Preface
November, 2005
Approximately 3:00 AM
“Hey, Mister.”
“Hey, Mister.”
I have only been asleep for an hour and with great effort I manage to raise my leaden eyelids. In the dim light filtering through my barred windows, I recognize my lover’s slim form standing in front of my bed.
Mosha kamra dichhe.*
“Mosquitoes are biting me.”
Wordlessly, I arise and follow my lover to the room where she is sleeping tonight. She complains about her pillow and I return to my room to give her my own, but she protests. She's had a bad dream in which her recently deceased mother-in-law had become a ghost. She and her husband have been separated for years but she still lives in his ancestral home. Never having had a comfortable relationship with her mother-in-law, I am not surprised that she should be haunted by the old lady.
After hanging her mosquito net, I lightly rub my lover’s forearm before finally tucking her in. Even in near darkness, my white hand contrasts greatly against her black skin.
Goomo.
“Go to sleep.”
As I turn to leave, she calls out to me in English:
“Good night.”
Back in my room, I lay on my bed with eyes wide open, knowing that sleep will elude me for the rest of the night.
I am happy that my lover is here. Slightly mad, alcoholic, and of questionable character, I have to love her just the way she is. Even if we can not sleep together (what would the maids say?), she has come and tonight that is enough.
How happy I am to see her bright smile and to look into her fathomless eyes. We always laugh together she enjoys my impersonations of her friends and family members. In turn, I giggle at her vulgar language. No one is spared. She even refers to her own father as a “son of a pig” and her daughter as an “illiterate bitch.” Another’s ears might burn from her onslaught of profanities, but I can only laugh.
Tonight she is curious about my relationship with my wife, so I produce a picture which she looks at briefly with a critical eye;
Mal’ta kothay payeccho?
“Where’d you find this trash?”
Excited by my descriptions of our intimate relations and lubricated by a bottle of cheap whisky, my lover stands before the bed and proudly removes her sari. Knowing well the effect she has upon me, she is strutting as her blouse, bra, and petticoat are thrown into a crumpled heap upon the floor. Together on my bed, she places her strong hands on my ears, lowering my head to her breasts. She whispers softly, barely parting her luscious lips. Less air is disturbed than a mosquito could manage with his minuscule wings flapping at half-speed:
Chosho
“Suck it.”
Slowly and softly I tease her with my tongue as she fondles my manhood. She enjoys hearing my exploits with other women and she is curious about my wife. She wants to know about her figure and how often we make love. I lift my head and tease her with details of our intimacies.
My lover’s roughened hand, with a black line across the fingers that I recognize as coming from the iron bars of an auto-rickshaw, casually strokes me as her anticipation grows.
Koro, koro!
“Do it!”
Although I enjoy making love to her, I am mostly happy to hold her in my arms and feel her cool skin against mine. I savor the touch of her cheek against my own and the taste of her skin as I nibble on her shoulder.
kamra debe na
“Don’t bite me.”
On the rare occasion that she touches me affectionately or simply when she looks at me with her kitty-cat eyes, my knees weaken. Now her eye-lids flutter as she wraps her arms tightly around my neck.
Chodo
“Fuck me.”
No matter that our evening of love-making is spoiled when my lover's cell phone rings. Hanging up, she excuses herself to use the bathroom. Just then she notices blood on her petticoat. Picking it up from the pile of garments and inspecting in the dim light, it is determined that her period has arrived early this month.
Even in silhouette, my lover’s naked figure is perfection. It could easily belong to a sixteen year-old. No one could guess that she had a daughter older than that by her physique alone. It stands in defiance of her blatant disregard for her diabetes and high cholesterol.
Despite my lover’s trim body, her age is truly showing on her face. Like the picture of Dorian Grey, her hard-knock days and nights of harder drinking had to make their mark somewhere - and that somewhere certainly isn‘t on her figure.
As I lay awaiting an uncooperative sleep, I bring my hands beneath my chin. The acrid scent of my lover’s womanhood still lingers on my fingers even after my shower. I had used prolific amounts of soap, polishing my hands like military cadet preparing his brass for the parade ground. Still, her fragrance remains and I wonder how I would offer my morning ablutions in such a state. The Bible tells us, “When ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.”
“Hey Mister,” she had called me. In this land of subtlety, this is a very significant gesture.
The traditional custom in Hindu India is that a woman should never call her husband by name. “Mister” was my lover’s amusing way of letting me know that she holds me in some regard. I know that she will never be my wife, nor the mother of my children, and never even a recognized girlfriend, so this is all I can expect from her. The platitudes I have become accustomed to hearing from my wife I will never hear from my lover. “Mister,” is as good as it will ever get, and I have to smile.
There are many trees outside my window. No drapes decorate the windows in my room and I can clearly see their trunks in the soft light of the street lamps. Thin betel nut trunks sway in the breeze while the thicker coconut trees refuse to dance as the wind commands. As I watch the silhouettes rock, casting shadows onto my wall, a long tail dangles from the awning over my window. It is fat, maybe two inches in diameter, and over two feet in length. I saw a langur, known here as a Hanuman monkey, the other day and maybe he was back.
Langurs are diurnal, I remember. What could it be? The serpentine tail moves with a peculiar motion, as if swaying to a snake-charmer‘s horn. Soon it curls up and swings upwards, back over the awning.
My lover is afraid to sleep in this room. She has already seen a bad dream this night and I hope that she sleeps well. When I am in America, I always dream of Calcutta. When I am in Calcutta, I rarely dream of America. Of what I will dream of when I return the States?
Would I dream of my wedding night and how beautiful my wife looked in her gold jewelry and burgundy sari? Would I dream of the soft kisses from her full lips? The times we sat at the Victoria Memorial and laughed at the young lovers shamelessly smooching under trees? The time we walked on the roof of our apartment building and watched the stars rise?
Would I dream of the grand festivals and the night we took our deity of Kali Ma to the Ganga to submerse her in the river’s cool waters? How the Victoria Memorial looked as brilliant as a gem, illuminated by thousands off watt-candles on that darkmoon night. How we rode by on the back of the lorry, long balloons stretched in our hands, whistling in the wind as we held them high above our heads.
Would I dream of my friends, neighbors, and relatives? The meals we shared, the laughs, the tears, and the memories?
Maybe I would dream of my lover; her eyes dark like onyx? The touch of her leathery hands? The salty taste of her skin?
Certainly I would dream of my beloved Calcutta. A city so few bidhesies [foreigners] have experienced and love the way I do. Once Calcutta grabs you in her lover’s embrace and digs her nails into your back, the scars remain forever.
Maybe I will be gone for another year, but I look forward to seeing Calcutta in my dreams. I close my eyes and wait for elusive sleep to finally make her appearance.
* All Bengali has been translated to conversational English, therefore the translations are not literal.
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