Moonlight - a story

There goes the wind again.
It doesn't howl, like it used to when he still lived here, about a year ago. It is subdued, as if it can guess that everything has come to an end. Can you read my thoughts, wind?
The house has been decorated lavishly, and so has the tent in the park in front, its pink cloth a mismatch in the black night. The light is too gaudy, the colours burn the eye; perhaps the occasion is not as joyous as the decor makes it out to be. But that, of course, was another matter.
Suddenly the sluice gates are open, and the memories flood through. Don't you ever stop? he screams inwardly, but they are already there, battering his eyes and ears.

He was sixteen when his mother remarried. His father then had been dead six years, or may be seven, and his grandmother had been prodding her daughter an equal amount of time to get another husband; the poor child needed a father. She died early, though, his grandmother; of a heart attack when he was thirteen.
Since then his family consisted only of his mother, and she became his friend, philosopher and guide. Everyday after school he would come and stand by the threshold of the kitchen, and while by the dusky sunlight his mother cooked he would tell her everything that was happening in his life, down to the minutest detail. Between them there were no pretenses of secrecy, no barriers of formality. He spoke freely to her, of everything from his new physics teacher to the war in Iraq to even his first crush. She would listen patiently, even during power cuts when in the darkness sweat ran down her face and down her side; occasionally she would advise her son, but it was never a binding, never a command, just words meant to help him through.
But then, almost overnight, everything changed. His mother did tell him about the marriage though. In the moonlight, watching him carefully to see his reaction, she told him that she was going to marry again, because he needed a father, and she could not carry on so on her own. To his mind then, it seemed like a dream; he could not fathom how any of this would change his family, he still pictured his mother talking to him as she was now, freely, with no walls in between. But of course, everything did change; when the stranger came into the house and began to live with them, Vinay realised his entire family had been torn away from him, torn away brutally. Every day now he would go to the kitchen again and try to talk, but in the presence of this alien man, their conversations became false, unreal, forced. It seemed as if they were in a play and this man was their audience, and follow the script or the audience will know. Half in anger, half in bewilderment he withdrew into himself, stopped talking to anyone but himself, and for most of the time he was at home he would stay locked in his room, pretending to study, for there was nothing else he could do.
This man who was now his father had a daughter too. Her name was Nikita. He knew because he had known her before; after all, they had lived in the same colony. She was a year younger to him. She boarded her school bus from the same stop as he, and over the years he had established enough of an acquaintance with her to wave a greeting whenever he saw her. Now, however, she was in it too, and he no longer knew her. When they went to school now, together because they lived in the same house, they scarcely talked, walking silently and standing apart. Sometimes, of course, he felt this was wrong, that it wasn't her mistake, that after all she was now his sister, but the thought brought with it so much pain and confusion that he let it go, and vowed never to think about it again.
His mother of course was worried by her son's behaviour, and it wasn't infrequently that she tried to draw him into a conversation. But every conversation, with either his mother or the stranger, sounded so farcical, so forced to him, that try as he might he could not help feeling that this was a different family altogether, not his at all; and in the night as he lay staring at the ceiling he wondered if this was the same house he had lived in for the past several years, and whether this was the same bed he had lain in and slept a peaceful sleep.
This affair continued for several months on end, with him alone and apart from the rest of the family, and then it happened.
The accident.
That night his mother had gone with her new husband to a wedding. He himself had stayed back on the pretext of studying, for he was in no mood of engaging in any form of celebration. At the time the call came he was switching channels on television with no intention whatsoever of watching, and Nikita, who had stayed back too, was in the kitchen fixing herself some lemonade. The phone rang, its jarring note annoying in the dull boredom of the night, and Nikita, glass in hand, went to pick it up.
A few words later she froze.
With a rising sense of foreboding he walked to her and took the reciever from her. The voice at the other end was still recounting the incident. “....They were taken to the Central hospital...and there they declared them dead on arrival...” He let the voice complete, then asked what had happened. His mother and her husband had been travelling to the wedding when a drunken truck driver had rammed his truck into them. His mother had died instantly. Her husband had died on the way to the hospital.
As Vinay replaced the receiver he searched his feelings for any hint of sorrow. There was none. He willed himself to cry, but no tears came. He willed himself to scream out aloud, but his voice was clear and calm. As Nikita, standing in front of him, fell on her knees with a long wail, Vinay realised with terror that somewhere down the line he had lost the mother he had so dearly loved, but his heart somehow was frozen into ice.


