enough for anyone to hear. It was as light, as soundless as the solitary tear that marred her face, as she sat on the floor with the phone clutched tightly to her hands. She was hoping he might call again. In fact, all she had done with a staggering devotion in the past weeks was to hope. Hope for him to be annoyed, angry at her course of actions. Hope for him to order; command her to come back to him. Hope for a single glance of his face.

Such was her dilemma, that wherever she went, her gaze would run astray searching for a glimpse of his face. Such was the tragedy that he was never there. Or so she had thought when his illusions had tempted her, playing hide and seek with her at the bazaar. But one fine evening, she had felt his warm breath against the length of her hair, and her illusions had astoundingly materialized. Her hands had trembled against an array of vegetables on the cart, her lips had quavered against the words she had wanted to say to haggle with the vender. But she hadn't turned around to drink in his visual, lest he might disappear. She had stood there fairly immobile, committing to memory the faint touch of his leather jacket against her waist, the inexplicable tightening of her heart and time slowing down for her eyes effortlessly. A scourge of mosquitos boogied around the brightly lit lantern in front of her, the buzz overwhelmed only by the sound of his breathing - erratic and dense. Or was it hers?

But he hadn't said a word to her then. Quietly turning around and leaving, after having breathed in the same air as hers. And as the pandemonium of the dusk would be painted over by the scheduled game of the nightly winds, she would catch glimpses of his face every now and then, making conversation with the man behind the tea stall counter, smiling at the grumpy child whose mother wouldn't let him have his favorite toy or just standing in one corner, staring. Staring with brimming sincerity - such, that it was strenuous for her to divert her eyes from his. Such, that it sent slivers of pain shooting down to her feet that could only be healed upon running. Running, right into his arms and never leaving that blissfully warm vortex. And run, she would have if she hadn't a vow to keep. These adornments - oaths, vows and promises had always come intrinsically to her. Singed as they were into her veins, she almost never flouted them. But after he had sauntered into her life, it had amazed and annoyed her at the same time that she needed to keep recounting the vow over and over again in her head to keep her heart in check.

This one time, she had seen him conversing with the bangle seller. Her heart had lurched and pirouetted into an unfamiliar rhythm of happiness when she had seen his fingers grazing a column of indigo bangles, as his hand were speckled by the light from the tiny mirrors embellishing them. She had sensed his gaze on her, and had almost fancied him walking up to her with the bangles. But he hadn't walked up to her, or slid the string of bangles down her wrist, and somewhere in the deepest, darkest corners of her heart, she knew he wouldn't have, knowing as she had known him. But nonetheless, her mind had ached, and burned foolishly with silly desire. And so every evening, hours before the vendors would even start setting up their stalls and carts, Paro would glide her hands over all her ghagras, unable to decide between the pink and the orange. She would stare hard, for minutes at a stretch, at the array of earrings scattered all over her bed, with restless energy - as her mind replayed the recital of his gaze touching her leisurely every time he saw her.

Thus her evenings were spent frolicking around in this clandestine manner, her eyes full of joy and her face, a reigning hue of rosy red. And her mornings were whiled away thinking, pondering and deliberating to the point where her head and heart longed for repose. Guilt wrecked her thoughts upon coming to terms with the fact that after learning by heart, his secrets and scars, bruises and faults she had up and left. She had left, when she knew there was still a lot, a lot more of the pain which he had wished to share, wished to let go of. But in their agonizingly short time together, she hadn't been able to gather the courage to ask of the stories that he had carved into his skin, being inept to bear the thought of him living through them again.

And then abruptly, he stopped coming to the bazaar. A week went by, and then the one place where earlier, she had found peace amongst the hullabaloo of the market - that very peace hounded and haunted her. Austere apparitions of his face would greet her at every turn of the bazaar. There were these moments interleaving through those days, where everything came back to her at once - the intensity of the emotions such, it made her head dizzy. And she didn't know if she liked to tread through them or the ones where she felt nothing at all. The numbing sensation was unfamiliar and hence, terrifying. Oh how, she had tried to stop thinking about him; tried to stop worrying about him. Crazy as it was, she also tried to stop loving him, building walls around her heart with the hums of melancholic songs and bites of tangy imli. She had tried to whisper of other mundane things, random ramblings which didn't even make sense to her own ears - all to skip his name, the image of his face just before falling asleep. But the man had suffused himself into her veins perpetually, probably without even meaning to. And hence, his words, his memories returned to her, their power intensified, to both cut like a knife, or heal like the most soothing of salves and drown her in them, more violently then any ocean ever could. In that one week without him, she wondered more than once, if he remembered the way she used to look at him. She wondered if he even thought of her, anymore.

