ENCOUNTERS.

I was new to the town with nowhere to go or to find a place, to stay permanently or
otherwise.

I hate hotels and boarding houses with their either antiseptic hospitalized ward
atmosphere or stuffy environments of boarding houses. You can live on your own without
bothering about environments or amid the crowds surrounding you but here was a
different proposition. You just have to be fitted with generalities of common folks
whose thinking is always tend to follow the lowest common denominator.

In a house of your own, however humble it may be, you do not feel alienated.
It may be that you project your desires and wishes into the empty space of the
four walled room and somehow they flash back and respond by take their domicile there,
to get entangled in nooks and corners of the room where you reside.

Their desires may be pertaining to comfortable or painful experiences but somehow they
accommodate you, sharing their secrets with you. Then it becomes less lonely sharing
your thoughts with other beings however inanimate these may be.

As I was on a hunt for accommodation, I wasted no time and started going about my
business straight away

***

I picked up my courage and found some unpleasant looking streets stretched out in a
tedious manner. I knocked at some doors where the signs of vacant rooms were
displayed. As expected I met with hostility and downright rudeness. As soon as they saw
an alien face the doors were slammed into me. I got insults, abuses and some even tried
to set their dogs on me. It seems none liked a stranger of alien culture and dressed in
different attire.

I was anxious to find a place of my own so I ignored theses indignities. Even a single
small room would have sufficed for the time being. A friend of mine who knew the town
well was in best position to advise me about it and he did so by pointing to a possible
vacant room available in the north of the town. Against such odds I considered myself
lucky at the mere possibility of finding some space to live.

In the evening my friend took me to a big rambling house surrounded by a large garden
and which was owned by an old foreign lady who must have experienced the same
indignities and hostility as of myself, at the hands of the general public. I was proved
right as no door was slammed into my face this time.

The door was opened by one of tenants of the house and I was led into the house
accompanied by my friend and who introduced me to the landlady. After initial greetings
she began to tell me all, about her troubles and about her difficult times of life and her
present physical ailments - aches and pains and all that.

Unexpectedly there was established some sort of rapport between us, ending in sympathy
for each other mixed with a pity on my behalf. We got along well which was contrary to
what was expected from her, as most people thought her a difficult woman to get along
with people.

Luckily I got the room at a reasonable rental rate but had to share the bathroom and toilet
facilities with other tenants. One tenants happened to be a pretty girl of fair complexion
and straw blonde hair. She appealed to me as I thought that she had an attractive
demeanor with her tall stature to go with it.

As time went by we started coming across each other more often and a friendship began
to develop between us involving talks at first and then cups of hot drinks.

We began to be friendlier, inviting each other to our respective rooms. Some sort of
respect and love began to develop for each other. We had a mutual taste for classical
music and a liking for mild intellectual discussion.

Once we discussed the topic of the beauty afforded by nature to each gender of the
species. I remarked that in human species the female was granted a greater share of
beauty. I generally thought that on whole women were prettier than men. She disagreed
with me at this conjecture and stated that she had come across many handsome males. I
was heartened by her surprise utterance that a lot of women would have found me
attractive.

With further intimacy, a romance began to develop between us. It began by supposedly
sudden touch of our fingers, then moving to hugs and embraces and ending in a sweet
lingering kisses. Eventually we thought of spending a night together to enjoy closer
physical intimacy.

4
 The night was palpitating with all the anticipation of nervousness and excitement in the
lovers first meeting carried under a shadow of high emotional drama. I entered my
bedroom and waited for her. Eventually there was a sound of screeching door and her
shadow slowly approached my bed in the dim light. She was naked and her fair skin gave
a sort of glow amid the darkness of the place. I moved to one side of the bed and she
climbed into my bed to lay beside him.

I gently pulled her face towards me and touched her cheek with my hand and felt it to be
cold. I pressed my warm lips to her cheeks and kissed her. She moved closer signaling
perhaps for further action. A wave of excitement came over me and I madly kissed her
cheeks, her forehead, her eyes and hair. A storm of emotions burst forth directing me to
her neck and slowly down to her breasts, kissing and tasting it madly. I then hesitated and
dared not to proceed downwards but moved to side ways, touching and kissing her
slender arms which seemed to be full of a taste of flesh, of purity and a sort of
exquisiteness.

It seems that our senses are designed for not standing still, unlike the stagnant waters of
some isolated pool and we are always on move. Senses can be creative as they seek fresh
impetus. After initial excitement in the meeting of sexes in close relationship, they tend to
fall into boredom and inactivity for lack of fresh impetus. Mostly the initial
impetus is of pleasure seeking but theses hedonistic impulses soon tend to fall into
boredom and then an anger, resulting in conflict and aggression, as each party try to
outdo each other in cruelty as to take a sort of revenge.

It could have been different if the parties have some creative spark within when the
relations gain that energy which strengthens their bonds but sadly these tend to be very
rare occasions.

This was happening with our relationship. I am afraid to state that she was of limited
sensibility and plain intellectual capacity and persisted in routine and traditional ways of
loving. To be always at the center of attention was her prime purpose, without putting
much effort of her own and so she wanted my worship at every step. Slowly she became
possessive and began to be jealous of any harmless activities of mine. I was fond of oil
painting but she hated me in indulging in that hobby of mine. She even suggested that I
was paying more attention to my painting then to her.

