MS

- 2 min read

Monthly Story, January 2023

Updated: Mar 1

Rasa → Veeram (वीरं): Heroism. Presiding deity: Indra. Colour: saffron

Śṛṅgāraḥ (शृङ्गारः): Romance, Love, attractiveness. Presiding deity: Vishnu. Colour: light green,

It was 8:10 am; a late start for Sunil. He had just gotten into the shower. Tanya was still in bed. Except for the sound of water splashing off of Sunil’s back, the room was still. Sunil watched Tanya from the shower; she smiled at him, slid his pillow between her legs and turned, tucking herself further into the sheets. Sunil wished he didn’t have to go to work.

Since Sunil started managing The Lewis property, he didn’t go fishing as much. But, he still went out at every daybreak to help his brothers pull their boats in. Every day, that is, until this morning.

Sunil walked out of the shower and stood near the bed looking at the rise and fall of Tanya's body, like mountains and valleys. She had worn just a loose shirt that had fallen off one shapely shoulder. He imagined sinking his mouth into her skin. He was tempted to slide back into the bed with her. The soft cotton sheets had twisted around her, tight around the thighs and falling loose over her calves. Just a while ago, he was there, buried in her. The thought of doing it again was all Sunil could think about.

It was getting late; Sunil tried to focus on what he had to do. If he finished the work now, there would be peace of mind by afternoon. He had to get the mason started on the terra-cotta tiles, make sure the lobby and lounge were tidied, check if the pool had been cleaned and get the new playlist going—although, the mason, the pool boy and the morning shift team really should know what to do themselves. But, Sunil knew better. If he didn’t go out there, the mason would be sipping tea till 10 am and the pool would still have yesterday’s leaves floating across its waters, while his staff would be smiling at guests through the bland space with no music on.

Yet, he remained rooted by the bed watching Tanya.

Her eyes were closed but Sunil knew she was waiting for him. She rolled over a second time revealing herself some more.

Sunil never got to work that day, but he still got peace of mind.

Read the previous story

Go to Reading List for this story.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

- 3 min read

Monthly Story, December 2022

Image → Angela Roma

Rasa → Śāntam: Peace or tranquility. Presiding deity: Vishnu. Colour: perpetual white.

Śṛṅgāraḥ (शृङ्गारः): Romance, Love, attractiveness. Presiding deity: Vishnu. Colour: light green,

As Jamila stepped onto the cobblestone floors, a reassuring composure welcomed her. It was her favourite villa at the old Dutch fort. Although a sunny April sat outside, it felt as if she had just weathered a storm. Feeling her phone vibrating again, Jamila held down the power button without looking at the screen. Her former fiancé, his family, and her family drove her crazy—collectively and individually. She just had to shut them out.

Jamila drank in the space hungrily while being checked in. It was a spectacular seventeenth-century hospice building turned into a villa. Although she had covetously dined at its restaurant, and religiously liked every single picture that they posted, Jamila had never stayed here before. In fact, she had never stayed anywhere alone before. Her right leg shuddered, twitching unstoppably under the reception desk. The old hospice walls reassured her that everything will be alright. Surrounded by its wizened beauty—holding the centuries within limestone pores, bearing countless stories of broken minds and bones that healed between these walls—Jamila couldn’t help but trust this place.

As soon as left alone in the room, she turned the bathtub tap on and started to undress. Seeing her body emerge from the clothes—thighs, stomach, arms, breasts–Jamila felt her heart rate quicken. Her pubic hair shone black bronze caught in a streak of southern sun sneaking between the curtains. Arching her back, Jamila savoured the vision in the generous mirror.

For as long as she could remember, the thought or sight of others’ bodies or their beauty didn’t quite excite Jamila. But, the effect that her own body had was almost immediate; carefully hidden secret pleasures would escape her effortlessly, seeping uncontrollably. But, living in a world where passion was predominantly a phenomenon to be shared with another, Jamila could never quite love herself without feeling guilty.

Her fingers stroked the ripple on the belly— a secret caress she had grown used to when longing for herself at stolen moments behind the work desk, or when she got the corner seat in the office commute, whenever Netflix got boring… But today, she didn’t have to stop there. Jamila let her fingers stray down to trace the pleasure fields in the folds and valleys of Venus.

