ONCE UPON A NIGHT IN SARAJEVO

It was raining in Sarajevo that night.
That particular, eventful, November night…..
Then she called me in
She was……


HAIR: auburn (bobbed)
LIPS: scarlet (salty ‘Bloody Mary’)
EYES: somewhere between arctic blue and aquamarine
AGE: six thousand three hundred and twenty eight days.
GENDER: Femme Fatale
TONGUE: peppermint
MOUTH: Big, bright and talented
HANDS: Velvet
EYELASHES: Lamborghini
MEASUREMENTS: Buxom circumference: thirty four;
Waist: twenty eight,
Hip girth: thirty-six inches;
HEIGHT (with stilettos): sixty seven inches;
MASS: fifty nine kilograms;
FIGURE: curvilinear; hymen present,
TEMPERATURE: Sahara
IQ: 131
COMPLEXION: Californian Beachside (6:45 pm, pre- sunset)
FLAVOR: Chanel
DRESS: Champagne on ice
SHOES: Multicolored mirrors on her hob nail boots
IMPRESSION: I always wondered how much she looked--had always looked--like Botticelli's Venus--the same smudged surreality, the same blurred beauty- painted by the artist in recollection.
She was……something


She showed me her apartment
And all her furniture-
Norwegian wood, teak furniture and teak furniture, antique furniture-
Memory too is like those pieces of furniture in the attic, par obsolescence,
For which one develops a sentimental fixation. Neither is discarded
Rooms. Doors. Doors. Windows. Doors. Rooms. Corridors. Rooms. Windows. Doors
China floor, still intact
Earring Chandeliers
Tea cups
Original Mink Vases gracing the cupboards
Spurious Rembrandts gracing the walls
Strains of Rabindranath’s ‘Shesher Kobita’ permeating soothingly, hauntingly
Sofa covers- Moccasins and Crochets
I observed her apartment.
I approached distant nooks and crannies and cobweb ridden corners to find her.
They were there but she was not. Not even in the fridge anymore.
Your darling, tucked away in memory


Set the scene.
Relish you take in the chitter-chatter pervading the scene.
Set the mood.
She kept on a talking in her wayward, Californian tones
I could stay if I wanted to.
She stressed: “Only if you want to”
Do you love me?
Such suffusion of love really
And she went past the bedroom door
I went inside
The more I went inside
The more was there to see


Her gown seemed like a wistful French ballad,
Strung together by some fugitive rhymes
Fluttering athwart the rhythm in swimming colors
Glimpses of her mountains of agony
Her hand, half-hidden in the darkness, beckoned me
Her slender pale fingers descended nearer and nearer
Her opalescent knee embarked on a tortuous cautious journey
She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, leaning back on the bed,
One felted, well shod, foot on the floor
And the other embracing the armrest
She said opening her eyes and raising herself slightly,
If I would like to
I, who had been leaning near the fire to keep myself warm, said yes


She stretched herself, as though, stifling an unrealized early morning yawn
My automaton knees went up and down
Losing sense of self
Neutral illumination
Morbid inquisitiveness
Calculated carnality
Avid caresses
Ardent tongues
Solitary ecstasieseerie silhouettes
Distant thuds with the awful stabs
The raised eyebrows and parted lips
She whirled like a translucent blender and meowed like a hellish cat.
A petrified paroxysm of desire
The scepter of my passion’s aching veins
My senses were suddenly filled to the brim
The waterfall nuisance pursued me of course.
But I never realized how wafery their wall substance was
Imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul
Reflected despair, dissolving in human tears


The sound of her last sob incongruously vibrated through me
I needed to see something. I tried to say something but my voice was ugly. I felt mortified when I heard it.
“You took advantage of a girl you lustful devious one. Nefarious tempter! Hell bound, bastard!”
“You enjoyed the meal, the swift efficiency of the conversation and then you enjoyed the woman’s body under yours”
“Even as your fire incinerated the lass, you didn’t mind. Her body burnt away speedy as a newspaper.”
Do these words enter your mind and eat at you like a parasite?


I ran away from the feared apartment
I drove away in my blurred car.
The several blocks went by rather uneventfully.
But the final one was paradise.
For on the crossroads, on the Fifth Avenue by West Street
I saw her again
She looked just like a surreal Botticelli’s Venus
With her exquisite Renaissance eyes
And I stood at awe at her and verily did I love her.
And lustful passions she did incite.
And love she did incite.
And I was but a passing mortal.


If somebody wrote up her life or that night, nobody would ever believe it.
Even I have camouflaged everything, my love
But it’s all true
Though you won’t know the facts till you’ve read the fiction
It really did happenIt happened one night
Once upon a night in Sarajevo