Ahead of him a frail old woman stands greeting the guests, and on seeing him, she turns this way and jostles towards him, and a few kids tag along.
“Oh, Vinay beta! You have finally come! Nikita has been waiting for you so long! She was worried that you wouldn't come....”
“How could I not come, grandma?” he asks rhetorically, a part of him wondering whether he should call her grandma; after all she was Nikita's grandmother. But he lets the question pass, fade away into space.
“It was Nikita's engagement.”
His words let go a million emotions in his heart, but he stifles each one of them, one by one. Why? A part of his mind asks and the question floats free, a soap bubble coloured in a thousand myriad colours. Why? it asks again, but of course he knows.....

After the accident, Nikita's grandparents took them under their wing. Vinay initially repulsed the idea, for to him, they were no more than strangers, but they were content with leaving him to himself, and did not mind his staying silent and not talking to them. So he stayed in their house, but not as part of their family; apart, as if he were a paying guest at their house.
With Nikita the sorrow of the tragedy was still large. Most of the time she would sit silently, staring into space, her lips pursed tightly as if to contain the grief, or fury, within. Her eyes stayed puffed and red from the constant crying, and it was not infrequently that she broke out crying, or started off into a series of sobs. Sometimes when he walked past her room, he would hear her sobbing quietly, or see her head buried in the pillow as if she was trying to stifle herself. Her grandparents tried to console her, of course, but Vinay thought that hers were wounds that would heal not by any cajoling, but by the gently lapping waves of time.
Vinay, however, remained, on the outside at least, untouched by the tragedy, or so he thought. Often he would see Nikita crying and wonder why, why he stayed so numb, why he couldn't feel for his mother as Nikita felt for her father. In the dead of the night, however, as he slept he would stand by the kitchen threshold again, and his mother would be standing by the stove with his back to him. But through the window would come not the red sunlight of the dusk but the icy silver of the moon, and he would talk and talk but his mother wouldn't respond, till when she would turn and the moonlight would reveal a corpse, and another standing by her side.
One day, perhaps a fortnight after the accident, Vinay went and sat on the stairs. The house faced a park that was almost treeless, with a few low-rise buildings beyond, so that when all over the city it was already dusk the red sun still shone into the house, and it was this sun Vinay watched as it continued its slow, leisurely path into the bowels of the earth. Across its face flitted a flock of birds, and Vinay wondered how they could fly, how they could let go so easily, when he was so bound in chains. He closed his eyes and tried to fly with the birds, forget his worries, forget the past that he was to be sad about, and tried to feel the wind rush through him and cleanse the soul within. Somewhere a koel sang, and Vinay let his heart sing with the koel, the past, present and future be damned.
The door behind him opened, and footsteps hesitated, then walked out. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Nikita come and sit by his side. Immediately Vinay felt awkward; he felt he was invading her moment of solitude. Perhaps he should get up and go. But she didn’t seem to mind him, so he stayed, and continued to stare into the dusk. But then, there came the sound of sharp breaths, and Vinay realized she had started crying again, her head resting on her knees, and her hair falling ahead so he couldn’t see her face.
Vinay wondered what to do. A part of him wanted to walk away, something he had done for the past several days, and indeed for the past several months. Yet something inside him said that the girl beside him must mean something to him: if not as a sister then at least as a compatriot in tragedy. He tried to look ahead into the dusk again, ignoring both the voices, but somehow the scene had lost its appeal; Nikita’s sobs sounded surprisingly clear in his ears, and somewhere pierced his heart.
“I can understand how you feel”, he said, wondering if that counted as consolation. Apparently it didn’t, for Nikita turned her head at him and looked at him with venom, as if he had run a sword through her deepest wounds. Vinay turned towards the dusk again, and for a minute or so, silence prevailed, broken only by Nikita’s sobs. Then he started again.
