Fiction
Death at dawn
Shona has been dead these past few years. She will not come back. The dead mingle with time, become dust and simply cease to be. So it will be with Shona. Only I will stand beside her grave, see the grass grow tall, watch the rain fall and seep into the spot where she sleeps. And I will remember the romance we whizzed through, the passion we let flow into our love. I, an old man made ancient by grief, will speak to Shona, she who once let the music flow, she who made a face every time I asked her to turn, and turn again. I will ask her about the dreams that came to her. And I will speak to her, again, of the dreams I wove around her. 'See how we shared beautiful time and space?' That was what she said, as I played with the raindrops on her cheeks, with the dew that glorified her lips, in our own pristine woods of grace and beauty. I caressed her nose. It was a November morning of declining youth when I met Shona. There was something of the Greek about her; and as she smiled, flashes of Roman charm seemed to drape her being. The sari she wore was white. A crimson teep shone on her forehead and brilliance shot forth from her eyes. I stole a look at the way she wore that sari. She sensed the innocent malevolence and quickly pulled the edge of it, her anchal, all across her belly. But that November wind? It was kind to me. It let that anchal drift. Forbidden delight was what I savoured. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, right? Or what's a heaven for? That was aeons ago. Or perhaps it was yesterday? It was a time when Shona, my Shonamuni as I was hers, and I discovered each other, explored the worlds that lay beyond us. On a rain-driven Asharh evening, we pushed the world aside, got on to a rickshaw and went travelling, to nowhere in particular and everywhere we could think of. Rainwater seeped through the torn plastic that served as a hood for the rickshaw. The winds blew into her hair and, as lightning threw its beams across her chiseled, dew-bedecked cheeks, I broke into song. She loved music. And she loved it when I held her close as I sang. Then she sang a solo, in that rain, even as vehicles of varied dimensions and colours swished past us in the rain. Aami tomaye chharha aar kichhu hai bhaabte parina je was what she sang. There was quiet passion in that song. And she gave it a cheerful texture. The roads we travelled on those wet evenings were our journey through space. We moved through time and space. It was a cosmic reality we built in our lives as we went browsing through tomes in the bookshops. On foreign streets, as darkness descended on what had been a luminous day, I led her by the hand, a warm, passionate hand, into a coffee shop. As she sipped the coffee, I watched her, examining all the contours of her swan-like neck. She winked, to tell me she knew what I was thinking about. As she passed the book of Donne's poetry we had come by earlier in the day into my hands, I held on to her long fingers and did not let go. What happens if one day all these days come to an end? She asked, looking sharply and deeply into my eyes. I waved the thought away. No, tell me, she insisted. I moved from her fingers to her hand, before beginning to caress her forearm. Shona, my lovely Urvashi, my Pearl, it will be Tagore I will go to for a song to remember you by. She waited for me to finish. And I obliged her. I sang a few lines of the song amar praaner pore chole galo ke / boshonter batash tukur moto . . . On the way back to the flat we shared in Earl's Court, she wept. The wind whistled through the autumnal trees and rushed through her graying hair. My arms held her by her shoulder and her waist. She was a rose I did not want the winds to scatter through the universe. Shona passed into the region beyond time on a beautiful dawn in spring. The night before she went away, she read out passages to me from a book I had given her. It was called Literary Seductions. It spoke of high profile romance linking men and women who write. She laughed loudly as she read some of the lines. And then she stopped laughing, put the book aside as she curled up in my arms. We too write, don't we? I nodded, as my hand went all over her cheeks, felt her nose and my fingers rummaged through her hair. Her lips tasted like grapes ripe enough to drip into sunset wine.
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