Paro sighed heavily, as her fingertips grazed the pink bangles encircling her wrist. They didn't match a square of her powder blue skirts; neither the white blouse which shimmered prettily under the moonlit sky, as she stepped out of the gates. But she wore them anyway these days, pairing it with absolutely anything to keep in her heart, his face and his touch, alive and blooming. She looked up at the sky, shaded with vagrant clouds. A slight breeze rose and fell, cool and warm in parts, beckoning her to walk into the market lane, which was now nearly empty fearing the onslaught of the incoming rains.

And then the raindrops fell, dispelling the quiet all of a sudden. The throbbing tumultuousness of the monsoon evening caressed her - her unruly tresses billowing in the rain-kissed evening air. She let the water glide all over her, and as it came down upon her lips - it tasted different from the rains back in Birpur. It seemed sweeter. Her lips parted and pursed repeatedly, her kohl smudging at the edges as she gulped away the icy droplets in abandon. And then adding to the monsoon milieu, a voice thundered close to her ears and a touch bristled against her arm, which sent familiar tingles trickling right down to her heart.

"Have you completely lost it Paro?" The incredulity in his voice only exaggerated with its reflection in his eyes. But she stood there mesmerized for a whole minute, stunned under the canopy of an old blue ruin, lusciously warm against the support of his hands, before she leapt into his arms, literally, covering him with a reckless, robust embrace. As his touch encircled her slowly - lingering and languid, he felt warm, hot tears seeping through his shirt, washing against his neck before she spoke, her voice in trepid trembles. "You said you wouldn't come!" It wasn't exactly a question. It didn't need to be answered. But answer it, he did. Only the words shocked her and him both. Maybe it was the tears, which gnawed at his insides. Maybe it was her soft, moist skin pressing over his, that it was impossible for his mind to formulate coherent, sensible thoughts. Maybe it was her scent - overwhelming in all its glory that he was breathing in like an addict. Maybe it was this entire blend rendering him unable to suppress the voices of his heart. "I tried not to, I did. But I couldn't stop myself. I was missing you."

A bevy of young women performing the ghoomer* passed them by - but the sights which would usually leave Paro in a fit of careless happiness, left her with a feeble memory of a haze of flamboyant, gyrating ghagras. "You have no idea how much I missed you...you, stupid, stupid girl. I missed you every hour, every minute of the whole damn day. And you know the worst part about it Paro? The worst part was that it somehow always caught me by surprise. I used to walk around the house like a madman searching for your face, not for any reason, no. But just out of habit. There were times when I wanted to tell you something. So many times - there was Aman, the damn fool he is; he kept badgering me with questions to your whereabouts. What the hell was I supposed to tell him Paro? And then Ranawat, he...he has stopped eating the food I cooked. He demands to eat only when you come back and cook for him. And...and then there were times when I just wanted to hear your voice. And then I'd realize you weren't there anymore. You...you, had left. And every time, every single time, it felt, like having the wind knocked out of my chest."

He pulled her back gently, she didn't resist. She looked up at him slowly. He was staring at her intently, with glint in his eyes. Ideally this should have been the time when she would have asked him to stop looking at her in that peculiar manner. But, her teeth just wouldn't cooperate. Instead, they desired to tell him how his one look was sending strains of a longing, a craving she didn't know she was capable of, gushing through her veins. Her heart was racing, quite plainly its pace accelerating with every word he pronounced. And if the hallway hadn't been that dark, the crimson tinted cheeks would be amply apparent to man holding her in his arms. Their broken, lonely souls seemed to have started to nurture in the shade of each other's words, presence and the deliberate touches.

"I had almost started liking the person I was becoming, when I was with you. You don't understand Paro, when you left, that person left too." His voice was harsh, echoing the thunder of the skies, but his words touched her heart like the softest of caresses. But soon his words faded out to become a wisp of the superfluous, as his face drew ominously nearer. The neighboring air seemed to be rapidly dwindling, causing a question from their recent past to surprisingly get jammed at the bottom of her throat. How do I breathe, Major Saab? As if to answer her question, his lips planted the smallest of kisses on her mouth before moving a breath away. He had made the last submission, and felt every other thought on his mind being eroded away asunder. He had stretched out his hand like one does when the skies are grey, just to see if they opened up as well and showered upon the earth the nectar of the skies, unsure till the very last moment whether the wish would be fulfilled or stored away like many others. *

