by Joie Bose
“Were you born?” asked Tonsing sharply, almost flirtatiously. “Oh you poet, tell me, were you born?” Meera replied, smirking. It was awkward for Meera, she was still on guard. So she had thrown back the question. Tonsing shattered the shades of formality with her answer, “My fortune or misfortune does not matter. I am the poet. By the way, those words are not mine. That was Borges, Anthony Borges. In the Accomplice. I am looking for something that is mine. Can you help, be my accomplice?” Meera wasn’t used to such direct people. Tonsing was being cryptic and enigmatic and unswerving at the same time. Only a woman could be such, Meera thought, only a woman.
No one usually ever asked her anything about herself, a journalist for more than a decade; Meera was the one asking pertinent questions. And that had been her plan when Tonsing, the author from the hills, toppled on her. Little did she know what was to unfurl.
Eccentric, recluse, award-winning Tonsing was giving her first press conference after the international acclaim. Meera was set to debone her with a thousand questions. But at the conference, questions eluded her mind. She could feel a stare. A shiver ran down her spine. Who was looking at her with that intensity? Was it a person? A spirit perhaps? But all eyes were focussed on the petite unsmiling frame of Tonsing, who was despite her masculine attitude, looked stunning with her short cropped hair, long neck and the simple translucent shirt through which her lingerie peeped out.
Had I made a movie, I could have cast her, thought Meera. Had I been a painter, I would have painted her. Had I been a poet, I would have written of her. Had I been… Meera realized she had been admiring Tonsing. So when suddenly Tonsing looked directly into her eyes and smiled, she blushed. Was she thinking out aloud?
She had been given a complimentary copy of Tonsing’s book which was resting inside her jhola. She fished it out and went to her post the conference to get it signed. Tonsing’s face, which had been so blank and unreadable for most of the others just a minute ago, came to life. She wrote in blue cursive – I had known you a lifetime ago, I recognise your khol rimmed eyes, For you I wrote, I give to you my lies…
Meera couldn’t sleep that night and after some extremely difficult days, she emailed Tonsing. They tried interacting but the connection they had felt there, was avoiding them now. Meera needed it, that connection. There had been something so magnetic… Her heart beat so loudly that it hurt her chest when she even thought of it.
Tonsing suggested they meet and without a thought, Meera jumped on the plane to Bagdogra where Tonsing waited to whisk her away to her lonely hut nestled in the mountains. You need to come to the hills, they are so full of secrets, her email had read.
Sitting across Tonsing now, Meera felt numb, gazing into the light grey eyes of Tonsing. She felt like a warrior after the battle – spent. There were so many thoughts that were bombarding her brain. It suddenly ached. She felt suffocated. She had started sweating. She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning.
Tonsing couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Meera. She had written of Meera throughout her life. It was Meera who had got her the awards. She was convinced that she would meet Meera one day. Only she didn’t know who she was, her name , where she lived or how she looked. Looking at Meera now, Tonsing’s heart broke. Meera’s cascading unkempt curls needed care. Her eyes were like a racoon’s, for her nights were long. She wore clothes that covered her snow-white skin, for there lay stories too red to display. Her breasts were big, for they hoarded secrets of pain and ignorance that she couldn’t expose to anyone. Her lipstick caked her lips, for they were dry – she hadn’t been kissed with want, for a very long time. When Tonsing saw sweat appear on Meera’s temples, she realized she had to take charge. It was her duty, her duty to her art.
Tonsing leaned forward and slowly sucked in the lipstick that lined Meera’s mouth. She held Meera’s clumsy body in her strong arms and slowly took into her mouth Meera’s full lips. Her tongue sought out the base of Meera’s tongue and traced it before hungrily, with full-throated passion, vacuuming the saliva off Meera’s mouth. Meera was her manna and Tonsing had kept her eyes closed the entire time as she performed this holy act of divinity, for she was paying a homage to her religion – art. Meera was a wilted flower that Tonsing was bringing back to life.