“Some things have happened”, he began, and wondered how stupid his statement must sound. “Things over which neither you nor I had any control. Maybe…maybe you don’t want to listen to me. Maybe I am interfering….and you see me as a stranger perhaps….I don’t know.” He had said all this staring at the floor, and presently he turned to face Nikita. She was looking at him now, and though she had stopped sobbing, in her eyes he could see the tears poised, waiting to come out. He spoke carefully now, looking at her, as if his words were the gospel, and had it in them to make or break her heart. “True, I haven’t spoken to you for so long now….And you are probably wondering why I am suddenly warming up….But…as I said, things have happened….And I have seen you crying so often…..And in so much pain…..I ….I wonder if I can help…” With that, he stopped abruptly and stared stupidly at her eyes. He wondered what she thought of this little eloquence, this nonsensical monologue. Perhaps he had made some sense after all: Nikita looked at him thoughtfully, then averted her eyes and looked at the floor, silent.
They stayed like this for a few moments, she staring at the floor, he looking at her, waiting for her to respond. Around them night had finally taken hold, and the clouds and the sky above were drenched in the lustrous violet of the fresh night, except for a thin strip of grey-blue at the very end of the western horizon, where the dying sun threw off its final few rays of light.
Vinay found himself looking at the sky and wondering, wondering if the relationship between them had in any way improved. He turned and looked at Nikita again. Perhaps she wouldn’t answer. Perhaps there really was nothing to answer. He sighed and got up, and with a final look at the young night sky, turned to leave.
“Vinay”, Nikita called out, when he had reached the door. She was looking at him now, and Vinay noticed she had stopped crying. “It is okay to cry.”
That night, as he slept, he saw his dream again, saw his mother again as a corpse, and as so many times before, got up in a cold sweat. Then he lay back again, staring at the ceiling, letting his mind work its way slowly into reality. Over the walls the silvery moonlight threw weird shadows of a tree, and as it swayed to and fro in an unseen wind he saw the dream again, and saw his mother, talked to her as he had in the past few years. “It is okay to cry”, she had said, and the tears came today; at first a solitary one that lay poised over his cheek, afraid that it would fall down and shatter his composure, but then like the summer rains they came, and flowed easily and freely, washing down his sorrow, washing down his grief and dissolving all those chains in which he had kept himself bound, unconsciously, for so long. The voice inside him that had stayed silent for so long now screamed in agony, screamed that he had lost his mother, lost his mother whom he had loved so dearly, and it was his mother, it was his loss, and of course, goddamnit, it was okay to cry.
For several moments he pressed his face into the pillow and let himself out, let his sorrow speak its full. He did not know how much he cried that night; for all he knew, it could have been a few minutes, it could have been an hour. But he did know that somewhere the shackles had been broken, somewhere a river now flowed free and easy, and the grey clouds that had stifled so earlier had broken into rain. In a way that he would never be able to fathom, that night finally let him shut down the tragedy and opened the gates to joy. And that night, as he lay sobbing in the moonlight, Vinay finally understood Nikita's sorrow, and his heart went out to her.

“Where is Nikita?” he asks the old lady, and is in turn led, on cue, by one of the children tailing her, into the house. It is a festive atmosphere in the house, and everyone who is of any substance at all is either carrying things up and down or flashing smiles to the guests. There are a lot of people whom he does not know, and Vinay wonders again whether this is indeed his own family, whether he is not just an idle man coming to his office colleague's wedding. But of course, Nikita was different.
Upstairs, and into a small room Vinay recognises instantly as Nikita's, though in this night of celebration it looks surprisingly alien. There are a score or so women in the room, all huddled around the mirror, and in the centre sits Nikita, subdued as the women decide for her what she should wear; it sounds strange to Vinay, for after all this is just an engagement, but then he is unfamiliar with women's devices. So he stands by the side, waiting for Nikita to see him.
Nikita sees him, and for an instant her face lights up. But then, of course, she knows it all and she falls back into her languor, though she still stares at him from the mirror. In the commotion, they just look at each other; they are too familiar with each other's thoughts to say anything.
Soon however, the ladies notice him in the room, and a fuss ensues. He looks at Nikita as a couple of girls take it upon themselves to flirt with him, but the moonlight is too bright today, and it reveals everything. He would so very want not to see the truth.

Next morning, Vinay made it a point to greet Nikita in the same way he had done before all this had happened. As she came down for breakfast, he gave her his traditional bow-of-the-head and flick-of-the-wrist greeting. For a moment she stared at him, alarmed, then, somewhat embarrassed, returned his greeting with a nod. No matter, Vinay thought to himself. He had created this rift, it was his then to build the bridges.
Nikita had completed her boards two months ago, and was now studying in the same college as he. Which meant, of course that they would travel together, in the same bus.
