Little Less Love Part II

She had met him at her best friend’s marriage. Upasana’s marriage.

Upasana’s marriage had come as a surprise to her. Upasana had never been the marrying kind. Or at least that’s what Shailaja had believed of her. They had been very thick form the start. One of the few female friends Shailaja had had. Somehow Shailaja never had too many girlfriends, but the few that she had she was very close to them.  Upasana had been one of those, they had come close in school and had managed to salvage their friendship through two decades and across continents for most of the time. They had a lot of stuff common but on very fundamental issues they were poles apart. Upasana was the glamorous, garrulous one. She was the one who would always be the center of attention at any social gathering. At the forefront of everything in life. Though she had been confused about a lot of things in life, she had always been clear of one thing though that the men in her  life would serve only one purpose, to sexually gratify her. She was not looking for emotional or financial support from any man. She had learnt her lessons from her mother’s life. Her father had been a serial alduterer , a philanderer. The nights she had seen her mother lie awake all night for her father who never came. She could hear her mother crying from her bedroom not that her mother made any attempt to hide it from her only daughter. Upasana had hated her mother for being such a wimp. For not fighting with her dad, for being such a push over and mostly for putting up with all the crap her dad gave her. Her mother was a beauty and she came from a very rich family. Her dad had very humble background compared to that of her mother and was the one who had chased her mother like a man on a mission and finally got her strict father to say yes to the marriage. Upasana’s mother had fallen badly for him and that had been the bane of her life. She had lost her heart and so also her dignity. Her life had been a series of never ending nights of wait, when her husband came home in the wee hours and sometimes not at all. She had borne it all silently. Upasana hadn’t ever understood her mother’s behavior. It was only later when she grew up to understand her mother better that she realized her mother had been a victim of a devious, wicked and hopeless love for her husband from which she never quite recovered her entire life.

And Shailaja had known all this about her friend. Shailaja hadn’t really liked Upasana in their first meeting in school. She had found her very loud. And had taken an instant dislike to her, it was only later she had discovered that the loud voice and the high pitched laughter were all a façade, a defense mechanism. They had come close slowly and steadily. And her friendship with Upasana was one of the touchstones of Shailaja’s life.

And from all these years of meaningless flings, one after the other in quick succession, Shailaja had come to accept that her friend was emotionally incapable of having any relationship that went beyond sex and for a period longer than 6 weeks at a stretch. Yeah 6 weeks had been a personal record for Upasana.

So when Upasana called her up two weeks back saying that she was getting married, Shailaja had refused to believe her. She was sure it was a prank or some silly joke Upasana found hilarious. It took Upasana quite some time to finally convince Shailaja that she was tying the knot, that too with a guy and for real. It had all happened too soon and she would fill her in on all the details when they caught up for the wedding. Shailaja had been barely able to make it to Upasana’s wedding. She was in US at that time and in the middle of her all critical project delivery and had lied through her teeth to get her boss to agree to let her go to India for a week.

She had reached Delhi at 2am in the night and had taken a cab at 5am the very next morning to Jaipur to attend Upasana’s mehndi.

She had been standing in the hotel lobby waiting for the receptionist to sort out the formalities when she noticed this guy walking upto the reception, charging like a bull. She thought this guy probably evolved overnight from a bull to a man so he had yet to refine his walk and chuckled to herself. He was lanky and dark. He came upto the reception and asked for a spare key for his room. He introduced himself as Vasu in room 203, right next to 202, the one she had just been given. As she began to lift her bag, Upasana breezed into the lobby shrieking at the top of her voice when she saw Shailaja. She ran towards her , gave her a big squeeze and then said, Shelly Now that you have finally had a chance to see my groom-to-be what do you think of him, the love of my life, My Vasu?”

A little Less Love

She woke up wide eyed. As if she had never gone to sleep. As if there had been no interlude between the two stages of consciousness. As if someone had wiped the sleep clean off the plate of her memory. Just like that. She sat on the bed for sometime. Unmoving, Unblinking, maybe Unthinking even. She didn’t know how long she sat there. She knew her mind had arrested her body. It had in the process also fallen prey to its own plans. Her mind too felt arrested. As if her brain cells were afraid to move. To be Active. They collectively stood frozen.

Till Vasu entered the room. Vasu. His entrance jolted her out of the self imposed cell arrest. Vasu. She kept saying the name again and again to herself. Under her breath, slowly muttering it, so slowly that even her own ears couldn’t hear what her lips were uttering. She pulled her lower lip in saying va- and then rolled her tongue in unison with both her upper and lower lip for the su.

He had come into the room looking for his phone. It had been ringing incessantly for sometime she realized now. He would have been as usual out on the terrace smoking. His ultra mild cigarette. He walked like a charging bull. She realized then. He always had. And she was the matador, baiting him, provoking him, playing him, priming him for the kill. The thought made her laugh out. He looked at her while still talking on the phone. Their eyes met. Hers drinking in every little nuance of his and his unseeing everything about her.

And that is how it had always been. She read him like an open book. She knew him so well, she could even sense what would be in store for him. He would ask her for advice about everything and her advice never failed him, not even once.

She could read him now as well. He was talking to his mom. And was clearly not comfortable having this discussion. She was sure his mom was discussing marriage with him. She knew his mother was trying to get him married off. He was getting fidgety and angling for a way out of the conversation. And very soon he would, he would tell his mom someone was at the door and that he would call her back. His mom would no doubt see through it and still go on. Then finally he would kick the table, tell her he stumbled and disconnect. And she knew this self infliction of pain during his mother’s calls were a clear signal to her about the literal effect of her choice of conversation. But his mom refused to read any signal she didn’t like. Like mother like son, she guessed.

 The entire scene played out just the way she had envisaged and then he looked up at her again. This time he held her gaze. He walked towards her and sat down beside her on the bed. She was sitting straight. Her legs folded under her chin and her arms around her legs.

He bent on the bed and kissed her waist.  She knew what he wanted. She could read all his touches. This one meant sex. Sometimes she felt angry at herself for knowing him so well, so intimately. Sometimes she wished she were as unseeing as he was. But then that was not her only wish as far as he was concerned.

He pulled at her hair. Forcibly. Till she came down on the bed. The love making was quick and soundless, like it had always been in the mornings, when he had been hurried and she too sleepy to care.

He got up and went out for a light again.

She lay there thinking how life had gotten them both there. Two individuals so different from each other, they could have well been from different planets.

Her thoughts went back to the day they had first met.