The First Spark
I rested against the window, with a white pallu saree thrown over my shoulder. The silken softness of the afternoon was pouring in and filling the house with gold. Pallu of my whitish pallu saree floating over my shoulder, silken draped over my body. It was bulging out to show the lace of my whitish netted brassiere underneath. Dragged into the midst of it all, as was most likely to occur, was also the further consideration on my part that I’d been wearing a sheer black blouse—the sheer aspect of which indiscriminately, openly laying itself bare for the fraction of a second of lace underskirt beneath, virtue and vice both going in particular out of its way to set. I had secured the saree around the waist low, the gold kamarband tightened and wrapped in, fastened, the smooth convex shape of the hip outlined. The bra was cinched about my bust, and there was a narrow white and brown strip showing between the bra line and the saree waist, folded fabric. The folds that covered bared breasts, where my mangalsutra lay — concealed, sacred sign, in the self’s belly, which gave bulk and meaning to the wearer on the body. My soul sang this night. My husband was coming home at last after all the weeks, and I had sewn all in love and care—every fold, every seam testifying to an ugliness and a beauty of proportion that spoke louder than clothes. Tap-tap on the door, staccato and relentless, and already I had let in my husband’s friend Arjun onto the porch ahead of me, with rain dripping off him. Rain ran from his hair down over the stringy muscle of his body beneath his wet, rain-soaked T-shirt. The storm had closed the roads, and he stood before me with the bad news: my husband’s flight had been cancelled. I knew him to be a go-along-and-get-along sort of pal, with his nerves tucked away to pause and consider the backseat. And yet this diluted, knot-in-the-stomach Arjun stood before me quivering with something else and gigantic—an inexorable force that blazed deep within me. He gazed with wide eyes, never having been brave enough to dream or hope to be so bold as to be so bold about my nudity, lace drawn out, stretched out, laid open under, part of him he had yet to find. I encouraged him to the bedroom, pushing gently, and gave him a towel, tracing the curve of his arm lovingly with my hand and sending shivers running down me. I stood there observing him, dry towel flung over the curves of his girth, outlining all planes and hump of flesh. My gasp in my throat, a spinning flush under my skin. I bite hard on my lip behind my teeth to keep back the hum of horror and the flash of lust so alien it shames me. I could sense under the torn towel that something had been pushed upon it violently. When he shifted, I was able to see. He was shifting his hand as if he was offering low. My heart began to accelerate. Winching towards normal, I sat down next to him on the couch, but my eyes couldn’t help glancing in his direction. Tension filled the room with the shock of vibrant electric juice of a kind that neither of us was ready to contain. And out and away blazed the lights, and we were in darkling penumbral twilight. I arose and went to the kitchen and switched on a faint light, its weak rays outlining the curve of my bare shoulders by the cleft of the open-necked blouse carelessly knotted at the back of my neck. On the periphery of my vision, I could feel the burden of his stare on me — ravenous-hunger tip on the edges of gaunt shoulders to hip beat. There was a stifling air of silence between us. Slowly, I emerged from the shadows and into the bedroom once more to play with my bra. I smoothed out wrinkles on the door of my top, easing tension in the material. I tore on the fastener of my white, sheer bra, popping it out in effortless haughtiness. I was certain that he was gazing—admiring every silky movement, revelation of hardness and implied strength. My hand tracing my bound breasts alone, a glimpse of vision of naked Arjun tracing me down with his hands in my head. I remembered tracing my hand down the outline of my thudding hands on him, the warmth of him, his shape in my hand. Drips dripped underneath me, each sensation, each breath intensified. I slid into a slinky black bra, Trashy but elegant in mesh material, and snapped it into place. Black material came around me even closer than that and bestowed mystery and courage upon me. I spun around too, and I found I could sense the force of Arjun’s eyes strike my draped left shoulder breast with a teensy-weensy mole—a comforting magical little feature that was mine—a glared out over me. By the way, the humongous hall mirror saw me change completely, Arjun becoming totally aware of this one transformation. Honey-brown softness of filtered light diffused, and the pose, noticing how the black bra contouring my body sealed up the distance between us—a bilious, wordless tension tormented by the over-dramatised breaking of flesh-to-flesh contact and voltage. Saree, whispering on the path to the kitchen, told me of their arrival beforehand. Arjun looked up and smiled, low and humble. “The black would look great on you,” I told him, his face a great wonder. I blushed to the cheeks, starting into a hot red flush. I smiled, half-delighted and wonder-struck. “Your mirror has tricked you,” I told him, feeling it suck everything from me. Silencing the soft, Arjun’s voice fell with genuine wonder. “You are stunningly courageous and lovely,” he puffed, his eyes flashing just beneath the soft material of my blouse. The soft lighting provided a soft, seductive peek within, drawing attention to the daring decision I’d made. I approached him boldly, and in the cold nakedness of the room, between us existed a more real wisdom. There was a storm howling outside our windows, but inside, season, suddenly, a fire white-hot to harden what would be. And when the compliment struck, I returned one, a flash and not ungrateful grin. “You’re lying,” I gasped.