A Handbook For My Lover Read online

  ‘Did you really think it would be that simple? You’d come here, I’d treat you to chai and then you’d leave with your cycle?’ he says.

  Before I can answer, he turns to his desk, retrieves my keys from under his laptop and places them on the desk, and gestures at me to examine them.

  ‘I could just take the key and go away. There’s no need for formalities.’

  ‘You can if you want to.’

  I reach out for the keys and hold them between my fingers. I make as if to leave, then sit down again.

  ‘You’re right, it shouldn’t be so easy.’

  ‘So when do I get to read the erotica?’

  ‘Why would you want to?’

  ‘I’d like to know if it’s any good! This would be the perfect setting for a brand-new piece. I’m sure that’s why you came.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

  So I find something online that I’d written for a magazine. He sits on the floor right beside my feet. I read him something called ‘Lost and Found’.

  When I finish, I return to my seat on the edge of his bed. He moves from the floor to the chair, which he brings closer to the bed. I lie down, mischievously, a Freudian slip. I’m now on the ‘couch’. He starts to interrogate me about my life, my work. I indulge him. I divulge.

  Beer makes me pissy. I leave the room and turn the lights off on the way out so that the room is only half-lit by his study lamp.

  When I return, I walk towards him, kiss him, then move away.

  ‘Now we have to pretend that didn’t happen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’d like to have several first kisses, and I don’t want you to stop talking.’

  We couldn’t pretend. What followed was the slow unravelling of clothes, breaths between kisses, an emergency, an urgent need to conquer and be conquered, then surrender.

  I wake up to the feeling of cold metal against my navel. Bicycle keys.

  He’s sitting beside me. He offers a smile.

  ‘You demolished my room.’

  I look around. The mosquito net had fallen apart, the poster near the bed had come undone, the carpets have been tossed to the edges of the room.

  ‘I apologise. I doubt I’ll come again.’

  ‘Well, the next time you “don’t come”, could you wear a skirt?’

  ‘Why should I return?’

  ‘Because I got a very raw deal?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I just lost a bicycle!’

  Fifty-four wooden blocks, each three times as long as it is wide, each one-fifth as thick as it is long. Three blocks are stacked at the base, to form a level on which seventeen levels of three blocks each are placed adjacent to each other, along their long side, perpendicular to the previous level, to form a wooden tower.

  He was a random acquaintance who’d charmed me into inviting him over to my terrace. Above us, only the naked night illuminated by stars. I’m in no mood for conversation, so I suggest we play a game of Jenga. I erect the tower upon the wobbly table, place a chair on either side, invite him to take a seat. The stakes are unstated. I place one hand firmly against the table, to urge it into standing upright, to fix the quirky wobble. I make the first move, retrieve a block from the centre of the third layer and place it on the topmost level as the rules dictate.

  Only one hand at a time may be used to remove a block. Either hand can be used, but only one hand is allowed to be in contact with the tower at any given point.

  I avoid eye contact, keep my gaze firmly on the looming tower. I can sense his eyes travelling across my body, peering through the cloth of my dress. I say nothing.

  Jenga isn’t the only game we’re playing.

  Ten moves later, the tower is still in place. He’s about to make his move, I lift my eyes and watch him as his fingers tug at a tight block. He manages to dislodge it and places it on the top. The tower is much taller now and it blocks his view of me. I can no longer gauge his intentions. Right then, I feel the sweep of his fingers against my stationary left hand. He knows I cannot draw it away because if I do, the game will end. And the trick to Jenga, like with seduction, is to prolong the inevitable, to stretch the moment as infinitely as possible before the unravelling. The tauter the stretch, the stronger the intensity, the deeper the passion.

  He makes patterns against my arms, then moves suavely across the canvas of my shoulders. I remain speechless. There’s no need for language.

  Carefully, without upsetting the alignment of the table, he wraps his feet around my feet. His toes probe the texture of my skin. I feel the trickle inside me, my body has begun the process of meltdown, the weight of the tower starts to shift towards one side. Any moment now, it will collapse.

  The rules dictate that the game ends when the tower falls in even a minor way or if there is a significant collapse where the tower crumbles exposing the base. However, if one or more blocks fall, but all players agree that they can be put back on the tower for play to resume, that is in keeping with the spirit of the game.

  We persist. We continue to cast block against block, level against level, but the tower’s lower half is beginning to relent, it’s only a matter of seconds before it all falls down.

  By now I’m ready to surrender. Now and then, between the blocks, I glimpse his gorgeous brown skin. I trace, with my eyes, the sharp outline of his face, the swell of his lips, the lure of his gaze. The brush-strokes continue, except his hand is no longer on mine, his fingers traipse along my thighs and venture further, deeper until he confronts the source of my lust.

  Suddenly, I can’t see him on the other side, he seems to have disappeared. Then I feel the clean sweep of his tongue against my clit.

  I play my last move. There are too many spaces between the blocks. For a second the tower stands tall. Then, just as his tongue makes butterfly strokes against my clit, the blocks collapse and spill over to the ground.