When he sat beside her in the bus that day, he sat erect, looking straight ahead, as if he were the new guy in school facing up to the headmaster. It wasn't that he had always felt this uncomfortable; two days ago, he would have given her a massive cold shoulder. Today was different, of course, for as the bus picked on momentum, and Nikita turned to the window to look at the city pass by (or perhaps to avoid him, but it didn't matter), he tried very hard to wreck his brain for some topic of conversation. None came, of course, and with an inward curse at himself, he began, “What all courses do you have now?”
Nikita looked at him, surprised the question had been aimed at her. Then she frowned, thinking. “Hmm....we have a Physics course, and a Mathematics one, and there is also something to do with Electronics. And we also have to do English this sem. There are a couple more, the one on....wait...oh yeah, basic computer science and another on chemistry.” Her answer over, and silence again, as she looked out of the window, and he looked straight ahead. An old lady climbed the bus and sat in the seat in front of him, her slow movements irritating the impatient passengers of the bus. He wondered if, fifty years down the line, when he and Nikita were as old as this lady, they would still find it so difficult to talk to each other.
“There is this professor, who teaches us physics. His name is Saha, I think. Do you know what kind of a prof he is?” Nikita asked. She had turned fully towards him, and in her manner Vinay saw no hint of any reluctance or hesitation.
“Ah. Saha”, he replied, forcing a smile, “He's an item, that one. And he has a very absurd sense of humour. He will start laughing at that precise moment when you realise you don't understand what is going on. Once, he was taking a class on the general theory of relativity, and everybody is looking at him with rapt attention, trying to note down every word he says. And in the middle of an equation, he digresses, and goes out of the way to comment on a student's hair, and laughs out aloud. But the interesting point is that none of the students realise that he has moved away from the topic, and it is not until he has stopped laughing and started to teach again that one student, one solitary guy, recognises the joke and laughs out aloud.”
Nikita smiled at the anecdote, though he knew it wasn't so funny. Her smile, though, was free and easy, and Vinay realised that this was the first time she had smiled, in all these months. A current of joy ran through his body on seeing her joy, fleeting though it was, and a part of his mind cursed him for denying her this trifling moment of happiness for so long.
As she looked out of the window again, he realised that, for her part, she had talked freely enough, that she had erected no walls of formality between them. At this thought, he relaxed. True, she had talked to him as she would have talked to a stranger, but he knew that even that meant she had put behind her a lot of things: the remarriage, the accident, the loss of her father. Perhaps he would forever remain a stranger to her, perhaps all their conversations would be only this long, but he took heart in the fact that she did not repulse him, she did not avoid him completely, and that there was fertile ground in which the first seeds of friendship could be sown.
Those, perhaps, were the first steps taken that day, and slowly, but steadily, the bond between the two of them grew. Living as they did together, they couldn't but help running into each other; and it is often the case that a few run-ins is all that is required for friendships to blossom. With Vinay and Nikita, however, there also was a common tragedy that in some way held them together, although it fell like a shadow over their hearts. Their friendship, then, grew not as much out of the trifling conversations and the small talk they had on the way to the college, or over lunch or dinner, but more out of the moments they spent together, when, as one sat morose and sobbed softly, the other would come and sit by the side. They would just sit together, silent, for both of them knew that sorrow does not so much get extinguished as it dies out on its own, and while it does that, it is helpful sometimes to have someone by your side who knows your sorrow, who can feel the bleeding of your heart. In those moments that they spent, not talking, maybe crying, or maybe looking out into the moon, they would not wonder about each other, and yet they would, somewhere deep in their heart which knew that it was not alone. It was in those moments that the faintest of threads began to grow between them, the threads of trust, confidence, friendship.
They did come out of their grief, though, but they came out with the treasure of a new-found relationship glimmering in their hearts. The bond between them had been made and perfected over sorrow, but now it blossomed in their joy, as every moment, every hour they found free they began to spend with each other. In the journey to and from college they would talk profusely, talk of all that had happened with them, all that was worth discussing and all that was not so worth discussing. They confided in each other freely, they trusted each other blindly, and they enjoyed each other's company. Once when Vinay managed to escape flunking his exams, they did the most insane things possible that evening, rushing to the roof of their college and screaming out abuses aloud, and then dining at an expensive restaurant where, having squandered all their pocket money, they had to hitch a ride home from a bewildered old man in an ancient Maruti 800.
