Silence on a tropical island is the relentless sound of water. The waves, like the sound of your own breathing, never leave you. For a fortnight now, the gurgle and thunder of clouds has drowned out the waves. Rains drum on the roof and skid over the edge, losing themselves in splashes. Simmer, whip, thrum and slip. The sun is dead, they tell you.
Seeded in the sounds is an elemental silence. The quietness of mist and the stillness of ice.
The newly-married Girija Prasad and Chanda Devi have resigned to their fate바카라”strangers in a bedroom damp with desire and flooded with incipient dreams. And Girija Prasad dreams furiously these days. For the rains are conducive to fantasies, an unscientific truth.
One night, when the downpour suddenly stops, it wakes him up. His ears had adjusted to the tropical cacophony like a spouse to a snoring partner. Rising from a wet dream, he wonders what happened. Who left the room?
He peeps down from his queen-sized bed to Chanda Devi바카라™s rustic mattress on the floor, where she sleeps facing the open window instead of him. Aroused, he gazes at the curves of her silhouette in the darkness. When the two of them were united for several births by walking around the sacred fire seven times during their wedding ceremony, she followed his footsteps meekly, firm in her conviction that destiny had brought them together once again in a new avatar. Yet in this avatar, he would have to find a place in her heart once again. 바카라˜Until then,바카라™ she informed him on the first night, 바카라˜I will make my bed on the ground.바카라™
She바카라™s wide awake, distraught because of the accusatory cries emanating from the other side. It is the ghost of a goat. The ghost escaped countless realms to come wander on their roof. And now its restless hooves have descended to stand under the open window, filling the room and her conscience with guilt.
바카라˜Can you hear it?바카라™ she asks. She can feel his eyes on her back. 바카라˜Hear what?바카라™ 바카라˜The goat bleating outside.바카라™ His forlorn erection withers away. He바카라™s alert now to Chanda Devi and the predicament she poses. 바카라˜There바카라™s no goat roaming in our house,바카라™ he replies in exasperation. She sits up. The bleating has grown louder, as if to tell her to convey to her dreamy husband, 바카라˜You took away my life, but you can바카라™t take away my afterlife, you sinful meat-eater!바카라™
바카라˜It바카라™s just outside our window,바카라™ she tells him. 바카라˜Does it scare you?바카라™ 바카라˜No.바카라™ 바카라˜Are you threatened by this goat?바카라™
바카라˜No.바카라™
바카라˜Then perhaps you could ignore it and go back to sleep.바카라™ He meant to say 바카라˜should바카라™ and not 바카라˜could바카라™, but he doesn바카라™t have the courage to be stern. His wife, he has realised, doesn바카라™t respond well to dialectics or coercion. In fact, she doesn바카라™t respond well to most things. If only she were less attractive, he could have ignored her and gone back to sleep.
(Excerpted from Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup with permission from HarperCollins India)
