Page 19 of Musafir Cafe

Sudha propped her leg in front of him, and Chandar’s shadow began massaging it.

‘Yaar, I’ll get an assistant for myself who’ll give me a foot massage before I go to sleep.’

Chandar didn’t reply.

‘All right, now just rub my back a little bit.’

Chandar turned her over and started giving her a back rub.

‘Open the bra strap.’

Unhooking a bra wasn’t new to Chandar, but he would fumble a bit every time. He tried but couldn’t open it; he then used both hands. It still didn’t budge. Sudha unhooked it with one hand and left it dangling such that the strap marks were visible.

‘After an entire day of wearing it, the marks begin to show.’

Chandar tried to level them with his touch. The faint light of the room turned Sudha and Chandar’s shadows into one. They both touched each other’s oceans with their lips, in a way that no corner was left dry. Sudha breathed in Chandar’s scent, and Chandar took in the room’s darkness in his eyes. Clothes freed themselves on their own, and Chandar and Sudha melted into each other on that mattress. Their clothes had a little bit of the sand, a little bit of the evening, a little bit of the light and a little bit of the ocean in them.

Chandar and Sudha were feeling exactly what the first man of the world had felt with the first woman of the world. For those few minutes, Chandar had turned into the world’s first man, Sudha into the world’s first woman. Mankind didn’t know how to talk then; they spoke through touch alone. In those moments, Chandar and Sudha seemed to have forgone their powers of speech.

It was the world between sleep and wakefulness, when nobody knows where to go. Both of them were drowsy, yet awake. Both were silent, yet talking. Chandar was hiding, leaning his head on her shoulder. Sudha’s hair had turned into the bedsheet for Chandar’s face. Sudha could feel the ocean in all those places where Chandar’s body could touch her.

The world was happy that it existed. The night was changing colours as she lay in wait for the dawn. The stars were begging to get their day off. Morning had gently patted the night’s back before arriving. The bed waited for Chandar that entire night.

A for Almirah

Normally, Chandar would shut his alarm clock down twenty minutes after it went off in the morning. These days, he turned it off immediately so that Sudha’s sleep wasn’t disturbed. Such mornings were new for Chandar and his home.

After waking up, Chandar would push the curtains aside and look at Sudha for a while like she was an interesting news item in the newspaper. The alarm would routinely wake Sudha up, but she faked sleep so Chandar wasn’t disturbed while he watched her.

Her mattress was no longer on the floor. They didn’t buy the double bed either. When two people become close, their almirahs become one. When they get even closer, almirahs fall short of space. Sudha’s almirah sometimes ran out of clothes, sometimes out of space.

One fine day, she said, ‘I don’t have clothes to wear.’

‘You have so many. Last time we shopped, you said the almirah is running out of space to keep the clothes.’

‘You’re crazy, girls never have enough clothes. How many times do I have to tell you that?’

‘Okay, don’t. But what’s the plan now?’