A story

A Story….

I dragged my feet across the grimy ground floor corridor; my strides became slower as the black doorway drew closer. I took a deep breath before entering. This was the doorway that had enclosed the entirety of my life for the past year, her serene face beamed at me through the doorway, like a painting from a frame. She was immersed in her labors in the sterility of the laminar flow chamber, just the way she’d been the first time I’d entered this Microbiology lab of ILRI, a dreamy research scholar yearning to complete my PhD. (Use of Apsergillus Asdifidus in tanning technology.)

“You should wear shoes around here.” Were her first words to me, when I’d stepped into the mosquito filled room, fighting to chase away a swarm that was attacking my squirming toes. “Mrs. Harini Subramaniam. Scientist B” her voice was smoothly self-assured. She held out her hand to me and I shook it reluctantly as her large coarse palms enveloped my own.

The moment I saw her, I knew that she possessed the wild untamed beauty of the ocean- and its violence too -with Her roughly carved face, the waves of her black tumbling hair crashing all around her face, her eyes flashing with primal vitality.

I’ve always shared a strange equation with water. The sight of its blue expanse exerted an irresistible pull over me, and I’ve always succumbed-only to drown. Over twenty-two years of trying to learn swimming, I’ve never managed to stay afloat, my surrender to its elemental might was unavoidable, and its consumption of me was complete.

In the early days of our relationship, I realized that she had the same effect on me. It was as if her very presence catapulted me into a breathless agony that felt like being thrust underwater. All those walks- in the leafy pathways around ILRI in the softness of the light dispersing through the leaves, when the birds chirped half-heartedly as if to fill the silence that enveloped us into a cosseted existence we shared.

And those long hot afternoons when we’d escape the dingy confines of our “microbial menagerie” (that’s how she referred to that tiny room.) to the air-conditioned comfort of Hot Meals (a restaurant right across the road) where even the food, the crowd and the blare of music channels couldn’t come to my rescue.

But the real magnitude of my obsession confronted me in a totally new dimension. “Hi.” She said, while shooting a sharp quizzical look at the paper in my hand. “It’s a story I’ve written.” I explained. “Read it out then” she said commandingly.

And the first words of the story that left my mouth transported us to a different world, a world where we weren’t separated by endless bottles of stains, where the laminar flow chamber we shared was a stunning castle, where a smile or a look from her could force ink through my dry pen, and stories from my hollow soul. I’ve never been a writer, all my life I’ve believed that words came to an inspired few who had a muse to lead them on towards the tempting mirage of living the story you’ve written.

I wasn’t an inspired man, I was possessed, and I knew that those stories would pilot me towards my salvation.

“Not bad.” She had said when I’d finished. “Not bad for a science geek. This is your first story? So you’ve unleashed your creativity after all these years, eh?”

No, I wanted to say. You’re the one who’s set this fire loose, not me. All I wanted to do was create stories just to wrap the two of us together, stories where we run to each other, where we hold each other, where we give ourselves to each other and make love together.

I’ve never believed that plain lust could propel me this far, as I got closer and closer to her, the stories kept flowing, sometimes after exhausting 12 hr days at the labs, I still managed to stay up to write two stories, it was the only thing that kept me going. There were a million stories throbbing within my head waiting to be born by the miracle of her voice and the gift of her touch.

“Hey my entry has been adjudged the best by the Mylapore women’s forum. They’ve invited me to their function to read it out.” My eyes lingered over her exposed skin of her neck as she waved off two mosquitoes that were perched there. “Oh. Congrats.” She said, oblivious to my infiltrative gaze that scanned the entire length of her lean body. “I want you to come with me this evening for the felicitation.”

My voice was heatedly unsteady, and my eyes bored into hers without flinching. Just then my arms slipped over a bottle of Silver Nitrate I’d been gripping too tightly. As the liquid seeped through my palms, blackening the entire area, her soft laughter couldn’t make me conscious of my clumsiness. As she wiped my arms, with the soft yet firm touch of her hands, she chided me. “Look at you, so careless, AgNO₃ stains will take a long time to fade. And they’ll laugh at you. What a fine writer you are, with your arms black with the inkiness of your words.”

I forced a laugh as I thought, “My arms have not been stained with the black ink of my stories, but burnt with the blaze of passion.”

That evening, as I read out my story to that politely disinterested audience, my eyes kept reaching out to meet hers, as if to make sure that she was still with me. Of all the women present there, she was the only one who could make my voice quiver. The mere tilt of her head made me pause for breath, and the way she cupped he chin at a pivotal part in my story made me tremble with expectation as I read out those lines breathlessly.

