[1358 words]
She is throwing me one of her juridical glances. You know: observe, record, and store for further use. She has her new beige shirt on. It is silk. She says she bought it on a whim, but I don’t believe her. I know she’s lying because when she lies she looks at me like that and sips her tea scurrilously.
I’m sitting here trying to run a hole through this plastic cup. Plastic is bad.
‘Your mother told you not to marry me,’ she says.
‘My father did not teach me about sex,’ I say.
My finger is now through the base of the cup and I pour in the tea. It is scalding hot. My pinky plugs the leak. I raise the cup to her and grittily, proudly, intelligently say: ‘this right here is the metaphor for our marriage’.
*
Round and round and round we go, taking in our vows. Round and round, around the fire. Seven times. And all this while I think how clear the pundit’s words are, how discretely enunciated. It is hot. He sweats exultingly, his eyebrows are wet, his hair is a paste, he is wearing practically a bathing suit. But his pronunciation is perfect. His Sanskrit sings. He launches into mantra after mantra, vow after vow, uninflecting. I think this is because everything he says, he believes. He is young. He is a brahmachari. He is a believer. He is binding us for eternity.
Will we believe too?
‘Om mayo bhavyas jaradastaya ha,’ I say.
‘Lalayami cha pade vadet,’ you say.
*
‘Where are you taking the ladder Papa?’ I ask my father.
‘I am trying to strike a vantage.’
From the window I peer out into the yard. I see him tending to the hibiscuses, the carnations, the vaudevillian marigolds. A low wind blows. He takes his shirt off. I think it is silk. I study the awkward texture of his torso—the hollow and the bulge, the droop and the bloat, the flaps and the folds; several more flaps than folds. So much loose flesh turned in against itself. So little bone. Then I see him climbing the ladder, presumably to inspect the frangipanis.
*
I am lying here and trying to imagine you in your depressingly perfect beige shirt giving a coyly imperfect presentation on OTT consumption coinciding with the rise of the new, vulnerable Bollywood lead who always keeps his shirt on. Your fumble is so fine as to be a snug diversion, a minor thesis on beauteous foibling. It is your human element. Your waxed-down, smoked-up superior is inflecting and you meet his smile with a foppish brush of your dangling curl.
*
‘…we have carved out our little corner in the world because that is what marriage is all about, being at ease in your corner and with all these little shadows, nooks, and clefts, and all the debris that’s left of understanding it is being at home with failure it is speaking a language of stops, starts, and silences like the specious syntax of a long poem before we have accumulated enough wisdom to clutch at its meaning you see marriage is not when we have all these rituals this fire but it is when I see your father tending to the flowers silently thinking of him as a prophet…’
*
In The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Liu Xie wrote that great poetry must have the ideal balance of wind and bone. The lack of wind is the sign of a limited imagination and originality, the lack of bone a sign of linguistic distress and confusion.
*
She is back from her presentation. Her beige shirt has wrinkles I notice.
‘Will you read my poems?’ I say.
‘So little originality is left in this world,’ she says, twirling her hair.
I examine the tips of my fingers. ‘Do you still remember the first time we met?’ I say slowly and sadly.
She collapses on the sofa with a battered sigh. The sly angle of her cocked head makes a spool of light on the wall. Her eyes are still as they meet mine. Like the way they had been in the new second floor library in the east end of the campus:
‘Hmm I have reservations with the way we look at love. Or I should say with the fact that we don’t really look at it. We dance around it, so to speak, but never take it for what it is.’
I nod.
‘You see the true problem here is that we do not have a direct relationship with death. All our interactions with it are mediated by an elaborate set of rituals. That’s our problem. Consider our Bollywood heroes for instance—you look at them and you think they could never die. They are not mortal. They never stop and think about death. They will kill but not die, except pathetically. I mean if what Heidegger says is true—existence is being toward death—then they are only partially existent. You and I are only partially existent. And this poses a problem for love too. Because you see, it is the obverse, the other face of the coin. Death is final, love is eternal. If we have not understood finality, could we understand eternity?’
Broad strokes. Possibly tenuous. But delivered with great sophomoric panache. Her vacant expression promises brilliant cruelties. I become a hopeful victim.
We go to her dorm in the west end of the campus.
‘I do.’
‘Do you remember to remember?’
‘No,’ she admits meekly.
I place myself next to her. I want to get a closer look at the wrinkles. I also study her curls.
‘Listen, are you willing to work on us? Are you really?’ she says after a while.
‘Of course, I am,’ I say eyeing the wrinkle that runs transversally across her spine.
*
Liu Xie was a Brahmachari.
*
‘Did Papa have wrinkles when he married you?’ I ask my mother.
She looks at me and sips her tea.
I’m sitting here trying to run a hole through this plastic cup. Plastic is bad.
My father walks in and snatches the cup from my hand. He is wrinkly.
‘Your fault,’ he says to my mother. ‘You did not teach him.’
*
‘About sex,’ she holds my face in her hands, ‘you need to let go. You need to trust your partner. It is all very intuitive,’ the sonorous lilt of her voice will admit no antinomies.
I nod.
‘Are you afraid?’
‘I believe you,’ I say.
‘You do?’
I nod.
She pulls away and looks down at her lap. ‘You know, that’s nice. To say that you believe me,’ almost whispering. From the windows, I can see the rogue ochre of sunset.
‘I will always believe you.’
‘Always?’ She turns toward me, looking at me softly, blessing me.
‘Always,’ I insist. My fingers brush against the pinky of her hand. It is cold.
‘Even when I have wrinkles?’
‘Even when you have wrinkles.’
*
How to create a perfect storm in a teacup:
Ingredients:
- Water
- A cup, preferably without holes, otherwise plug the leak with your pinky.
- Washing liquid, frangipani-flavoured.
- Some sand from the yard where your father has a makeshift nursery
Now fill the cup 3/4th with water and add seven drops of frangipani-flavoured washing liquid for each round you took before the fire. Then add the sand you think will put out the fire. Finally, give it a good hard marital shake.
Viola! You have successfully created a perfect storm in a teacup.
*
‘…marriage is like being at home with failure…’
*
‘The wrinkles are caused by low-testosterone.’
‘All of them?’
The windows are facing west. The room is cool. Her cold fingers are threaded together in her lap at the angle where a shaft of light falls on it. I look up at the window from where it leaks.
She holds the shaft in her palms. I see my father peering in. He is striking a vantage. He refuses to plug the leak.
*
In the dark, I access your beige shirt. I put it to my nose, it smells of frangipani.
I am taking it for what it is.
Utkarsh Adhrit read philosophy at Ashoka University, India. He is currently based in New Delhi.