Often during the nights Vinay would lie on his bed thinking of Nikita. In a surprising turn of events, somehow, his life had come to revolve around her. Every trifling thing that gave him joy was in some way linked to her. Yet there was something, somewhere, that worried his heart. It eluded him, this little worry of his, but it was growing, and he did not know what it was. But pure joy has a way of muting your senses, drowning you in its flow, and even in those nights that this shadow passed across his heart, it would not be long before the memory of the moments that they had spent together that day would overwhelm him again, and he would drift into sleep, contented, satisfied, and peaceful at heart.

It is time.
The ladies have all gone away; only Nikita and he himself are in the room. Through the mirror she looks at him. Her eyes are wide, beautiful, but the maskara makes them look extravagant, almost indecent. He remembers her smile, toothy and jovial, but today with the lipstick on her lips are closed shut, unhappy. Her face, which he always thought was radiant, has been effused with so much powder and makeup it looks artificial. She is not beautiful today, he realises. A pang of guilt pierces his heart. Must she be?
For a moment images flash through his mind again. Nikita sitting on the stairway and crying. Nikita sobbing gently as she slept. Nikita in a restaurant, laughing aloud at a joke he had told, and he admiring the light in her eyes and the joy in her face. And now this.
She gets up to go, and without looking at him, turns towards the door. He doesn't stop her; he has no right to. It is her engagement today, he reminds himself, and tries to be happy, but of course he can't. It is her engagement today, and his blood turns a freezing fire as it flows through his veins.
Nikita is the best sister in the world, he tells himself aloud.
Who are you lying to, Vinay?

Two years and he had passed out of college, and was struggling for a job. He found one six months later, in an IT firm in Bangalore. Time flew by, and very soon the day when he was to leave, forever, because he had to live and work there, was upon them.
That day Nikita was so upset she refused to come out of her room. With his luggage in hand Vinay stood at her door, waiting, hoping that she would come out and wish him goodbye. She mattered a lot to him now; she was one of the few people in this world he held this close to his heart, and today, as she sat behind the door, he could not but help feel a growing despair welling up inside him. He knocked the door, but she did not open. He called out that he was leaving, but she did not reply. He pictured her in his mind, lying down on her bed and crying into her pillow, and he willed her to open the door, willed her to talk to him one last time, at least to say goodbye. But the wooden door in front remained steadfastly closed. He gave out a sigh that as if took the life out of him, and, with one last forlorn look at the steadfastly closed door, turned and left.
The next six months to him were agony. True, he and Nikita had been friends for about two years now, but this was the first time he realised how much she meant to him. Suddenly, with no one to confide in, no one to share his stupid anecdotes with, life seemed dull, a dreary desert with no oasis of emotion. Every night, and every day, whenever he would be free, his mind would wander off to Nikita, search for her around, and then sit down dejected. He relived all those moments he had been with Nikita, but this time out of sorrow, this time out of longing. His hand yearned for her touch, his eyes yearned to see her smile. And in those days, Vinay realised the tiny worry that had been nagging him at the back of his mind for so long: it was this, this strange storm that now ravaged the landscape of his heart.
He phoned her of course, often, every day, initially, but then every week. But she would either not pick up the phone or reply that she was busy, that she couldn't talk. Fine, he told himself; if she does not wish to talk to him, nor does he wish to talk to her. But that was a lie of course, and it only made him think of her even more, made him even more morose, nostalgic, sad. He waited for her, waited for her to call, or speak, or visit him one last time; he prayed to God to see her smile one final time, to send him that one last glimpse of her that he would clutch to his heart till he died.
She came of course, and one evening when he came back home he saw her standing near the guard's room just outside the colony. She stood looking at the sky, her frame silhouetted in the moonlight; he touched her on her shoulder and she turned, and looked at him, into his eyes.
That moment there froze in time, and it was as if he had looked into her eyes for all eternity. He looked into her eyes now as she sat on the stairs, telling him that it was okay to cry. He looked into her eyes as she sat in the bus, asking him about her physics teacher. He looked into her eyes as they sat in a cafe, sharing a joke about a common friend. And he looked into her eyes as they were now, wet, black, wide, the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen or would ever want to see. Somewhere something broke, and the dreams of a million nights shaped themselves in his mind, the thoughts of a million lifetimes when he had sat thinking about the moments he had spent with Nikita, when he had sat relishing her joy and his own, when he had sat with love buried deep in his heart. She had never been his sister, she had never been his friend; in that few moments that they spent staring at each other, the moonlight revealed everything, brought them to themselves, showed them the truth that blossomed so in their hearts, showed them the truth that was as beautiful as anything they could have imagined, and more beautiful than anything they could have imagined.
