Love as you know it

He sat on the bed,typing away furiously with his fingers. The sunlight from the window behind,fell silently over his left shoulder in a square patch. I could see the occasional shadow of a bird flitting by. The bottle of beer lay open,propped up on the bed by his waist on one side,and the pillow on the other. Unattended for long,it now lay cradled in a drenched crevice of its own.
I gazed at his neck,where a stream of sunlight teased his clumsy black curls into iridescent strands. I traced my gaze over his shoulder,where the brown skin stretched out in familiar patterns,and rested my eyes on the strange little spot over his left arm. It always fascinated me,his birthmark-it seemed to remind me of a slightly distorted sea horse.
I knew he was angry. Disappointed. His pulsating passion was as palpable as the restless clatter of his keyboard. His brows were knit together in immense concentration. Looking at him then,thrust against the pillow with an effortless ease,with a passion that seemed to radiate with a calm and power of the December sun outside, i couldn't help but feel like a shell on the beach,engulfed by towering waves of an inexplicable emotion.
He took a swig,and without looking up,asked, "What are you looking at?"
"You."
"Don't. Next thing you know,the court will pass that off as a crime too."
I sighed heavily.Our kind of love,still had an entire nation to conquer.

Remorse

It was a slow Wednesday morning in Pune,and Nikhil had just got off the phone after a five minute conversation with his mother in Calcutta.
The November sun jostled its way through the blinds to fall in light,foggy patterns on his office desk. A fist-sized paper-weight kept his piles in place, and as he reclined into his chair,his arms folded up behind his head,he gazed at the translucent green of the weight. The golden rays pierced through it, fluttering into a lemon green shadow on his mahogany desk. He gazed intently, the smooth green stone, with the little bubbles inside. He hadn't seen one like this in ages- since his childhood,in fact. A strangely familiar memory bubbled up, and with a slight jolt, he recalled one exactly like this, a turquoise blue stone,the one which Jeje used, in their house in Chandannagore. He would use it to weigh down the tea stained morning newspaper,on that old wood and ivory center table. It would be noon by the time Jeje completed scouring through every article of the paper, and Jemma would be in her inevitable good-humoured complaints about her lazy old husband, muttering loud enough for those around her to know how Jeje never did anything on time. The household was going to the dogs,she said. ''Ucchonne jacche,bujhli Buro.Tui jeno khobordaar tor Jethu'r moto hosh na.", she used to warn me, while scurrying around the house,doing a million things at once.
It was a customary tradition for me and ma to stay for a week at Jemma and Jeje's every summer holiday-Baba would drop us off at Howrah, and me and ma would board the 10.15 Bandel local.It was twelve stations to Chandannagore, and I remember counting each off in my mind,as the train whistled past.
A vague aroma of dhoop and Lifebouy soap was the very first welcome to Jemma's house. Somehow, it was always Jemma's house, to me. My earliest memories of Jeje was as I had always known him,until his last days- a complacent,content old man,clad in a humble lungi,stretched across his armchair,with his nose into a newspaper.Jemma,on the other hand,bustled around,bubbling with a childish energy,which seemed to increase manifold during our week-long stay. By the end of it, I would be at least three pounds heavier- Jemma made sure that I gorged on generous amounts of peethe,luchi,mangsho,aloo posto and payesh. The fates had been indifferent to her, and I was the sole recipient of Jemma's motherly instincts. I think she sometimes wished I'd been a girl-not that she ever compromised with her love-but it was one of those feelings I'd instinctively harboured since I became aware of my consciousness.
Our annual visits waned in length as I gradually became older and eventually halted into a permanent hiatus,as summer afternoons turned into extra hours of tuitions. I was too busy too miss Jemma and our visits,and phone calls sufficed-more or less. Like the many childhood customs so carelessly left behind, my summer weeks in Chandannagore lay in a dusty old corner of my brain- unforgotten and abandoned. I moved to Delhi, Bangalore,and then Pune. Jeje had passed away in the meantime, and my semesters had prevented me from attending the funeral. The news had made me sad-death,after all, was a loss-but I had been too busy to feel anything more than the ephemeral remorse at the mere idea. I was young,and immature. I could brush away feelings with a sweep of my reality.

Nikhil sat up straight, shaking himself free of irrelevant emotions. He wrote out a cheque, and buzzed for Anita. "Arrange for a bouquet,make it white. And post this cheque along with it to Chandannagore.I'll give you the address in a while." He'd loved Jemma,but he couldn't possibly be there for her last rites. He had an important presentation tomorrow.