STONE

It was a strange feeling to her now, this warm glow. How long it had been since she had felt that quickening of the muscles around her heart, how long since her hand had fluttered so in handing someone a cup of tea. She had been a child, barely out of her adolescence, when she last remembered hoping that someone’s fingers would brush hers, so lightly, and yet so purposefully, as she handed them that cup of tea. It was alien to her now, and it nearly scared her out of her wits. This warming of the blood at a most inappropriate time of life would be positively obscene in somebody else, the sort of thing her sisters would have loved discussing in sibilant whispers filled with delicious malice. But it was true; she was alive now; alive when she had been frozen and dead. She mopped up the tea she had dropped, and apologized, “I’ll get you another cup. I’m so sorry about that…”

He smiled. Oh! That smile! “That’s okay, Ahalya, I really must leave now. I have a couple of things to do before I return home. I need to pick up some food for the night, I’m having a couple of friends over. I just dropped in to pick up the book for Vish.” It was a very disarming habit of his, calling her by her first name. All the other young men called women her age Aunty. She flushed; she had known he would come, Vish had called to inform her. “Wait a bit, I made some halwa this morning, so that will take care of dessert for your friends. I don’t know what came over me, one minute I was looking at carrots in the market, the other minute I was stirring gajar halwa” She giggled, then stopped herself. Giggling was one step too far. He began to demur, saying he couldn’t possibly take it, but she had already reached the kitchen. “How many friends are you calling?” “There’ll be three of us.” “Good, I have just enough then.” she said, coming out with a plastic box in her hand. He smiled again “ That’s not dessert, that is an entire dinner!” “Don’t be silly! Three strong young men, it will be gone before you know it. Now, enjoy yourself and think of me when you have the Gajar halwa.” Flirting! She was flirting with him! But he didn’t seem to notice, “Of course, Ahalya, thanks, you really didn’t have to…”

Dr. Kashyap was a name that oozed respectability, a name that stood strong and silent, a name with principles and high moral values. “Mrs. Ahalya Kashyap” had made her feel like her feet were finally planted on terra firma. She had said yes in the proper way, shyly and after much hesitation. In reality, she was raring to go, waiting to quickly shed all that she had been, the hateful memories of college, the stifling evenings at home, the secret meetings with Inder. No more of all that for her. She would now run a home of her own, have children of her own, and be invited for dinners where she would discuss the colour of her silk saree and the cut of her diamonds with other doctor’s wives. She had been so happy on the day of her wedding that it went past in a pink haze of smiles. And then she had run a home of her own; she had discussed silks and diamonds. She had done these things well and she had been content. And Kashyap had lived up to the sound of his name, right down to the last resounding syllable. What was the use, going over these old memories, they were long past. She was alive again now, she should consign them to the deepest fires of hell and take joy in seeing them burn till nothing was left of those years.

“I got the book; Ram dropped it off today, with some of the gajar halwa you gave him. I didn’t know you were capable of cooking, much less achieving this halwa.” Vish, the sly dog, was on the phone, teasing her as usual. “He actually likes coming to your place. He admitted to me that you were one of the most intelligent women he has met. Are you blushing yet?” He had introduced Ram to her. Knowing Vish, he had probably calculated for the exact effect the meeting produced. For twenty years she had lived alone, even when she was living with family or friends. Always alone, even in a crowd. Then she had met Vish. They had picked up the threads of a childhood friendship, like the thirty years in between had never gone by. She was still alone, but at least she was no longer lonely.

Dr. Kashyap: it all came around to him. To him and his morality. For five years they had been married, for five years she had slept with him. But she had the unfortunate habit of quoting from a letter when she replied to it. He had the annoying habit of blowing things out of proportion. Inder had the habit of clinging onto the past and of putting his happiness above anybody else’s. They were all set in their ways, the ways that had killed her. Inder wrote to her. She wrote back. Inder was no longer at the address and the letter returned to sender. Kashyap received it, read it and blew it out of proportion. He slapped her and something inside her died. Died forever, she had thought, but how wrong she had been. She was alive again now, and all those things belonged to a past aeon. Now she had a song on her lips and the wind in her hair. The lips were no longer young, and the hair was no longer completely black, but those were irrelevant details.