Meera wanted to resist. She tried feebly protesting. But Tonsing was the most passionate being Meera had ever come across. While her mind resisted, her body and her soul ran to Tonsing like a magnet. Tonsing was dry land for the drowning Meera. So Meera let Tonsing peel off her clothes, one by one, till she lay naked in a strange place in front of Tonsing’s ashen eyes. The cold felt cold now. It pierced her lungs. Made it difficult to breathe. But Meera enjoyed this. The pores on the skin rose like little lumps, little mountain peaks. Tonsing’s warm fingers navigated through them like a Sherpa. Tonsing was a Sherpa’s daughter, a Sherpa who knew the mountains secrets, who had taken many campers to the peak all his life before getting buried in a landslide. The Himalayan slopes peeped into the brown lamp lit room of their hut and were the only witnesses of Tonsing’s lust. But then again, they had witnessed Tonsing’s every secret, hoarding them for ages like they hoarded coal and made them into diamonds. They had witnessed Tonsing harden into becoming one of them.
“My breasts were always quite large,” said Meera, lying on the sofa, sipping the Chaang that Tonsing had given her. Tonsing had covered her up with a purple duvet that smelt of moth balls but it didn’t matter. “They were awkward and jutted out. People stared so much. I stopped going for tennis, for there was a boy who had asked me if he could touch my tennis balls. I had said no but he pinched them anyway. I complained to Ma, but she asked me not to make a fuss about it. Things like this happened. She brought me a cotton bra instead. It hurt so much and the thick red line almost became like a tattoo. It often cut into my skin. That is why even now a dark brown line remains.” Tonsing gave her a coconut cookie, with snow- like icing. She knew that Meera needed the energy now, more than ever.
Meera lifted the duvet and exposed her bare thighs. There were dark dots, like craters on the moon. Tonsing smiled; she knew those dots. She knew them, those familiar marks. “Cigarette burns. I don’t know what pleasure a man gets out of marking you like that. The first time, he had held my wrists when I said no. I was crying. He stuffed my mouth with his shirt and he said, like it or not, I will do it. You are there to pleasure a man, he said. Then he took his half burnt cigarette and pressed it. It hurt. I wanted to die. But he laughed an evil laugh. For the first time I saw him in that avatar. The romance turned to ashes that night and laced my pain. He raped me till I began enjoying it. Later that year, after he dumped me, I took to smoking. I added more burns here, on my thighs. That is why some are lighter than the others. I could never let him go. He was an addiction I loved and hated at the same time. They eventually shifted him to a ward, I heard. He killed the woman he married. I still repent not being married to him. Perhaps I would have been better off. So, no. I wasn’t ever born. I was made.” Tonsing lit a cigarette and gave it to her. She tenderly touched the burn marks. She loved the imperfections of the body, especially those that were there in women.
A part of Meera wanted her to be the only one in Tonsing’s life, another didn’t –she couldn’t afford to be so significant in someone else’s life. Not a woman, no, especially not a woman. Meera looked at Tonsing obsessing over her scars and perhaps that was the moment she realized. Tonsing, the poet from the hills was just like the mountains herself – dark, foreboding, pregnant with secrets. That was her charm. A moment ago Meera had cared and felt possessiveness. But not anymore. At that moment Tonsing was all hers, every bit of the poetic body, mind and soul. That was all that mattered. The mountains can never be yours totally, the little bit of slope you are standing on and the slopes that rise up in front till your visions end, are all yours for that moment. Only for that moment.
Tonsing’s light warm touch on her thighs was like a balm for Meera. Tonsing’s grey eyes looked deeply into Meera’s grey soul and she vowed to bring the colour back. They made violent love. They made love tenderly. They made all the love that was there to be ever made and then lay next to each other, wordlessly sighing.
Tonsing read out lines to Meera from the books of authors and poets Meera had heard about. Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Charles Bukowski, P.B. Shelley, Rumi… They fell asleep warm and naked under the duvet, knowing that Meera would become just another woman who would go back to just another life, and Tonsing would write of her, of all her scars.
Pic from https://www.flickr.com/photos/
Dark,foreboding love,the story keeps one glued,iam not surprised Joie has written this piece,have known her as a person of depth.
Very tender and compelling short tale by Joie Bose