In a trance they made their way to the lift, pressed the button for the fourth floor. They got out, he opened the door, all this time not neither looking into the other's eyes, for they knew what they would find, they knew what was going to happen.
They entered the apartment and stood facing each other, the moon and the stars visible through a window by the side, the rest of the room plunged in darkness. Vinay looked into her eyes as she looked at his, and in the moonlight saw her eyes, wide, gentle, her eyelashes as they bobbed up and down when she blinked, like waves breaking on a calm sea shore, her hair as they fell straight over her shoulders, their feathery blackness glistening in the pale light, her lips as they shimmered. He stepped up to her, held her in his arms. She did not resist. Then he bent down and put his lips on hers, a light kiss, no more. His mind screamed, a million questions, a hundred clouds thundered over his heart, but thought was nowhere today, there was just this feeling, deep within, that bliss was right here, right now, and its name was Nikita.
He kissed her again on the lips. Her lips did not respond, but she didn't push him away either. His own stood poised there, his mind still short circuiting, but what was to happen had already happened; he bent and kissed her again, and this time she responded, her lips wet and passionate on his own. Suddenly Vinay found himself drenched in ecstasy, his heart singing a million songs, raising itself into an octave he had never thought it could reach. He closed his eyes, let himself drown himself in her, let his lips take him to what had been paradise for so very long, and let his eyes see a million Nikitas; Nikita in the bed, crying, Nikita beside him on the bus, Nikita through closed doors and Nikita now. There was only one sight:Nikita, only one fragrance: Nikita, there was only one feeling: Nikita, and there was only one truth: Nikita, and in the realisation he revelled her touch, lived her, and lived her a million times.
The night watched silently as they made love that night, not remembering the past, nor caring for the future, for the joy of the present was paradise itself. The moon came out of its veil of clouds to look upon them, to witness the one emotion that was divine. Far away crows crowed and dogs barked, and deep down the city squirmed and slithered in its gaudy light, but here was heaven, here was eternity, and here were two souls merged into one.
She stayed with him for the next week, and those days they lived not as friends but as lovers, in each other’s arms, in each other’s hearts. Their relationship hadn't changed; even when they had sat, almost a year ago, over a cup of coffee in the canteen, it was love that had blossomed in their hearts, and it was love that blossomed now. Neither heaven, nor earth, seemed to give them as much ecstasy as did each other's company, as did the touch of his hand or the feel of her hair. The prelude of five years culminated now in those few days of sheer elation; heaven as if had chosen their hearts to descend.
She had to leave then, and in the station they stood looking at each other while all around people hustled and jostled to get into the train. The train hooted once, and the jostling increased, and several passengers gave them irritated looks: they were standing in the way. But they were oblivious to it all. They stared into each other's eyes, remembering the nights past, living again their love. Hoot! the train cried again, and Nikita picked up her small suitcase absently. Then on impulse she hugged him, and he hugged her in turn, feeling her feathery black hair ruffle in his face. Then they kissed, for that one last time with the same overwhelming passion, on each other's lips, not caring that all around them people were staring, half with wonder, half with disgust. Goodbye, Nikita, he whispered in her ear, and let his heart soar into the sky one last time.

Nikita had called a month later, frantic that her grandparents were looking for a groom, so what should we do now? Of course, Vinay couldn't do anything. We have to let go, Nikita. Ours is not going to be. It would be impossible for me to marry you. Marry the boy your grandparents choose for you. The arguments had been heated of course, but Vinay knew that there was only this far their love could go. Someday, Nikita would have to marry, and she will have to realise that there are some people you just cannot fall in love with.
A card had then come some time later informing him of Nikita's engagement. He had torn away the card, not out of sorrow but out of anger, anger that Nikita hadn't cared to talk to him. Talk to you? Oh, come on.
