eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 44
STORIES
Photo courtesy: Jöshua Barnett, Flickr
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thin bones, which she attributes to anaemia.
The government’s non-commercial advertisements fed all her suspicions. The night is
tacit, submissive in the most possible sense.
He whispered in her ears. “I know. You are
trying hard to pretend to sleep.” She feigned
deafness.
The night changes colours. She has blossomed again. She can do anything, but
can’t make love to herself. Her eyes are half
opened. She wants the early years back. She
imagined it several times. Some soft flowers
showered on her, sweets left half eaten, the
poetic conversations. Raju stretched his
hand resting on her softly like ripples bubbling in the lake. Saroja felt the intimate
screams, once very strange and familiar
later. She too has the hunger, the wait of the
desires, the more realistic quarrels hovering
around her past. She threw his cold fingers.
The coldness of the night made her invisible like the glossy leaves of night queen. She
knew his face. Dark and skinny. His body
is slightly feverish, and shivering. “Sirisha
eFiction India | June 2014
had some strange disease.” Suddenly, her
friend’s words echoed in her thoughts, to
her surprise the power came, the fan made
enough noise, sprung her velvety curls. She
can no longer feign her ignorance of Sirisha
knowing the least important details about
her children. She can no longer take pride
that her curses came true in reality. She
knows that, they knew it. She holds her
children as if a monster from her fairytales
comes alive and takes them with him. She
wants the night to melt. She closes her eyes
– similar to those several eyes she had seen
from those photos with fragrant garlands
– ignoring his amorous appreciations. She
wants to live in the day, wants to handle
his anger and the children’s science lessons.
She curses the night, its poisonous wings,
the night queen’s fragrance from the attic,
and the filmy rain. He becomes desperate.
When the palm vine leaves his body, the
sun brings more toiling work to her, she
is contended as a maid of short-living. Till
then, she feigns the same deafness to her
children’s nightmarish school days.