Between flashes of parting the skin like petals and grasping at the ebb and flow of lines and curves along the body, Jamila felt her mind fill with something like music. Behind her, the bathtub was filling in unison. Lifted into the air, with the world drowned away into insignificance, Jamila soon found herself suspended somewhere in the zenith of the sky. Then, with an incredible release, she wept.

Finally emptied, Jamila wiped her face and turned the tap off. She lowered herself into the bathtub and felt the warm water surround her with liquid grace. Jamila realized that her insides had been brewing a storm since the arranged marriage was confirmed last year. And, when it finally broke out in lashing rains and thunder yesterday, she called off the engagement and didn’t return home to her parents after work. She came to the villa instead. Coming dangerously close to getting locked into a default life that wasn’t hers, Jamila understood that without making room for who she is, there will never be space for happiness. Yes, passion for self had no biological purpose; but, does everyone have to contribute to this frenzy to propagate? Jamila had no answers.

Everything will be alright, the old limestone walls assured her.

Read the previous story

Go to Reading List for this story.

- 3 min read

Monthly Story, November 2022

Image → Inna Rabotyagina

Rasa → Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Wonder, amazement. Presiding deity: Brahma. Colour: Yellow. Śṛṅgāraḥ (शृङ्गारः): Romance, Love, attractiveness. Presiding deity: Vishnu. Colour: light green,

The crisp brush of his white cotton shirt on my skin.

The smell of the sea on his skin.

That immortal place where everything is at rest, and even the coconut palms leaned comfortably into the call of gravity.

I’ve always known that inside every person, there is a place. Inside my father, there was a place thick with wild lagoon fear and intermittent bays of total abandonment—a lot like the village that he grew up in. In my mother, there’s a clear, cold, calculating lake. In my grandfather, there were rocky mountains with grey peaks; unchanging, silent, intense, and watchful. Inside me, is an abandoned old city, with worn walls bathed in a warm night that would never birth a dawn. Each place was different from the other as we were from one another; but, they were also similar in how all our places shared some form of torment.

But, inside Sunil, there was a place that I dared to call paradise. It was a sunlit ocean shore shaded with tall palms waving in the breeze. You could perhaps even see a little house between the faraway palm groves where the beach curved in the distance—well beyond earshot. Ahead, it blazed hot gold along the stretch of sand. But, under his palms, it was always cool, and the air was free of the sun’s noon frenzy. When my eyes adjusted to the shade, I could see that the sea was no longer made of glimmering diamonds, but a clear blue. I’ve never seen a place quite like Sunil’s shore. It had no shadow of hunger, hurt or fear that I felt in everyone else. On Sunil's shore, I would always sit down and forget to leave. He was where I liked to fall asleep.

I remember the way he thought about it carefully when I asked what his name meant. ‘Sunil? Hm. Clear, cool, water. Something blue...’, he said after much thought.

I’ve now given up trying to forget the way he talked about the sea; how he said he loved to go fishing and swimming in the mornings because the sea nurses a sense of danger that is natural, gentle and latent—something he liked to be reminded of every day. It was such an honest and subtle flirtation with death that it wasn't morbid in any sense. “Everything began in the sea, and everything will end in it,” he’d say in his placid blue voice. When I asked him how he learnt these things, he looked puzzled for a second. “You just watch and you see, isn’t it?”

I haven’t visited the seaside south for four months now; half out of being unable to bear the pain of remaining just a guest and not part of that dream; half out of the fear of looking Sunil in the eye after the things I’ve imagined through the nights in my apartment. But, the voice in my head telling me to resign from the firm and move to the south never rests now.

Today I went to the beach near my city; just to smell the salt air again. Although it was small, dirty, and full of people, I still found traces of Sunil in the smell, sound and sight of the sea. The salinity cleansed me of greyness—and I could long for him again without breaking.

I remember his weight on me. A clear, clean, blue airborne sensation entered at the tips of my hairs and swam all the way through me, making cool sea moisture on my skin. His memory came to rest in me, as apparent, as distant, and as real as the horizon.

Read the previous story

Go to Reading List for this story.