Debashish babu looks at the full moon outside his window with eyes worn from all the alcohol he needs to forget her. His wife curls up in a ball on the other end of the bed, sad, disgusted, hurt, humiliated. He has come reeking of her attar, of a tryst with his true lover. She can't leave him. He can't marry the one he wants to forget. They are all in a warped world of norms that suffocate and desires that kill. As he smells the laajwanti plants from his balcony, he misses those that adorn the hair of his midnight desires and he writes...
Running my hands through her gajra
The jasmines falling on the white sheets
I think of her name
Laajwanti
The touch-me-not
"Touch the leaves of Laajwanti
And they curl and fade away"
Her long black curls
As dark as the star less sky
Lie on the pillows like a never ending stream
I dot them with the fallen jasmines
Her fair arms, wrapped around my waist
Adorned with the gold that her mother gave her
I run my fingers on her skin
And I think of how I met her,
Under the veil of her Chanderi saree
White and gold
Just like her arms
I kiss her lips
Passionately, as though kissing her is the only thing that I'm sure of
And I think of her existence
In this kothi
This place
Where her flesh is weighed in rupees
Where auctions begin every night,
And on nights when I can't reach on time
She's sold off
To a new man
To be his mistress for the night
To give him her never ending tresses and her gold and white arms
I hold her, tight
As though she's my life
And I kiss her passionately, over and over again
I look in her eyes
Her Kohl smeared, her pupil large
Her chest pounding with desires
And I think of myself
A visitor to her body
A stranger to her mind
And a salvation to her soul,
I run my hands on her soft waist
Delicate, just like the Laajwanti leaves
And I think of us
As the wind and the flower
I can touch her
I can love her
But I can't be hers
Ever
I look at her
In a green saree today
Her anklets ringing on the bed side
And I wonder
Why I couldn't be
the only one
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