– And where exactly is she, now?
– We told you, she married a local Malayalee, there in Kerala, but her exact address could be with our dad.
That night was almost sleepless to him. The face of that teashop thatched house girl was looming over, whenever he woke up from his disturbed sleep. And also he dreamed a dream again and again in which Mala exchanged in nude. Though her boobs were large with long nipples, her vulva was hairless and smooth as it was on those days she swam inside the irrigation wells.
There was chillness in the night wind that again was not to his comfort. And then, in the middle of the night, he heard murmur nearby. It knocked out his sleep completely.
– I’m afraid he may wake up.
– No chance. He had traveled a long distance, you know, tired enough to sleep a week.
– A week now we are at this; a break today…
– But we planned to do this until dad returned, you know. And I want to have positive result this time.
– For that matter, why not this one at least from your husband?
– Don’t… as if nothing…
– Yet there is a husband who indeed married you.
– But here you’re still unmarried. I know why you’d rejected Chandrakala.
– That was because she had a pockmarked face. Didn’t I reason it so?
– But the actual reason was not her pockmarked face….
– You know it, then?
– I know it as my cunt knows your cock.
– No more argument. Have your way.
– That’s my child granting stud!
Mohan was shocked by the meaning he gathered from the murmuring voices. A beam of light was coming from a crack on the door of an adjacent room; and also a sound like that of a dog drinking water. He rolled up and put his eye to the crack in the door. And there inside…
Mohan collected his bags and stealthily left that house and his native village. He traveled, this time, little longer by road to catch the train at another station than the one where he alighted a week earlier. What he overheard of Chandrakala and her pockmarked face from the conversation of Mala and Kumar proved his worst feared doubt. Yes, he was running away once again from his native place and also from his sister.
*
Same day, there in that teashop thatched house by the railway station, Kala the gorgeous girl, while sweeping the floor, did broom out a purse that was lying hidden under a wooden box. Wondering, she picked it up; opened and found, inserted in its left pouch, the small size photograph of her family.
How come? And whose purse is it? Puzzled was she at first. But slowly it dawned on her. It hit her like a boulder that the military man, whose purse it had to be, was none other than her brother, who ran away from home long back, as a boy. With horror she recollected their meetings and her intention to get pregnant by the seeds of him, her own brother.
*
It was raining. Through the rain-thicket, a train slithered to a halt in a small country station. And as the train pulled out, it had deposited on the deserted platform a lonely passenger: a tall young man in military green. The young man searched around to locate someone to enquire the way out. And there he saw the station master locked his office in no time, unfurled an umbrella and vanished into the rain. Left to lurch in the railway station, the passenger had no other choice but to listen to the rain, patiently.
wpDiscuz