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Lavenders in our Portico | Part 1

On the first morning of her last summer, Vygha woke up to find her body covered in sweat and her mind yearning for Anees. It was not an ordinary yearning; for numerous years she fell asleep wanting his heated breaths to hit her cold face but now she wanted something more. She wanted to know, once again, how it feels to have his manhood move along her bosom and to pull it towards her and kiss it till he cried with passion.

She remembered days when they laid naked in their portico, often smoking, surrounded by the sound of crickets and the twinkle of fireflies. She used to tell him about lavenders and mountain tops, he would close his eyes and listen. Anees loved her stories, he loved her journeys, and she loved him for it. They planned countless adventures after their marriage and often did none; they wanted to smoke the costliest weed, they wanted to travel the world like hippies and they wanted to grow lavenders in their portico.

Vygha got out of bed, her thoughts were still raging wars inside as she wiped away the sweat and tied her remaining silver hair into a bun. She walked towards her daughter's room, it was still and dark, she hadn't yet woken up. As Vygha grew more and more senile, she became rather fond of early mornings. She remembered how, during her youth, she hadn't seen the Sun rise for years. She was the aphrodite of never ending midnights and Anees a true partner in crime. It was during one of those nights that she, high on adrenaline and drugs, asked Anees if he could handle her as a wife. It may have occurred to him as a surprise, but then he was already in love and couldn't resist.  Together they waged wars against time with blatant animosity; they drank wine all night and made love all day.

But now it seemed to Vygha that time had indeed won. She walked, feebly as she could, to the kitchen, made tea and went with it to the portico. She looked at their yard and at the portico as if it was flowering in front of her for the first time. She felt a deep and nostalgic affinity towards grains of soil, blades of grass and every plant and flower she saw. She found with delight how the portico blossomed with the many flowers she kept- roses, poppies and dahlias - all caressed by her wrinkled hands and visited by all the bees in their town. She remembered how she used to paint these pots and hang them from the roof so that butterflies needn't be so grounded to get what they wanted. She thought about foremothers of these flowers and wondered if they knew Anees like she knew him, after all they too would have counted his pubic hairs and learned when he moans the most.

She also remembered, with discomfort, how the mango tree planted by her mother was cut down to make a car shed for her son-in-law and how the name board announcing 'Architect Vygha Krishnan' gradually rusted and fell away. It was only recently that Anees's motorbike was sold to an antique shop and her car, beyond old, was made into a sitting space overlooking the valley. Her daughter wanted to sell the car at first, but Vygha protested and decided to overhaul it. She called a mechanic and asked him to cut down doors on one side to make an opening, and to turn the seats to face the opening. She kept the engine for herself and asked the mechanic to paint the insides in the darkest of blues. After the work was finished the mechanic was so in awe at himself and his work that he didn't take money from Vygha, but gave her his gratitude for bringing out the artist in him.

She would sit inside that car in the evenings, take with her a kerosene lamp, some books and her diary. She had read all the books she owned and now found pleasure in re-reading many of them to find bits and pieces she missed during her previous readings. She would note these down in her diary along with a remark on how well she lived that day. This activity was partly for her own amusement and partly to give her daughter and her son-in-law their own moment of privacy.

She had indeed become reclusive, but she still didn't develop a lack of affinity towards life. It was always difficult for her to await death in peace, she could never do that. Even when Anees came back home one day in a freezer, even when her daughter and son-in-law shifted to help 'ward-off' her loneliness, even when every friend she knew had died or just plainly forgot, she couldn't welcome her own death. She would rather sit idle in the portico for hours tussling with her impulses and warding away strange desires to travel. She knew she wasn't able, at least physically, to be at places where she wanted to be - the highest villages, the coziest cafes and the funkiest parties, but she could still reach there in her mind.

Things have indeed changed, she thought as she finished her tea, the Sun came up in the far East, and its first rays covered everything around in an orange tinge. Light in her daughter's room was put on, another day had begun.

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