.....SEX, THOUGHTS & HOTEL CONFESSIONS

Her blue denims
Around her ankles
His fervent tongue
All around her


It felt dangerous
They were constantly terrified
That someone would walk in
And discover them


Aniruddha and Reva had met again
In Marseille
Where she was getting married to Andrew
Eleven hours later
In front of five hundred people


Reva thought fleetingly, of the wedding,
At the chapel just six miles from the hotel
Of the unsuspecting Andrew, her in laws
She thought about their fledgling bond
That had changed irrevocably,
That had been ripped apart
Just like her denims
And her
That night
Scandalously
Unhappily
Inevitably


She knew in a few hours from now
It would all be over
Their secret would remain only between them
Punishing and protecting them at the same time
And that’s when she fell asleep

………
Aniruddha looked at her closed eyes
Her eyes had said to him that evening,
“Lend me just one night please?”


Her eyes which when open,
Were always; a sparkling, turquoise blue
He had felt that gaze that night,
And that left breast,
And felt those calves
Her sharp small breaths
Like a child’s


He thought of the November when she'd walked out
Of their eleventh floor condo
She'd left a storm in her wake
She'd left him staring at the empty walls for hours
She had left without a note
She had left nothing behind


His memories of Reva
Had begun falling apart in the days and weeks
After she’d left
The thousands of days he’d spent with her
Reduced to a handful of specific scenes
The images building, then fading
Like fireworks


He looked at Andrew’s photograph
In her watch-chain
And thought-
For this man, Reva had fought with her parents in India
For this man, Reva had colored her hair burgundy
For this man, Reva had learnt to cook
For this man, Reva had stopped having red wine and given up ballet
For this man, Reva wore an undersized ring that stung her finger in the winters
For this man, Reva had left Paris
For this man, Reva had left him


He wanted to wake her and ask her
“But does he make you smile?”
“But does he know that you’re allergic to silk and mangoes?”
“But does he manage to surprise you on your birthdays?”

…….
And then he fell asleep
No longer realizing
When Reva awoke at five- thirty
Ordered breakfast for him through room service
And delicately placed it on the bedside table
Then she had kissed him very lightly on his left cheek
So as not to awaken him
Drawn the curtains, dressed
And looked lovingly at him for twenty two minutes
She saw his half open mouth
And the red lipstick still around its edges
She smiled and thought-


“For months after we broke up
I’d looked for you
On the crowded streets,
In newspapers and magazines,
In every doorbell
I searched foolishly for your face


I'm so thankful
That you're here now
That you exist
You breathe
You are
And
Therefore
I am


Because
You, Aniruddha Kanti Sen, actually, genuinely, like me
You never judge me
You never seem to notice that I’ve put on weight
You look at my face
As I look at yours now
And I still see you as the young boy
On whom I'd had my first crush
Yes, you have not changed much
The same chiseled features,
The same brown, forlorn, eyes (now with faint wrinkles sprouting in them)


In these wrinkles of your face only
Lies the entire meaning of my being
I wish time would stop here like a train at its last station
But I've reached an end here”


……….
She locked the door on her way out
He never saw all that
He never saw
Her tears that morning
Crossing the threshold
She returned to her existence
The existence she had chosen,
Without Aniruddha in it


Last night
She had asked him,
“Where’re you going after you leave Paris?’
“Maybe Florence”
His silence had said,
“Don’t marry him, Reva. Come with me”
And her silence had said,
“It’s too late baby”


She thought
In a few weeks,
It really will be,
Too late
But
Maybe not yet,
Baby
Not yet