Riders on the Storm

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A phantasmagoric expedition of a volatile and incomprehensible juxtaposition of two people’s lives.

Riding in a Vikram (a three wheeled uncomfortable vehicle used for mass transportation in smaller cities) she’s sitting right next to me. It’s around 2 am on an intoxicating February morning and we are returning from one village to another. Though it is only a 10kms ride, it seems a journey from the orient to the occident, or such is the nature of my belief. The periodic jerks of our ride notwithstanding, I’m drenched from tip to toe in a perpetual high. So elevated are my senses that I’m unable to see the quarter of a dozen folks sitting right in front of us, noticing my agitation or the electricity in the air, I’m not sure.

The chill allows me to slip my hand underneath the common bed sheet that we’ve wrapped around ourselves. Her warm right thigh is cutting against my left one, which I’m shaking inconspicuously to fell just a bit more in that temperate explosion which is taking shape inside me , piercing the ligaments of my muscles. Powered by an insurmountable vertigo my hand reached her bosom, via her belly. Placed between the two cotton clothes, I can feel her heartbeat racing with the blood, faster at times, mellowed at others.

The caresses mutate into something deeper as my palm turns warmer with every passing second and the top surface was still fighting the cold. Audacity gave way to intimacy and intimacy gave way to a strange desire that is not exactly lust.

The ride did end eventually and we reached our destination. My hand came back to its equilibrium though somewhere inside me, the warmth was still trying to escape but something kept holding it back.

It has been two hours since the ride and everybody is fast asleep except the two of us. We are lying in a room that is filled with eyes and thoughts. Though the eyes are closed but I am not sure about the thoughts. Of course, they are not asleep. Thoughts never sleep. Are they asleep or just pretending, waiting for me to make a move. When I start galloping on intimacy I loose track of every other feeling, activity, or the situation around me.

“Is she awake and thinking the same as me?” is the only question in my mind.

After about half an hour of this tussle within me and conquering all the vulnerability inside me, I move my hand across an unconscious lady over to her side. My index finger makes way to her palm and her index finger responds to it. I bend over her side while my frame rests over the lady in between us and my lips touch her cheek. After being tilted for about 3-4 minutes I decide to move on her side but the space between her and the lady is not sufficient enough to accommodate me. She moves slightly against the wall and I move over her with the upper part of my structure swinging over hers, and the lower one on the floor. My mouth instantly moves over hers as I feel her lips below mine. My lower lip tearing in between hers and my left hand pressed against her cheek. I can smell my breath on her lips fused with some of hers. Within a few seconds we feel out of breath and start panting over each others mouth. Warm, inviting, pursuant air blown out in acknowledgement of our artlessness.

That exhaustion makes way with the most slackly used phrase in the world “I love you so much” said at the weirdest moment one can imagine and a prolonged liaison is born. A liaison that will last till the two of them will remain within each other’s vicinity. Or more effective when they are away from each other contemplating about moments like these which was transcendence for more reasons than can rhyme.

Still we are able to make it into the same room without the slightest bit of apprehension as far as the rest of the gentry are concerned while a storm of anxiety rages within us. Sometimes it’s the storm of the same perpetual high that I felt sitting next to her more than eight years back, or a more mellowed down sweet ardor combined with my usual clumsiness around her, or a forced repulsion due to a feigned abstinence.

Therein lay the upheaval inside ourselves always clad with a silk sheath of unasked questions which we ask ourselves rather than each other creating our own conspiracy theories on the slightest drop of a hat. Vehemently poised are the moments that still trespass on the shoulders of a lost Rendezvous in the slickest of situations and times. Our timings still remain top notch, high pitched drills of a faulty rhapsody, clinically doctored surrogacy of a child neither of us can claim. Equally clandestine are our actions following the suit of our thoughts, in my dreams or her eyes, in my audacity or her trepidation, her fidgeting or my inconspicuous raised heart beats.

Like a sinusoidal pulse we move up and down, down and up, to and fro, in arms or in thoughts, full swing, over to moon in a flash, dancing from one planet to the other, witnessing all in one go, mach 1 2 3, lightening quick, and suddenly we start falling apart at twice the terminal velocity of a mass less being filtering through dozens of layers, with our body parts taking off one by one, flip flop, bang bang.

And that’s the eternal fall I have been experiencing over the past few years. But somewhere down the line I started believing that it wasn’t a fall but my usual being which has taken the shape of a fall. Just like this memoir which I started a few days back and which is hard to let go, like nostalgia or my most recent disappointing intimacy.