A Story

SILENT RIVER

The Man came back again and again a hundred and one times, and told tragic but amusing stories.

Ones he told me the story of a man who always fell asleep while making love, and another time the tragedy of a female spirit trapped in a man’s body. Mohit, wanted to be Mohini. “Your name is Vishnu”, desperately Mohit told his lover again and again, “why don’t you make me Mohini.” The man across me endlessly laughed like the ghost of Mohit. Suddenly he stopped concluding through the laughter that Vishnu himself was a Mohini in search of his man.

Yet another time, he told me about the terror of how two men trying to make love in a public place were caught and beaten-up and looted by some people. He also told me in detail about how gay men cruised and did sex in public toilets in Bombay, at Caunaught Place, at the Marina beach and at Lalbaug.

Many times he told me about gay men who were caught in a straight world’s marriage trap - their ways of sneaking out into a world of their kind and so on, and he also showed concern over how they suffered contradiction and the mess of confusion and trouble balancing the two worlds.

Some time back he just finished the funny story of the troubled young homosexual man who was seduced by a psychiatrist to whom he had gone to get treated.

Seemingly tired, he sat back and was trying to read the newspaper – it was obvious that he was struggling to get out into another world. Restless as we were for a while, and before the silence grew heavy he began talking again.

The rain clouds I saw through the window in the south corner far away a little while ago began pouring … and in no time it was wet all over.

I was thinking about the silent river and the swiftly moving silver fish above the mud underneath. Soon I was humming an old boat song … “When do I see again the northern girl …”, the country boats floated in the prickly rain droops falling through the peculiar slant of yellow monsoon light … A bit of bear in the tummy had made my brain float – and now I was thinking about the pickled tender animal and human foetus in the glass jars of the laboratories and museums, immortally floating like little boats between the sky and river.

“In the village there was a large slow moving river and many slower rivulets making a network of streams in which people took bath, washed utensils, and on their banks children played and elders endlessly waited for their lovers to return. As the bright moonlight shined over the water the oysters ate mud and copulated too.” I could make out that he was beginning to talk about his childhood village. I was once again beginning to imagine the young boy who watched the copulation of animals and the masturbating servant boys in the artic of the old wooden house …

The cow dung and hay smelling southern compound beyond the shrine where the buried bones of the ancestors waited for their great grand children to release them into the sacred waters, were the wild jasmine wines grew into a thick jungle. It was there once at the sunset that he had held me close and whispered into my ear “not to tell it to anyone, the heads will fly”.

“I don’t know if the man who held me close first time with burning desire all over his body, and many times since then, ever knew that there is something called love in this world. But one thing is sure, like him (along with the fear of heads-flying-off) I too realized that we all have boat like bodies and it needs to be floated aimlessly over the silent river. The souls kept watching from the bank like those of the pickled foetuses outside the jars.”

Under the umbrella the newly wedded couple in the boat over the glimmering sunny water balanced well and reached home. After cutting the wedding cake and ceremoniously feeding each other, they got into the bed soon after the sun set. Like a guard the kerosene lamp burnt whole night on the veranda.

“The virginity was intact”, the bridegroom told me proudly the next day steeling some time from others. The couple was on their customary visit at my home after marriage. Said in triumph, “there was blood too”, he remembered in hushed secrecy.

On the day after that I was in my classroom clarifying with my bhasha teacher as to what it meant by ‘garland of shining pearls on the ripples of water’. Wonder in her eyes she explained it plainly enough as the reflecting sunshine on the water. The servant boy married off my life too had become un-poetic.

I knew it, but couldn’t make much sense of the breaking of virginity my servant boy was proud off. I couldn’t ask any one for clarification either. He tried to explain it that it was like going into a flower with many beautiful layers of petals. At the beginning, not very far off, there was something that couldn’t be easily penetrated. And when he did it and there was blood. I seem not to understand the logic.

“The curious world of adults, they know it all” he stopped and smiled, “it is so good to be a child, there is so much to explore”. I looked at him and smiled in disagreement.

Some time later due to the monsoon the wild jasmine creepers in the southern compound had lots of tender, affectionate wines and leaves. It had no flowers, and I was alone. The servant boy was married, and was no more interested in me.

As always I was growing up with rainbow colours in my breast like the panchavarnakili that hopped around and was shown to me often by the servant boy.

I didn’t realize why I felt so sad when I was returning form the school that week end. I had walked till the river with the boy with a dark mole on his chin. He lived in the neighbouring village and got into the small rowing boat along with others and left towards the direction of setting sun. The flat trees against the flat orange sky looked empty. Now I realize that I was sad because I was going to miss him for the coming two days.

The eyes are so important for me till today. I did wait for the Monday morning to see him again, but meanwhile the rouge that I can never forgive had already seduced my senses once again. The servant boy was through with his wife; she had already gone off to her parents for delivery. This time he made love with me wildly, bit me on my lips, squeezed me violently, but I hated to enjoy it, and in disgust he finished it off.

I was not particularly guilty, but since then I didn’t know how to look at the boy with love from the neighbouring village. I was confused. His dark mole on the chin looked like dark moon that I couldn’t even look at. But he looked very sexy and attractive on that Monday about which I felt guilty. Was my love also because I felt like the servant boy? The rouge was always surreptitious, but it always made it’s way into me and I was ready to give-in.

Tell me friend how do we differentiate between love and the need for bodily pleasures? To me, always the boat filled with love was departing towards the flat trees against the flat orange sky. And I kept remembering the silent river and the swiftly moving silver fish above the mud underneath, and the souls on the bank kept on looking at the floating boats.

Shivaji
Feb-May 2001.