The lovers' notebook-extract 1

“There you go again…..fretting about your next assignment on Coleridge. Here we are having the time of our lives with no nagging thoughts of classes to attend or our imminent first sem which I’m sure to screw up and you’ve nothing better to talk about than an extinct nineteenth century opium addict”. We were at the Green Zone, lying lazily down on the soft grass at an hour when classes and assignments were in full swing and the more studious types were surely slogging it out in the DL behind abominably thick volume of books ~ the lush green scenery around us was occupied only by the gone-to-the-dogs couples like us and the occasional gardener or the rag-picker. Amalina lit her cigarette and for sometime watched the rings engulf the silence like a mock epic. Her lips were curled up in thought, her skin tight kurti clung onto her with sweat in the mild November heat and a single strand of her hair had somehow managed to get entangled with her dainty earring……..she was not fair enough to be called pretty but possessed a quick wit and sense of feminine smartness enough to call her sexy.


She placed her hand soothingly on my shoulder and I jerked away with a sense of guilt under the impact of the momentary electric touch. “Amalina”, I reminded her in a baritone voice, “this is a public place.” “What are you..”, she reproached, “one of those I’ll-pee-if-u-touch-me prototypes? I can’t imagine what’s with you men. All what you think of is the body and yet in public you will feign to be one of those platonic touch-me- not, forget-me-not souls”. I voiced a raucous protest but couldn’t quite refute the truth in her argument. “So Amalina, you want to be a scientist?” I quizzed her not finding any other suitable way to bring about a change in the uncomfortable topic. “Me?” she exclaimed in a frenzy as if I had suggested her to join Al Qaedia the very next day.” “Not really” she laughed it off nonchalantly, “I’m happy with what I’m.” What she meant by that was well beyond my level of comprehension. “You want to remain a student……?” “No fathead”, she smiled, “I meant I’m happy to live in the present. We humans at times tend to dwell too much on the past or future.” She had a point. “Like you might be thinking now”, she continued, “Why I called deepteshpoetry a failure yesterday or what will happen to you in the future as you are wasting time with this godforsaken girlfriend of yours? But I’m damn sure that of all things right now you are not thinking of the present”. Girls like Amalina save the trouble of explanation at times because more often they guess everything and guess everything correctly. And when you put together her ready wit and devilishly good looks, I must admit she is a complete package of enviable attributes. “But that is not what I was thinking” I protested. But she was lost in some other world.


“Our society is always wrong”, she resumed. “Why?” I mused, “Now what did this society do to you? I find no apparent connections darling”. “My dear Rajesh” she began with an extraordinary sense of calm which was often followed by a violent rhetoric of threat, “I say why do you freak out when I hug you in your so called ‘public place’?” “Because we are still not married”, I blurted out. “Exactly so”, she continued candidly “and once we marry it’ll be absolutely legal to hug or kiss and even make love?” “I guess so” I shivered at her hint of matrimony or possible motherhood, “We’ll have the right to”. “That’s the catchword dear”, she said, “‘Right’. Simply because we’ll be married….that is we will go through some religious and societal shit in a temple and then we’ll have the right. So is marriage just a license to make love? Don’t you think the fact that we love each other makes it reason enough to believe that we’re married from our minds? Then people might as well go fuck in a whorehouse!” “Amalina I say I’m hungry. I’m heading off to Milanda’s place.” “I have a class to attend in fifteen minutes” she said , “ Can’t miss GB’s lecture. But don’t forget to turn up on time at the Park Street crossing tomorrow. I’ve some shopping to do for mama and will then dine out”. “But-“ I started protesting. She was already gone. I started walking back towards the Arts’ Building slowly wondering about what she had told me. As always, she had a point.




(……to be continued)


(Posted by Deeptesh)