  No Sex Again Last Night

  I haven’t exactly been keeping track. I don’t strike lines against a wall nor do I tally them to study their steady increase. It’s purely incidental how I arrived at this nondescript bit of trivia. I happened to retrace my footsteps and suddenly stumbled upon the last time we happened to fuck. At last count, it was two hundred and forty-six days ago.

  I can’t be sure how many of these two hundred and forty-six days you’ve spent away from this city, wanderlusting on account of work, crisscrossing continents to document lives. I cannot even say for sure how many of these nights were spent in the same city and under the same sheets.

  What I do know for certain is that there was never any dearth of opportunity.

  Like those summer nights when in the agony of heat, in the middle of my sleep, I’d take off my shirt to expose myself to fleeting sighs of wind; sheetless nights when the fan was all whir and no whirl; powerless nights when the air conditioner went off with a whimper; shirtless nights with skin pressed against bare skin, the sudden surprise of my nipples against your shoulder blades; sunburnt mornings emblazoned by light when you’d wake up and take shelter under me as if I were a tall, leaf-filled tree; monsoon nights when it rained so hard we had to seal the windows, and still the scent of wet earth would seep in and enchant us until we fell asleep under its spell and we’d wake up intoxicated with lust. I’d be as wet as a puddle. All you had to do was jump in and swirl. But you wouldn’t and I couldn’t imagine why; winter nights when we’d cling to each other for warmth, your feet entwined within mine, my arms wrapped around you like a shawl. Foggy, frosty mornings when all I wanted was your body, hot and warm and firm inside me.

  It was you who initiated me into the pleasures of morning sex. You taught me to anticipate the sun. You steered me into a pattern and soon I learned to dedicate the evening to food and wine and song, and to spend the night in a state of want.

  And right on cue, as the sky shed shades, you’d release me from my state of sleephood and enter.

  In these eight months you’v
e managed to meddle with our carefully crafted script. I no longer know my lines and I’ve forgotten what role I’m expected to play. Am I the seductress or the seduced?

  Every morning I wake up hoping you will finally quench this now centuries-old thirst. But you draw me close, kiss my mouth repeatedly and then quietly make your exit from the landscape of the bedroom. And so everyday I nurse this lust. I pet it, soften it, temper it. And yet, every night it grows in size and strength.

  I hold you responsible for having aroused in me, through this extended foreplay, something more vital than passion, something elemental and irrepressible; a bottomless hunger that can no longer be fed away. If you were unfeeling and cruel, if you had another lover who consumed your body, if you were no longer chemically attracted to me, I would understand. But each night you bury your face within my breasts, you caress my aching body with the wisdom of a healer, you feel for my heartbeat and you let me study yours when you park your lust right beside mine so I can feel you growing in size and strength.

  I could seduce you. I’ve thought about it. I could impose my lips on your body, make you swell with hunger and desire. I could appeal to your mouth. I could parade my nakedness, make you yearn for me.

  But I refuse to.

  I want you to finish what you started.

  Unfurl me like a daydream. Touch my sweet and luscious core. I reek of spring and holy things and I taste like evening.

  At 12.30 p.m. this afternoon, I bid you goodbye. You were on your way to the airport. I’d helped you pack, had rid the fridge of all things cursed with a short shelf span, had ironed your Nehru coats so you could wear one at the lecture you were slated to present in the land of our former coloniser. We held hands in the taxi. We snuck our private gesture behind our handbags so the driver wouldn’t be witness to our intimacy.

  Eight hours later, I’m slipping into a summer dress, trying to disguise my reluctance. I’m not sure why I agreed to reacquaint myself with L, a man I’d spent one night with sometime last year when you were away. He happens to be in town for a few hours and he’s intent on seeing me again.

  I contemplate faking a last-minute illness. I can predict the flow of our conversation and I know he would like it to end with me poised beneath him. I was sure I didn’t want to go there. Not again.

  I repress the urge to curse you. I’m still upset about the other night when I was about to collapse into the welcoming arms of sleep. You came to bed later and wound your legs strategically so your feet lay pressed against my cunt.

  ‘Are you fast asleep?’ you asked.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Could you please press the tips of my toes?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  I pressed the little gaps between your toes, then pulled at their tips. When you were satisfied, you turned your back to me and asked me to relieve you of the itch on your back.

  I felt sympathy. You are allergic to so many things and this past week the skin on your back had broken into a rash and I couldn’t even begin to imagine how frustrating it must have been for you to not be able to reach the regions that itched most. I scratched your back. You purred like a tomcat.

  Then you buried your head in your pillow and were about to break into sleep.

  ‘That’s what I’ve become,’ I said. ‘Backscratcher and masseuse.’ ‘What do you mean?’ you asked.

  ‘You see me as a spare set of hands. I have a body too,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’ve told you before; consider finding a younger lover, someone who can satisfy you.’

  At which point I succumbed to my angry pose and turned against your body, slipped into a corner and threatened to sleep without kissing you goodnight.

  But I relented.

  ‘You deserve to be satisfied,’ you added.

  ‘It isn’t about satisfaction,’ I replied.

  ‘Then what is it about?’

