Broken Hug

Sweet Aches

“I dedicate the poem to you.” He lifted her hand, his face moved forward, his lips rested on the back of her palm. The feel of the softness closed his eyes, and he inhaled a slow and deep sense of the smell of her skin. Warm emotion gradually trickled in his mind, and like gentle water spreading onto the seashore, his mind flooded with the warmth released by an unknown God. The warm flow pushed his eyes half open and in that state, he saw the girl looking into his face. Her gentle face with a pair of dark and lonely eyes, the sharp and sweet little nose the semi-rounded lips and the straight cheeks. He stretched his hand and touched her face, he ran his fingers through her hair. 

Her hand on his stirred in emotion. And the touch spoke in quiet solitude. He with her, she with him. She smiled, he smiled. And their eyes exchanged unsaid words and conversed in a strange language, the Professor-Student Language of a different kind, the Student-Professor Language of a different kind, applied with early soft-meditative tones of silent words.

As he took her hand into his, the touch made him lonely, lonely like the entire night sky with clouds hiding all the stars and keeping the sky in aloneness without anyone to share its thoughts.

A pain woke up in his mind. Fai-pain it was. Bangkok-pain. But here something told him, She is your student. But again something spoke with conviction, But you are beginning to pour out to her, and she to you. No.

No. That isn’t correct, his mind said.

Why not? Of course it is, his heart said.  

*

He woke up in slow measures from his reverie and fixed his eyes on her face. Yes, there she was, in front of him. Both together. He-she, she-him. The running dusk had begun to deepen the sky, allowing the stars to shed ample light. And in his heart something rumbled like the crashing waves moving with a gentle rush and touching the pebbles on the sea-shore. The waves moved thus, allowing the music created on the pebbles to remain everlasting in honour of the quietness and solitude in the attic study.

The quietness of the man and the girl.

Suddenly his eyes fell on the window, and there, at the glass, the two smoky beings appeared, their faces lit up with a light smile. They heaved a sigh and gave him a thumbs-up. They smiled, and they kissed. And they rested their video camera for a while.

He got up and brought two glasses and two cold drink bottles from the dining table downstairs. She was standing at the window and on hearing his footsteps on the wooden floor, she turned.

“Thank you, Sir.” She took the glasses and the colas and kept them on the table next to the newspapers. “By the way, Sir, isn’t that a South-Asian lady?” and she pointed at the framed picture of Fai.

He took a sip, I nodded.

“Yes, Charoen. I had met her seven months ago. In Bangkok.” He looked away from her and fixed his eyes at the picture on the bedside table.

Charoen was now looking at him, her face fixed to his, and there with her female intuition, she could see traces of his emotion.

“I came across another picture of hers downstairs. How did it all happen, may you tell me, if that is okay?”

“Yes of course.” He related to her his holiday in Bangkok; and how he had met Fai at the BACC; their time at Bayoke Tower; and how their love deepened; and his return; his parents passing away; and…

“…no news from her till date?”

Charoen-Thip’s face was fixed to the floor, and the minutes passed in silence.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Sir. I’m from Bangkok too, but my mother is an Indian. She used to teach in the Australian International School Bangkok where she met my dad.” She paused. “Yes, no wonder your poems are so painful.”

She took the few steps and sat on the bean bag.

He nodded. “By the way,” he said to ease the atmosphere, “Monday is the day of procession followed by a meeting at the Town Square.”

He looked at her eyelashes. The slim twin waves, thick and black, the gap between them narrow added to their attractive darkness. She looked up at him surprised.

“Is it so?” She questioned as if to herself and continued looking at him, searching for his voice to bring the answer to his mouth. After a pause she continued, “Which means the university will continue for half the day. And by the time the university vehicle will take us back we will get stuck in the traffic.”

“Will you attend classes then?” he asked.

“I don’t miss classes on such occasions, but since my residence is quite far from the institution, father insists I stay back at home.” She paused, looking around the room; then finally rested her eyes on the painting on the wall. “I told dad to allow me to rent a room in a condominium near the campus.” She took a sip. “Reaching college will be easier then.” She ran her fingers on the back of her left palm. “Besides,” she added, “it will save me a good amount of time. But pop said he will give it a thought.”

He nodded. Outside post dusk had already begun to settle faster than he had thought.

“You think it’s time for you to return home?” He found it hard to shift his eyes away from hers and praise her eyelashes. “After all it will take you quite a while to get back.”

She nodded. They got up and with unsaid words went down and out the gate. The street lights had lighted the neighbourhood. A child moved about in a tricycle, pedalling in his own world. The grating sound of his vehicle’s blowplast wheels appeared loud and clear above the quietness. At the crossing he hailed a cab and she got in. She waved out at him from the seat, smiling a quiet and soft smile, revealing a set of sparkling white teeth in the running darkness.

*

It was 9:30 PM. What might Fai be doing? It’s 11 PM in Bangkok now. If she were out, maybe she had already returned home before that. As far as he could remember she was quite an early bird to reach home. After changing her clothes and tucking into dinner she might already be in bed, sitting, listening to music. She had developed quite a liking for Indian classical music, and to a large measure Rabindra Sangeet, Rabindranath Tagore’s song and music composition.  

            She had said, during the course of one of our conversations that as a child she would cry for a particular doll in a blue dress with frills at the bottom and at the sleeves. It was there right in front of her nose, but she wanted her father to put it on her lap. He had also told her you can go and play with the other children, it’s 4 PM now and do your schoolwork tomorrow as it’s a Saturday tomorrow. And after your dance competition next month I’ll buy you another doll, even if I have to order it from Singapore. That night, her heart filled with satisfaction, she had gone off to sleep.

            You might have dreamt about the doll that night?

I can’t remember that, I was around five years.

            Sitting at the balcony, Rohan allowed his train of thought to taste free rein. He remembered sitting with her in the park bench near Thanon Yaowarat, the China Town area of Bangkok famous for its Chinese cuisine and gold jewellery. 

*

Rohan got up, locked the door and stepped out into the street.

The road was quiet. A common dog of the neighborhood lay curled up in one corner of the pavement, on a small mound comprising black stone chips and sand piled up, like a neglected corner of a beach. Rohan walked down the taxi stand, a long line of these yellow vehicles standing in silence till the end of the lane. Next he crossed the girls’ school with its grey and white building appearing more like a ghost at this time. CC&FC, the local club appeared next, its wall rising to ten feet and covering its ground in a rectangular stretch.

Rohan had reached the grey flyover by now. Its long path was an anaconda, the middle part of its body raised with the tail and head end flat like a plateau on opposite sides of the ground. Below this stretch, a pair, male and female, was walking. No hurry in their walk. Rohan increased his pace and came within six feet distance. The woman, a choker around her neck and a pair of dangling gunmetal earrings in the shape of a scorpion, had a tight blue jeans micro mini skirt with black leggings and a black sleeveless T-shirt with a white border running all around. The man’s silver stud on his left lobe threw sparks as he shook and nodded his head in a silent conversation. His tattered blue jeans and maroon T-shirt made him a lord of the night.

Rohan’s heart skipped a beat. The smoky beings?