There came a rift between us and our relationships took a turn for the worse. We stopped
seeing each other except on rare frequency. Our emotional bonds became loose. We have
to do something to remedy it and so I arranged a meeting at a nearby café.

We sat across the table face to face with our hands stretched on the table. I advanced my
hand slowly to touch her fingers but she abruptly withdrew her hand.

“Please, don’t.” she pleaded.

“ Why not? Remember you used to hold my hand for hours when you felt in need of
affection or comfort from me. ”

“That was in the past. ”

“ But why not now? After all nothing has changed.”

“ We are not the same “

“ How is that? “

“ There was love between us then but things have changed “

“ But I still love you “

“ Don’t make things worse by lying “

Love is such a strange thing, I thought. When it comes to you, it overpowers you
pushing other things away but still there are other things in life and a man cannot live by
love alone, there are other interests of equal importance.

It is different for a woman who needs love all the time and often uses love as a power
game. To rule over a man was her sole ambition in life. It was her center, her life and
possibly whole of her existence.

“ Can we start again? “ I blurted

“ Not where we left. “

“ Let us make a new start then. “

To my surprise she agreed.

7
WE have been walking in the wood amid sunset, hand in hand. Our closeness had created
a sort of harmony between us and conveyed a mood of electric feelings,
through our bodies and even without recourse to verbal communications. The body has
its own language and may be its own field of thinking and action which is far from being
a tool of primitive biological communication, which it is commonly thought of. As our
emotions are refined through usage of thinking and feeling, the body takes on a different
mantel of exploration and as long as we do not fall into pre-requisite hedonism, it
becomes a tool of exploration of senses and physical complexities and which might lead
to unknown regions of our psyche.

The trouble is that we are programmed biologically to fall at the first hurdle of pleasure
seeking mind, sacrificing all the higher emotions and wisdom of the body for scraps of
pleasure. Most people behave like animals grazing in the field who are happy just to
graze in order to fill their stomach with grass and thus appease the hunger and that is the
end of their sensibilities but I think that human beings have more sensibilities in their
make up but alas no one wants to make use of these in any manner, which we are made to
think of as foolish tendencies to be ridiculed.

The harsh shadows of afternoon melted into soft twilight and the atmosphere became an
intricate web of harmony and anxieties. Like the setting day, the impending end of the
day also pointed out to the end of our days, of the duration of our life. I pulled her close
in order to feel less pain.

Suddenly something out of blue happened .She sort of proposed to me to get married,
which affected me greatly as I never expected it.

I blurted out that we should wait and perhaps just live together for the time being until a
suitable opportunity arrived. In my heart of heart I never wanted to get married and it was
intolerable for me to live like others, as all the way of flesh, making children, having a
family and getting involved with the so called normality of human life. In that pre-
arranged conception of life where everything is encoded neatly by mankind and dictated
by programmed emotions, I could not find any foothold.

There was a silence between us as we walked along the paths of the park where tall
trees were whispering to us strange language of their own. She was holding my hand in a
gentle way but suddenly her grip became tight and agitated.

“Have you noticed that you have not spoken to me intimately for sometime? Have you
become less fond of me?”

“ That is not true, I always show my tender feelings towards you through gestures and
worlds”

“ Words are not enough .Do you still love me like you used to love me at the beginning “
“ Yes I think so --- mostly ----“

“ Mostly, What does that mean? “

“ It means that I will always love you “

“ You are clever at words, why don’t you show it in action?

I mean you should have proposed to me by now.”

I was surprised at the turn of the conversation.

“ I want to marry you “ She insisted

“ Is that a proposal? “

“Yes “

One evening she told me that she would soon be leaving the country for a distant land as
she has found an excellent post abroad. I was shattered but on the other hand she seems to
be happy with the prospects of foreign travel and work. I went to see her off on the
station. My mood was bitter with suppressed emotions and lump in the throat. I saw her
and said goodbye to her at the station

When I went home my head was empty and numb as if I had not slept for ages and all the
energy from my body had been flooded out by avalanche of stormy emotions. I tried to
concentrate on the job at hand but it simply did not work.

Somehow I managed to eat a morsel of food and straight away took refuge in bed though
it was still daylight and long rays of evening sun were penetrating through the chinks in
the curtains.

I tried to sleep but felt that energy was being drained out of my head and I was pouring
out an army of horrible little creatures out of my brain. It seemed that all the despair of
my mind was giving shape to theses creatures, diminished creatures with twisted mouths
and horrible limbs.

Soon they began to surround my bed whispering to each other as if mocking me. I could
hear their shrill laughter. Soon they began to climb into my bed, then over my body.

Their crawling little steps made me feel nauseated I felt that I was being injected with
sharp poison of their hooves.

They began to pull my hair and some tried to strangle me within grips of their tiny
hands.

Enraged I shouted and tried to get up but felt their hold on me too strong. I felt humiliated
and insulted and made a supreme effort to get up, which I last succeeded in. I took
handful of them and began to throw them out of my bed. Strange shouts were coming out
of my throat, which must have frightened them, and they managed to scamper into the
corners of the room and disappeared.

I was perspiring profusely and took a towel to rub my body and forehead and went back
to sleep and slept for days.

Durlabh Singh© 2008.