  ‘Touch. It’s about touch. You used to touch me in a certain way and you don’t anymore,’ I said as I uncoiled myself from the fetal position I’d assumed and lay flat on my back, my palms spread against my head.

  ‘You mean like this?’ and you encased my fingers within your fingers so your pulse could invade my own.

  By then, despite the current that passed through me, a tear coursed past my cheek.

  I waited for the surge to subside and when I was sure you had passed into sleep, released my fingers from the bondage of your ‘touch’, turned around and tried to negotiate my passage through the underground of sleep.

  When I woke up the next morning I could taste the anger on my tongue. As is my style, I said nothing. I answered your every remark with a monosyllabic smile. It took three such instances for you to finally catch on.

  ‘Are you pissed off?’ you asked at last.

  ‘No. Not at all,’ I said faking reassurance.

  You didn’t pursue the matter, went for a walk instead and asked me to make you a bowl of porridge for breakfast.

  When you returned, you noticed my face was still twisted in the shape of a grimace. So you did that corny thing you do where you smile at me patronisingly and expect that like a monkey, I’ll mimic your smile and erase my frown.

  It didn’t work.

  ‘I guess I am pissed at you,’ I revealed, finally.

  ‘Why? What did I do this time?’ you asked most innocently.

  ‘It’s okay, fuck it.’

  ‘No, tell me.’

  ‘You insulted me last night.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By suggesting I take on a younger lover.’

  ‘But I’ve said that to you before too, it can’t possibly have come as a surprise.’

  ‘That’s the thing! After everything we’ve been through, you’re still suggesting I take a lover.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll take that back.’

  ‘You should. It’s disrespectful.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s just that before, you used to touch me in a certain way, and I find, increasingly, that you don’t. You want me instead to administer to your aches and itches.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Later, when I was scrubbing the dishes, you snuck up behind me and put your lips to my neck and your fingers against my crotch. I turned to liquid, my body smouldered in the warmth of your breath.

  ‘Hmmm … Don’t touch me like that,’ I said teasingly.

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘No. Don’t not touch me like that!’

  Despite that make-up touch, I’m still pissed off at you for your suggestion, and for having generally reduced me to a Lady-Macbeth-like caricature. Each time I make love to another, I find I wash myself repeatedly until all traces of digression have been shaken off and my body is a blank slate once again, clear and vacant enough for you to write anew upon my skin.

  This wouldn’t have happened if you had enforced monogamy. If you had laid down rules and asked me to abide by them. But you don’t care for cuckoldry. You don’t care for possession. You prefer to let me make my own rules, be with whomever I wish.

  The ex used to say the same thing, except he’d make too much of a grand gesture out of ‘giving me’ my freedom, ‘Your body doesn’t belong to me,’ he would say. ‘You have every right to be with whomever you want,’ he’d add. ‘Just don’t tell me about it, I don’t think I want to know.’ I was young then, even younger than I am now. And as long as he was around, I never faltered, never indulged in other bodies. But when he left this city of djinns, during my second year of university, things fell apart. I discovered the world of men, and the thrill of conquest.

  I assumed the role of picara and made my way through the landscape of lust and desire. I never sought out lovers; they just seemed to find their way into my body. The structure was common to all: first the sighting, then the pursuit, which was almost always literary, followed by contact, followed by words. Yes, men made for good muses. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if my writing depended on adventure, or if the adventure was in
cumbent in order for me to write.

  As I line my eyes with kohl, infuse my body with mild perfume, and examine my face in the mirror, I’m overwhelmed by how much things have changed. The ex is now married and recently had a baby girl. We don’t talk anymore. He couldn’t forgive my many ‘betrayals’. He didn’t really expect I’d make use of the ‘freedom’ he so patronisingly bestowed on me. He was trying to appeal to my feminist sensibilities. He took my infidelities personally. I could separate love and sex, he couldn’t. He knew, also, we would never be equals, that I would always be more easily desired than he, a socially awkward, overweight, boyish economist with a noticeably receding hairline.

  I wondered then, as I wonder now, what it was that I sought in past lovers. Was it the lure of a good story, or the thrill of seducing and being seduced, or was it just a phase in my life, a transition I was trying to make from girlhood to womanhood? Or was I searching for fragments of myself?

  I know for certain that desire was at the root of this search. I enjoyed being pursued, an indulgence I had never known as young girl. I loved waking up in a bed not my own. I delighted in the power of my body. I revelled in the company of men and found strange comfort in the transience of the moment.

  You, too, were supposed to be a one-night stand. A quick fix. A conquest. A ten-line poem in my grand anthology of lovers.

  But you altered the narrative, you marked your territory on my timeline so that as I look back, I find I can neatly divide my more recent past into two unequal halves: before you and after.

  It was a few months into our acquaintance when my body first began to betray me.

  I find it ironic, in retrospect, that the lover in question who was privy to this first bodily deceit was a sculptor.

  We’d seen each other at a few art openings. At some point he asked for my number and a few days later, invited me to his studio for dinner. He promised me fish curry, Kerala-style, in keeping with his origins. I agreed.