His smile had breezed in through her door one wintry morning. Vish had probably walked in first, but all she could remember seeing was that smile. She had hardly heard the introduction Vish made: he was a friend’s son, passing through town. He had laughed and talked, completely confident and at ease. He looked up to Vish as sort of mentor. And Vish had brought him to meet her, to her house which hadn’t heard a guest laughing in a million years. Later that evening, try as she might, she couldn’t remember all the details that suddenly became so important to her: what he was doing here, how long he was staying, how old he was. He was just young, achingly so. Young and Smiling, Intelligent and Gentle, Caring. She hadn’t believed she was capable of such hopeless sentimentality. She hadn’t believed she was capable of such depth of feeling. She hadn’t believed she would ever be able to feel everything again. But just one smile, one touch, melted the edifice she had spent twenty years constructing.

She built the first wall on the Day of the Slap. She added another one for every one of the twenty nights that Dr. Kashyap raped her. It was without her consent: Rape. The nomenclature was the pinnacle of her building, the steeple that she erected over the tomb of her heart. Twenty nights spread over the four coldest months of her life. The ice that followed was a tropical afternoon compared to those four months. He railed at her from the moral high ground that he never descended from, even as he was raping her. He called her unfeeling, unresponsive, frigid; a stone. She had taken that stone and tied it around every pleasure in her life, then drowned them all. He left after the divorce but she remained, living in the same rooms, staring at the same walls, closing the same doors. It was only when someone suggested it to her that she even realized that the memories should have made the house unbearable to her. It was then she knew that she would never again find anything painful or pleasurable. So she stopped her heart in its place, denied her body and sat down. Till Ram had her heart running veritable marathons.

He was sitting next to her, in her living room. She had just told a joke, and he was laughing again. She laughed with him, till Vish’s knowing smile from across the room stopped her short. It was an awkward moment, Ram had seen the look and had stopped laughing. She stared straight ahead, feeling inexplicably exposed. Vish sauntered out of the room mumbling something about a glass of water. Her heart was beating hard and her eyes had begun to smart. Then Ram put his arm around her shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze. It was something he might have done for his mother, a supporting squeeze that seemed to say he understood. She held that squeeze in her head till after he had left the room, calling out for Vish. Then it was gone, but the warmth remained, and she continued to bask in it, sunning herself like a contented fat cat.

Inder had called on her one afternoon, after all those years. There was a part of her that had hoped she would be able to feel like the old Ahalya around him. But she had found she couldn’t. She was not the Ahalya he knew, and he wasn’t the Inder of old. The old Inder had been gallant and strong. This Inder seemed to have only one thing on his mind. He grew increasingly candid as the evening wore on, and she heard stories of what seemed like a thousand girlfriends that he had had. His eyes had become shifty, now looking here, now darting there. He stared like he wanted to be able to see everything all at once. Like he was the demon from the greek myths, with a thousand eyes that never rested. Yes, he wasn’t the Inder of old. He had become a nymphomaniac. And she had become stone.

“My train leaves in an hour, so I had better be leaving.” “Yes, I think you’d better start, the traffic’s pretty bad. Thanks for coming to say bye.” He smiled, “You think I wouldn’t have come?” She wasn’t unprepared for the parting. Vish had begun a countdown a week back. And she had used that week well: an invitation to lunch or to dinner everyday. He was in and out of her house, sometimes three or four times a day. Every minute took her to an exhilarating new high. And now he was going. She followed his tall frame as he walked down to the gate, and counted her heartbeat under her breath. Then she turned and walked into her home. She sat down at the window with a cup of coffee, watching the people on the road walk past. “Thanks” was an ineffectual word that barely started to cover what she felt. He was gone, but she wasn’t. A smile put crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes, and the breeze was playing with her wispy graying hair. She was alive again.

*****