She had gasped, drawing in a mouthful of air perfumed entirely by his musk and the rain as she watched him watch her, as if reflecting, analyzing her face, her taste, the shiver running down her spine. The downpour splattering on to the ground next to them sprayed her bare arm and his leather sleeve facing the market, with a few hundred droplets. An iridescent glow was rendered to her arm, mirroring the pink of her bangles. Acknowledging them as his gift, his fingers soon lost control. He drew abstract patterns on the damp hair plastered to her face, on the downy hollows around her neck, coming to rest, linger against the curve of her neck. A heartbeat later, his mouth came upon her with genteel strength, and then she shifted closer to him and the rhythm altered into an inciting, carnal warfare - a collision of roguish breaths and callous cravings. Or so it seemed to him, who was stunned at the pleasure she was both deriving and giving in to this kiss, a first of the many to come. But he was of course, unknown to the fact that regardless of being a novice, her lips had a mind of their own. Ensnared by his taste, by the coarseness of his hands unrelenting against her waist, grazing against her breasts, she didn't want this atypical enchantment to end. Her trembling hands, had reached out to his face, seeking warmth blissfully unaware, that her touch was rapidly crumbling any residue of his defenses into liquid dust. Then she felt his mouth drawing in her lower lip, and by then, she was floating, agile like the paper boats Paro used to set afloat along frequent puddles.

And then the anchor of moderation made its return. Smiling (or was that his habitual smirk?) against her mouth, he stepped back enough for just their faces to come apart. He looked at her with unconcealed delight, basking in the glory of this surreal first and the flushed face in front of him, which seemed to be pleading for their latest battle to continue at any cost. A second later he saw a wave of coyness beginning to engulf his wife, as she lowered her eyes from his face to the buttons of his shirt. He chose to engulf her in his embrace, instead. She came readily to him, breathing in traces of assurance and veiled love. As his face rested against the bend of her neck, Paro felt his hands gather up the entire length of her sodden hair, and coiling it around his hands lightly, aiming to filter out the impertinent water, till he saw it fall back along her back like a riverine tributary - inky black, beautiful, bewitching.

"You need to go and change into something dry and then sleep," he instructed fiercely, even as his fingers moved in copious circles around the sides of her face. "And...and you are going back?" She seemed surprised, shocked even, that after what they had just shared he would let her go, away from him this easily. And then she saw a ghost of a smile, the sign of victory clouding his eyes and she knew. He wanted her to come to him. Come back to him. Of her own will. And probably she would, to silence the throbbing of her own heart. And then sense came knocking down her doorstep, even if it was only a mere sliver. She couldn't, could she? She had a vow to keep; a vow ensuring his health, even if it didn't ensure his happiness.

"I'm waiting Paro, go - run back and change." She looked up at him and then timidly took his hand in hers and dragged him along with her upstairs. Remarkably enough, he didn't pose questions along their little journey till the kitchen, upon entering which, she left his hand and started fiddling with bowls and pans. She spliced thick slices of a few mangos, squeezing the porous pulp into a flat-bottomed dish filled to the ridge with warm milk. The concoction turned from dark to desirous. "Aam kheer, its Bapusa's favorite; give it to him." She didn't raise her eyes to his, afraid of what she might have found lurking in the black caverns. If she had, she would have found a sassy squint telling her that, this delicacy she had so lovingly prepared was his favorite too. Instead he asked her something she wasn't prepared to answer. "When did you last eat Paro? You have lost weight." The strict voice warranted answers she didn't have. She told him she didn't remember. He walked away from the kitchen door, where he had taken position to watch her as she worked and instead walked stiflingly close to her. Placing a soft kiss at the corner of her lips, he whispered against her ear. "You, left me. Then why...why are you not eating Paro?" He paused, watching her eyes close, as her face inadvertently lolled closer to his touch. "I want to you to make what you would have made for me, for dinner had you been back home and then finish every morsel." With that he had sauntered out of the kitchen only to throw back words at her from the gate downstairs which warmed her heart inexplicably. "I'm going to call back to check Paro!"

Much later, after eating her first proper meal in days, she stared at the woman in the mirror facing her. She seemed startlingly different - cheeks flushed with shades of wanton abandon of an adolescent awakening. This kiss, this admission of this unnamed thing between them had rendered her flying - flying, without wings, surprisingly without the fear of falling; just flying.

*

* The talented AngelTeen (Rae) wrote a beautiful line for this part-

He had stretched out his hand like one does when the skies are grey, just to see if they opened up as well and showered upon the earth the nectar of the skies, unsure till the very last moment whether the wish would be fulfilled or stored away like many others.

* Ghoomer : This is basically a community dance for women and performed on auspicious occasions. The famous 'ghoomar', Rajasthan's popular dance gets its name from 'ghoomna', the graceful gyrating, which displays the spectacular colours of the flowing 'ghaghra', the long skirt of the Rajasthani women.

Based on the song Dhol Yaara Dhol by Shilpa Rao. Do listen!

Couldn't wait for your pm, so was just checking to see if you'd updated...

You write so magically...

Eagerly waiting for the last chapter because I'm thirsty too!