Editorial

Love, Lust and Longings (part – 3)

Three: Class, lust, and lecture

It was the last lecture on Friday, and Alpana wanted to drive home fast. The dark cumulo-nimbus clouds threatened to break the monotony of the sky, and they ushered in a sense of impending torment in her. Although she taught in a city college in Lucknow, her parental home was in a distant, suburban area in Uttar Pradesh. Afroz might be waiting for her, Afroz, her M.A. final year student who also stayed in the same village. After Ashok’s death, it was no longer the student-teacher bonding anymore, as Afroz was just three years younger to her. It was an excruciating pain that she felt when Ashok was no longer there, but when a few years passed, it was just with a slice of loss that she lived. She needed someone to fill up the emptiness of her body, the pangs of bodily thirst that she could not endure for long. In almost no time, Afroz became her closest friend, confidant and perhaps, a supporting pillar also. Alpana drove home more desperately now. It was for one week that she had not seen Afroz.

“Have some food and then go to the village library,” Maa was still not aware of their intentions.

“Ok maa, I shall be back, quickly.” Alpana suddenly felt like a damsel in distress, waiting to be reunited with her long-cherished idea of true love, Afroz. They met after one whole week, and the wait was worth it. Afroz had grown more impatient for her, parched, to get united in body and mind. It was 15th June, and it rained terribly when they made love on the roof. They kissed frantically, smashed all age-old doctrines of mourning in widowhood, and got drenched in the lusty rain. As the June rains pattered more forcefully, Alpana’s pelvic movements became stronger, harder as she kept on biting Afroz’s lips, held him strong beneath her, never to let him go. The rain and lovemaking subsided, as Afroz showed her the approval of his scholarship; he was going to Boston the next day, for his Ph.D.

“Who had given them these high doses of tranquilizer?” the matron of the government mental hospital shouted at her juniors in a raging tone. Nandini, Suman, and Alpana all three had been suffering from visual, auditory and somatic hallucinations and they needed medicine doses as per their prescription. She looked at all three of them in the cabin that they jointly shared. While Alpana was busy scribbling something on the whitewashed walls, Nandini was playing with laliguras florets. Suman could be seen in a distance, muttering some incoherent words and using her fingers like snake, to show that she was busy on a laptop. The matron went slightly close to them, and she was stunned once more after they all were admitted in this hospital one year before:

Alpana’s scribbling read ‘Afroz’, Nandini’s flower design alphabetically read ‘Afroz’ and Suman kept on muttering ‘Afroz’. Afroz still existed for all the three women, like a balcony to their claustrophobic homes, because they wanted to think, to make the world a better place to survive.

End

Sreetanwi Chakraborty