Rain on me …a monsoon tale in three acts. (Act 2)

As a young girl, Savita had been skinny and not quite the fairest of them all. She had two elder sisters and a younger brother. By the time she was born, her parents were yearning for a son and had been barely able conceal their disappointment at having yet another daughter. Her eldest sister, Suneeta, was a traditional Indian beauty, and her parents were quite confident of finding a good husband for her. Her other sister, Sarita, was effervescent and bubbly, and while she was not very pretty or demure, she was the life of the party and despite the fact that she was constantly getting into trouble with her pranks, nobody could really dislike her. Her younger brother, Sunil, was obviously the apple of everybody’s eyes – her grandparents doted on him, by the virtue of the fact that he was a boy. Somehow Savita had always felt a little left out – and though she not particularly ill treated or neglected – she never felt that she had the affections of her family the way her other siblings did.

In college, Savita had begun taking an interest in literature and poetry. She had read almost the entire collection of Premchand, and even though, she had not been very fluent in English, she had begun reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy. One of her favorite books was Nabokov’s Lolita. She had felt a little naughty reading it – the book had created a stir for its portrayal of a young girl as a seductress. In reading the book, Savita had discovered the tiny hidden corners of her own sexuality – and unknown to her, she was filled with a secret longing – a longing that burned through her flesh into her soul.

In the middle of her second year in college, Savita joined a writers club. Most of the members of the club were earnest looking young men and women, and for some reason most of the men had beards. Over cups of tea, they discussed a new book or politics. While Savita never really participated in these discussions, she enjoyed the ambience – an ambience that was filled with the headiness of youth and idealism. It was also a welcome break from her life at home, which revolved mostly around her elder sister’s impending wedding to an engineer. Her mother was filled with pride and excitement that her eldest daughter had snagged such a good catch, and was gleefully enjoying the fact that she was the envy of all her relatives and neighbors.

In one of the evenings, as Savita listened to Vinod and Ismail talk about communal politics, she felt someone pull up a chair next to her. She didn’t turn around to look, but she smelt the muskiness with a gentle intake of her breath. It was Sameer. She had never spoken to him, but watched him wistfully from afar as he laughed and smiled in carefree guileless way. Sameer was the treasurer of the writers club, and he was one of the few people in the group who drove a car. His father was a powerful bureaucrat in the Indian Administrative Service, and he had studied in prestigious English medium schools. He had an easygoing boyish charm, and most of the girls she knew had a crush on him, and most of the guys wanted to be like him.

Savita took a small breath again, inhaling the wonderful muskiness. It was not the sweet, cheap, cloying smell that hung around her brother, or all other men she knew. This was refined, expensive, subtle and sophisticated. For Savita, Sameer was like Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Before she knew it, the discussion on the tyranny of religion was over, and people were beginning to leave. Savita stood up as well, and she realized that her dupatta was stuck under Sameer’s chair. “Oh, I am so sorry, “ he said, as Sameer lifted the chair and pulled Savita’s duppatta. Savita was too flustered to say anything, but she smiled. A smile that was so unsure of itself, and yet so full of promise.

Savita and Samir kept bumping into each other at the weekly meetings, and while they exchanged polite greetings and occasionally spoke to each other about the books they had read and the authors they liked, they rarely had conversations with each other for more than a few minutes, though it was not for the lack of trying on Samir’s part. But Savita was strangely hesitant and scared. She found it hard to believe that someone like him should like someone like her.

One night, the group had a particularly prolonged and heated debate about where Indira Gandhi was taking the country. It was well past seven, and it was raining heavily outside. Savita glanced at her watch and jumped up realizing that she was about to miss the last bus home. As she stood in the door way trying to open her umbrella, Sameer walked up to her and said, “Maybe, I can drop you home. Its raining quite heavily and its getting dark” Savita was silent, and she continued fumbling with her umbrella. “Give it up, “said Sameer with that easy going laugh she liked so much. The two of them ran towards the car covering their heads with their hands, as if the web of flesh and skin was strong enough to withstand the ferocity of the monsoon rain.