OS: Garam Hawa

Paro lay on her Chatai in the dark, too afraid to occupy the empty bed. She heard the door crack open and footsteps of the man she wanted to hate. She squeezed her eyes shut and began chanting a safety mantra on her Rudraksh.

Ironic! I resort to a Rudraksh to protect me from Rudra.

She held her breath, trying not to make any noise that would attract any attention. She knew it would happen all over again, soon. The clothes would fall off the bodies, the skins would touch and set fire on each other. The hot breaths of desire would co-mingle, pan laced breaths seeking comfort with whiskey laced ones. Hair would revolt from its chignon to cascade down the back and sweat would glisten on bare backs, spurred on by heat and passion. Glass bangles would be broken, like every other night, to be picked and cleaned by a giggling maid the next day. Marauded flower petals would stay clung to the mosquito net in a telltale sign of the carnalities that came to pass in the night.

A heavy burden descended on her as she thought of all those nights. The moans of pleasure were hard to restrict within the four walls of the room. They always wafted down the hallways telling the guards outside of the sins committed inside. And just as she lay there, her pulse racing and heart beating, the footsteps headed towards the bed.

She didn't want to feel anything. She wished she could shut out the inevitable surge of desire that spread between her legs as the night wore on. She despised herself for those feelings that knocked on her body, like clockwork, with unfailing regularity. The respite came to her in those short days when Rudra was away on field duty.

Those days would be heaven for her. She would not feel the torture of committing the travesty of lust when her body would betray her without her permission. She could breathe on those days and roam freely about the house without the searing pair of eyes following her everywhere. She could even laugh at Rudra's sisters jokes. She could be almost human again.

But those days were getting rarer and far fewer. He never seemed to want to leave the mansion and his insistent nightly forays left more scars on her than she wanted to know.

She stopped breathing as she heard the bed creak under the weight of his muscled body. A hot flash ran though her body involuntarily. She tried to shut her ears and chanted her mantras louder.

The sounds of rustling clothes getting pulled and cast aside, followed by eager bodies meeting one another, could not be contained on the other side of the paper thin walls. She heard Laila's moans, like always, as he approached the bed in the next room and must have pulled on her clothes, as Paro imagined.  She heard Laila's husky and seductive small talk, beckoning Rudra to her side. Paro strained to hear the words.

Paro's heart sank as the sounds from the room next door delivered enough evidence that tonite, just like many nights, Rudra did not object to Laila's presence. Paro didn't know why she expected him to refuse Laila but she  did. She had hoped he would not get pulled into this carnal dance every night and would spare her the trauma of listening to the two make mad love to each other.

She knew this was his way of torturing her. He knew that every night she detested him more for doing this to her and yet, when the time arrived, she, Paro, melted and wanted him by her side instead of Laila's. Paro felt sick to her stomach at her own hypocrisy.

She was not a traitor but her body was a different story. It was a traitor who went against everything she had been taught about propriety and correctness. She was aghast that despite Rudra's stoic silence and indifference to her, she wanted him to love her, she wanted him to want her and she wanted him to make love to her. She was not a traitor, no she was not.