eFiction India eFiction India Vol.02 Issue.09 | Page 44

STORIES Photo courtesy: Jöshua Barnett, Flickr 43 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.