Every bonfire dies luminously into crumbling red ashes, every river runs out of drive as it surrenders the last vestiges of its identity to the open mouth of the greedy sea, every crusade for a lost cause peters out at the sight of the sneering face of defeat, every sprinter runs out of breath at the last cruel mile, and every story comes to an end. That night was inevitable.

As her lips trembled against mine as I probed the depths of her being for the meaning I’d sought for my existence since the first time we’d met. My body shuddered with ecstasy when the answering echoes reached me. I stared hungrily at her sleeping face framed by the mass of her unkempt hair, at her naked body entwined between my arms, at her white underwear that we’d flung carelessly on my study desk, it sat innocently on “Industrial Microbiology – an Introduction.” Like a scared kid in a dentist’s waiting room, at her smeared eyelashes, at the lipstick stains all their vivid red hardly visible over my blackened hands, at the single bed filled with her clothes and mine.

I reached out to extricate her ID card from beneath her soft ear lobes, her ID card photo (her bespectacled grim face staring at me like a joke, when I looked at her soft face on my white pillow.)

Dr. (Mrs.) Harini Subramaniam.

Wait, what were these bracketed appendages doing to this lovely lovely name I loved. They scowled at me crossly like a nasty disclaimer beneath an attractive discount offer.

A sharp intake of breath from me shook her awake, she smiled at me groggily. “Where’s the phone? Got to call my husband.”

As I heard those sounds of domesticity reaching me like a violent curse from my corner desk, I reeled backward with the impact of my realization.

“Hey, I’m at the lab. Yeah it’s late. “ I looked up so fast at the sound of her voice, it was like being betrayed by a masked villain. Her voice had taken off the sensuous mask it’d worn for me to reveal its domestic duplicity. It was softened all of a sudden, it reminded me of the hard mangoes at home changed from tasting sharp and tangy one day to succulent and tenderly sweet within the span of a night.

“Have the kids gone to bed? I’ll come in half an hour. See you, darling.”

The click of the phone alerted me to her exit and I stared disbelievingly at the open door and her disappearing shadow. Tears stung my eyes, tears long suppressed along with a dangerous knowledge, tears stemming from a truth I’d known all along, I wasn’t a victim of her deception, but a prisoner of the make believe world I’d created for myself.

The story had ended and I was trapped within its pages forever, powerless to withstand the sorrowful tide that’d engulfed me. And I’m doomed to stay within this page you’re holding in your hands right now- rendered defenseless in the face of my terrible fate and doomed to the flat silence of this feeble paper as I ramble about within its torn borders searching in vain for the destiny it’s snatched from my arms.

“….in vain for the destiny it’s snatched from my arms.” The last words on the paper got smudged as my tears fell onto it to mingle with the ink. I folded that sheets and put them into my blazer pocket. As I looked at myself in the mirror, my eyes smiled cynically at the sight of my deadened face. “The fellow’s worked too hard for his PhD thesis, looks really worn out after all that.” That’s what all those voices said-the voices from the seminar hall drifted into the bathroom, but my eyes knew better.

As I stepped out, my eyes sought out hers immediately and she strode forward in a flash to meet me. “Brilliant work Ashok. And your defense was impeccable; your seminar couldn’t have been better. You blew away the people who took your viva….” Her words faded into meaningless sounds at the back of my head as her face filled my thoughts. “And, here’s my husband Subramaniam, you haven’t met him have you?”

Her voice suddenly bored into my consciousness and I looked up blankly to see a tall gentleman in glasses who shook my hands vigorously. I stared at Harini in silence as she continued, “Ashok is one of my brightest students- yes the one I’ve told you about” she looked at me and paused, before continuing “the writer.” She finally said and then smiled at me. “ He’s leaving for the USA where he’s got an offer from….”

“Houston University Junior Scientist” I completed mechanically. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.” Perhaps it was my imagination, but her face darkened as I said this.

My hands were in my pockets; they were twisting with agony crushing those sheets in anger as she continued to engage her husband in mindless banter. Finally in a sudden flash of resolve, I took out those sheets and smoothened out their wrinkles. Her eyes grew wide as she watched me and we looked at each other directly after a long time. “Harini.” My voice was a vacant whisper “Read this story after I leave.”

Her hands shivered as they touched my fingers when she took the sheets I’d held out.

She held my hand for a long time and the silence of those last few minutes could have carried me back to an irretrievable past where the only two of us shared an impenetrable bubble, a bubble that had burst long since.

“I’ll miss your stories, Ashok.” She said softly.

“I have no more stories left for you.” I said wearily and turned back.

When I reached the safety of my room, I buried my face in my arms, and when I caught sight of my arms, I stared in shock. The black layer that had spanned the entire area of my hands had shrunk away, dotting my palms with tiny black spots- like an awful souvenir from an accident. The burns were healing, and the scars were fading.