Narcissus

Of all the women in all the different universes including ours, Nandita was the most beautiful, at least according to me. "If you are writing my fable, it should begin with my beauty" said she when she accustomed herself to me during my dreams. It has to be stressed right from the start that whatever I know of her, I discovered through those dreams - Nandita; her body like wild fire consuming anything within its vicinity, her eyes like deep wells of poison intoxicating your body once you fall in, choking you with passion, her touch like hot blood dripping over your skin with its ironish smell and dark-reddish texture, and she - complete, perfect!

The way she told her story was by itself enchanting. She would lie beside me in my sleep, play her hands around my ears, caressing my face, feeling my lips and gently whispering in my ears. A strong current of lust would then fill my body as I would pull her close to me, our bodies uniting with shared melancholy, with every inch of my grotesque existence asking her to continue the magic. She would laugh at my helplessness, giggle at my impotence and stroke my head with dominance. There was always a strange allure to her, which made my words dance to the music of her orgasmic gasps. I remember writing about her for the very first time,

'She comes in my sleep as if she existed within me. She knew where to touch, she knew what to speak, she knew how to appeal to a hapless man like me. It was as if she knew me long before I ever knew myself. It was at once haunting and entrancing, that someone who presents herself only in your dreams could inspire you to write about her.'

***

Our nights were set ablaze with passion. Her voice was a relapse to my depressions, and her assiduity a forbearance. And one should say it was mutual. She would sing tales of how I could heighten feelings of desire within her. She would comment on how my hands discovering the curves and crevices of her physique could make her breasts overflow and her body to ache, how I could absorb her remorse and create a moment of happiness which brings her closer to life than she had ever known. Those days of passion continued for a very long time, and every night I found myself encapsulated by her sweating nudity and every morning I would wake up to a deserted bedroom filled with her lascivious aroma.

Words dripped onto my diary like reminiscent ardor and every entry I made had one name all over,
'Nandita - my lust, my love. I know her existence maybe a trick my mind plays. But I have never been with another woman who understands me better. It may seem like a word of flatter, but as of now, this woman who visits me during my sleeps, fills my head with a perturbation that desperate lovers and lonely poets could only feel. It was as if we were broken fragments of a faraway star, having to live apart all this while, but colliding with each other one fine day under the light of the same old star. There was something heavenly with it, something spiritual. It was as if I was discovering my own femininity and falling irrevocably in love with it.'

***

I had to speak about all this to someone other than her, which was why I met up with my sister Krutika, calling her out for a coffee one cold evening.

"It is stupid Nandan, I find it damn strange and damn stupid." she said.

"You know me. You know the issues I had, the struggles.. struggles to understand my own gender." I said reliving something we've both forgotten by then.

"I could accept that phase of your life. But what you blabber on now.. It is ridiculous! And it is plain bullshit!" she thundered.

"Well then, piss off!" I said and walked out leaving the untouched coffee to the mercy of the surrounding frost, while she was shouting that I should see a psychiatrist.

***

Many things changed after that talk with Krutika. I began treating Nandita with contempt, the way you treat your schizophrenic hallucinations. As she crawled over the mattress, in a pursuit to hunt down my frightened lips, I pushed her away making her jump angrily over my chest. She sat there breathing down her ornery winds, which hit me, filling me with rue.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asked.

"Nothing I said, just leave me alone today." I replied.

Next morning came sans her smell, the crumbled bed sheet exhibited spots of blood, the source of which I realized was my neck which was torn apart by my own claws. 'Is this all some absurd fantasy?' I thought. 'Will I wake up twenty years younger on my mother's lap?'

"Life has beaten me!" I murmured as I looked at the balding figure in the mirror with stale eyes "It has beaten me faster than I thought.. Everything has become so absurd.."

'What do you get when you add a little personal absurdity to a greater universal absurdity which besieges us all?' I thought and went back to look in the mirror. 'Somewhere inside that head which is losing hairs as if by the click of a hair-losing switch, the woman I loved would be staring angrily at me.'

***

In days following our argument, Nandita came and left as if she was given a key and set in motion. The curves of her body didn't upset my breathing like it did before, and possibly she understood it too. Those meetings became more of a timid pass time, something which failed to interest us both.

It was then that we began doing something, no ordinary lovers would do - we began discussing insignificant things! We talked and heard about multiverses, and of individual electrons. We talked about our favourite cartoons and childhood pranks. We talked about poems and songs, colours which interests us, teachers who inspired us, our fears, our insecurities. These random musings brought out a certain interest which we lost midway. We sat cross legged on top of our bed, night on, eating each other with our eyes, talking about every last thing we experienced in our individual lives.

"I always wished for this" I remember her saying "Us.. Beside each other.. Late night.. When everything around is in deep sleep, while we sit here looking at each other and talking about every silly thing no one cares to talk about!"

"We're doing it now, aren't we? We're going through something special here?" I asked.

"Yes" she said "Something so beautiful, something I wish would last forever!"

There was silence, and every last negativity which pulled us apart seemed to be fading away. I held her hand, it locked perfectly with mine, letting our finger graze over the backside of our hands. I let her head rest upon my chest, stroking it gently.

"In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?" she asked suddenly.

"Are you a tormented city?" I replied jokingly.

"I'm an island. Seas surround me and I stand without company."

"So falling rain will make it more torturous?" I asked.

"No. It relieves those torments of the commanding salinity around me."

"So, in what language does rain fall over tormented cities, my dear?" I inquired.

"In the language of love. Single. One. Universal!"

Saying this she got up, took my head and immersed it between her breasts, the heat of which made my cheeks to sweat. I climbed over to kiss her damp lips, and bit it with ferocity. She threw her hair over my face, making a screen through which she repetitively hit me with forceful kisses, asking me to guess where the next one will come from. After the sexual tensions held long within each other finally broke away out of us, we fell like tired fireflies, motionless and glowing!

'The language of love. What difference does it make if the love is for her? Nandita - she was always there inside me, ever since I was born.What difference does it make?' I thought and fell asleep upon this glowing woman beside me.