Kishore Pahadi
The room is small.
Supposed to be dark, but…
The sunrays entering through the window make it a little bright.
There are four walls, white walls. On one hangs this year’s calendar. On the other, last year’s too.
Against one wall rests a shelf stacked with books. From another dangles clumsily a bare wire with a forty-watt bulb.
While opening, the door-leaf always knocks against the trunks.
“The trunks need to be moved slightly,” he says whenever the door-leaves knock them.
Unkempt clothes slouch disheveled atop the trunks.
Next to the clothes is the bed. On the bed rest, Marx and Gandhi lie among the heaps of other books. There are Columbus and Hitler too. Eliot and Mukunda-Indira lie alike.
Close to the window stands an old table, its broken leg resting on a brick. In front of it is a chair. The chair has sturdy legs.
Atop the table some papers are left scattered, as if thrown away. Four thick, fat books. A small plastic glass. Inside it are a pencil, one red sign pen, few useless ball pens and…me.
In this room lives a writer. I belong to him. Each time he needs to write, he takes me out from the crammed glass. Until he holds me in his hand, I linger inside the plastic glass and at times on the table I loll.
In this house, along with the writer, lives his wife. He calls her ‘Paro’. If that is her real name I don’t know.
***
Paro comes into the room. Shuts the door and stretches out on the bed resting on her back.
Phew!…she heaves a sigh. Snuggles around and under the pillow. As she lies on the bed, Paro reaches out to the radio, turns it on and closes her eyes for a while.
When she closes her eyes Paro looks very beautiful—I know that. Through my glasses I keep gazing at her. Everyone admires beautiful things. So do I.
After sometime Paro falls asleep. A gust of cool breeze from the window makes her hair fall on her face. I goes on looking intently at them.
The cool breeze ruffles her attire crumpled under her thighs and her back. I go on gazing agape. Now gradually as she twists towards her side, she clangs to the soft pillow and places them in between her knees. I keep on looking at her placing the pillow too.
She slides her palm beneath her head and smiles in her sleep. I go on gazing at her smile.
How adamant my yearning for Paro is! How daring an act of an insignificant pen to crave for a woman!… Crap…that too for my master’s wife…!!!
The pangs of longing begins on the sixth day I am bought. That day, from inside the glass, I see the semi-undressed Paro. He has kept me in the glass. Paro comes, bolts the door and pulls the curtains. And without any unease undresses herself and wears her new clothes. The first exposed figure of a woman that I have laid my eyes upon ever. And, I simply fall for her.
Then after few days…
Then after a few days, I see her stark naked, that too in such a state that I do not have the audacity to mention here. Because she is my master’s wife and my master almost every day makes me write “…In this life I just love one and that is my beloved Paro. Paro is kind-hearted. She looks after me…”
He writes such things in his diary: “…Today I handed all my salary to Paro. She was thrilled. I love making her happy…”
He pours his feelings in the diary, innumerable times. I know all that he writes because it’s me who jots them down. The writer’s diary, articles, poems, letters…I write all. That’s why I understand his emotions. I know everything.
I am on his table or inside his plastic glass. That is why I know his lifestyle and his marital life—each and everything.
- Lifestyle : He wakes up at 6 am and starts writing. Then he leaves for office. He never reaches on time because it depends upon how long he takes to write. I am unaware at what time he sleeps, for he is always writing.
- Marital life: He keeps writing while Paro sleeps. Sometimes he and Paro make love in the night. Then Paro mockingly remarks, “You have become old.” This happens only sometimes. They do not have any child.
***
It has been a few days that Paro endlessly gazes out of the window. What is there outside the window?
– A tree, bearing fruit
– A blown-away tin roof
– A road
– A heap of bricks lying alongside the road
– A mulberry bush
Further away is the safety tank of the house which at times gives a foul smell.
“Talking of foul smells these days, it stinks everywhere!” — I remember the writer write something like this one day.
Occasionally, when the glass is placed at the window, I become aware that there is another window right in front of this one. Exactly in the front, save for the distance.
One day looking at that window Paro smiled.
The following day too she smiled.
The day after too.
And then the next day Paro waved her hand.
After that, I don’t know why Paro starts disappearing every afternoon from that window. From the house. For a few days.
***
Then one day…
Paro enters the room, her face dazzling with glee. Moist lips sparkling, shining. Misty eyes inebriated as though under the influence of some potion.
She throws herself on the bed. Subsequently comes in a young man running his hands over his hair. He stands facing her.
Paro shuts the door and windows, switches the lights on. She gets hold of the man’s hand and pulls him towards herself. The young man lands on her lap.
(My Lord! What is happening? Your wife, who you trust and love so much, she….
Alas! Why does the house have a window?)
Paro begins undressing the young man, taking off his clothes one by one as though she were peeling onions while chopping vegetables—shirt, vest, jeans, undergarment—everything. And then she begins stripping herself off, removing everything. That fateful day, I see Paro naked, stark nude. The hills and valleys of Paro’s body, the plains, and the mountains—I see them all. Sitting inside this glass I feel chilly goose-bumps appear on me.
– chill of terror
– chill of exhilaration
– chill of abhorrence
– chill of passion
That is the only day I see her naked. The day onwards I begin craving for her. Yearning for the hills, yearning for the valleys, yearning for the plains and for the mountains. Desire; only desire.
***
As night falls, the writer comes and gets hold of me. He starts writing a new novel.
Paro is sleeping peacefully. In the faint light, he can see her disheveled clothes reach above her knees, revealing her thighs. The writer looks admiringly at Paro and her radiant supple skin and writes: “My wife is extremely beautiful but she calls me an old man. She tells that her interest in this aged man has died. There is no eagerness in my youth; it has turned out to be elderly…Today I feel that my wife looks even more beautiful when she sleeps. I can see her loyalty towards me in her thin lips. Paro…”
He is writing, but I have no desire to praise her. “Paro is not honest, my master” I wish to write. And feel, may the writer never love her, may Paro never love the writer, and she never love the young man!
I crave to kiss her bosoms the way the young man did.
I long to stroke her body in the manner the young man did.
And, yearn to breathe in ecstasy like them: sigh sigh sigh….. Wearied.
The lifeless me.
A pen.
The writer makes me write about his sentiments as I gaze at his wife with a fixed look.
The slipping hair.
The creased clothes.
The pillow held between her knees.
I know everything. From here to there, everything.
But on the table is placed the glass and alas, inside the glass, me!
(Translated by : Saguna Shah)
[Kishore Pahadi (b. 1956) is a poet and storywriter. His published works include Ghar-Khandahar (1980), Banchnu ra Banchekaharu (1980), Bishudai (1988), Sarvagya ra Sex ( Collection of stories, 1998), Kathakon ( Joint collection of stories, 1986), Adhyaya (1990), Kimbadanti (Collection of short stories, 1996), Saharma Batti Nibheko Bela (Collection of poems, 1996), Ekaisaath Hasau ( 1998), Maalik (Anthology of translated stories, 2002), Lamlamti Dam (2000) , Tyo Talako Aa-aaphno Bhag (Collection of stories for children, 2003) and Rojja Katha (2076), a collection of his representative stories.]