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.