He stands here now, in the park under the tent, and whatever little ceremony there is is in full swing. The people have all gathered around the centre, where Nikita's grandfather, now so old his cheekbones jut out like cliffs jutting out of the water, proceeds to announce the engagement. He then hands the mike over to Nikita's uncle, a roly-poly affair with a balding head that sparkles in the light. He cracks a few jokes, but of course Vinay can't hear them from here. He doesn't want to hear either; there is sufficient noise in his own mind to listen too.
Five years ago, perhaps, he would never have thought that things would come to such a pass. When he had sat on the stairs that fateful evening, he had never bargained for all the happiness and joy that Nikita had given him. Perhaps it would have been better if he had never talked to her. Perhaps it would have been better if the flames of love had never lapped the walls of his heart. Perhaps, but it was over now. There would be wounds to cleanse, souls to mend, but it would heal. Time would heal all.
But then the images come again, this time with brutal force. Nikita on the stairs, lying on her bed, talking to him, laughing with him, speaking of a million joys and woes, Nikita, Nikita, Nikita, Nikita. Her face swam around him in dewy circles in the light, her voice called out to him from the stars and the moon, her fragrance drifted from the flowers in the gardens of heaven. His eyes filled with tears at the thoughts of her, for though he might have tried to convince himself a million times that all would heal, he knew it would not. He knew that he would love Nikita for all eternity. He knew that this engagement was but the first nail in his coffin, the coffin in which he will be buried alive. And in a surprising clarity of thought he realised that this marriage could not, should not happen.
No, this marriage will not happen.
He noticed that everyone was looking at him now, staring at him. Perhaps he had said something aloud.
“What do you mean, Vinay?” asked Nikita's uncle, an edge to his voice. Vinay walked forward, into the merry crowd that had suddenly lost its mirth.
“This marriage cannot happen.”
“Why?” came the question, and Vinay imagined a guillotine around his neck. Dissent and you shall die.
“Because”, he began, mustering courage, “She is in love with another.” He looked at Nikita, and in her eyes he saw relief, and joy, and for the first time this evening he realised that she was beautiful, was always beautiful. She reached out and grabbed his hand, and pressed it. A tiny splurge of joy ran through his sickened veins, sick no more.
“Who? Who is she in love with?” Nikita's uncle was asking. But Vinay was looking at her eyes, at her wide eyes with their black pupils that looked like deep whirpools. They conveyed lifetimes to him, and even as the people around them watched with unabashed curiosity, Vinay pulled Nikita towards him and held her in a strong embrace. They stood like that for an eternity, or so it seemed to him, she burying herself in his chest, he feeling her hair brush gently against his face, each feeling somehow complete in the other's arms. The world outside, of course, stood waiting for an answer, but Vinay took his time, looking into Nikita's eyes as he spoke, his voice, though merely a whisper, echoing throughout the silent crowd.
“With me”, he said, and Nikita smiled, a solitary tear flowing down her cheek. He smiled too, and they both cried, because it was all over, because it did not matter, because in their hearts the sun was shining and paradise was restored. The crowd around looked into each other's faces, the groom, and the rest of the family stared at them alarmed. But high above the moon went on with the night, and through its thin veil of clouds looked upon the world, wondered how love could blossom in the murky waters of humankind, and smiled for them both, smiled for Vinay and Nikita, and through its pearly moonlight wished them the best of eternity.
“She is in love with me.”






Endnote -I don't think I can claim fully the credit for the idea for this story - it derives, more or less, from an ancient newspaper clipping that said that some celebrity had sued some lawyer for alleging that she had fathered a child with her own step brother.
When I read the news at first, I found it shocking. How can you hook up with your own step-brother? I asked. But when those initial waves of shock and alarm began to fade away, I realised it wasn't such an abominable idea after all. I have a tendency to look down upon romantic relations within the family, as most other people have, I am sure. But is a step-brother/step-sister relation really a familial tie? Or is it something that is forced upon us by the society? Is it something like those boundaries that we like to draw around ourselves, blatant fissures that prevent us from joining hands, that prevent those purest of pure threads of love from crystallizing?I wondered. And in a flash, this story was upon me, whole, almost exactly as it appears here. I was so stunned by the beauty of the thought I found it difficult to study for my exam, which was the next day (it goes without saying that I screwed it). When I actually sat down to write it, I found my writing prowess not quite upto the job. I had to rewrite it thrice before I could be satisfied, but even then, this piece of writing comes nowhere close to that sheer beauty that dropped like a meteor onto my head.