My Dadu (maternal grandfather) lived in Behrampur city of West Bengal and my Thakurda’ (paternal grandfather) in a village called Jitpur, some twenty odd miles away.
From Jamshedpur, we would travel by train to Behrampur, changing at Calcutta. After spending a few days with Dadu, we would leave for Jitpur. We would take a bus for Amtola, and get off at the point on the road closest to river Jalangi. If we took the bus from Behrampur late afternoon then we reached the kheya-ghat (jetty) there, just before sunset. It was not really much of a jetty - just a few split bamboos nailed together, and laid on the almost flat riverbank, to make for a landing that just allowed one to avoid the soft and slushy riverbank.
Thakurda’ would have sent down a boat for us. This last leg of our journey by boat was the most thrilling, at least as far as I was concerned. First of all, there was the anxiety whether there would be a boat at the jetty. Getting off the bus, therefore, I would run the short distance to the jetty, and then exult upon finding the boat, tied and rocking gently over the undulating river water nibbling at its underbelly. The boat usually had one boatman to row, and another to pilot it. Rowing upstream to Jitpur, a distance of some six miles (those days distance was measured in miles), the boat would take about two hours, take or leave a quarter-hour, depending on the current. At times one of the boatmen would get off, and pull the boat by a rope, walking along the high riverbank.
As the boat set off, a reluctant electrum evening would gently descend from the heavens, smearing the tall white plumes of ‘Kaashful’ flowers on the riverbanks with passionate colours, and setting the river surface on fire. The reflection of the dying sunlight and the darkening sky in the river surface would break up into innumerable shards of different hues, gradually melting and dissolving into an unfathomable blackness. The tall riverbank would rise up and up into the silent enveloping darkness, like the sinister wall of some ancient fort. Into its million gun-holes would return formations of birds clamoring and fluttering, homing like a thousand boomerangs coming back without result.
At last, as the calm darkness descended, a velvety canopy of black sky would come up from the east, studded with a million sparkles. And to outshine their glory, a creamy moon would rise with the omniscient smile of knowing every secret that scurried to hide in the darkness. I would feel as if I was embarked upon an endless voyage in time standing still under a perpetually twinkling sky, sentinel of the scintillating water of the sluggish moat running by the unending wall of a fort abeam, changing side as the river meandered.
Eventually, I would be wrenched out of the reverie, suddenly jolted by the boat striking against the jetty at the village. And, Thakurda’ would appear like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, with a lantern in his hand raised above the eyes.
Thakurda’ had named me Nirendro, fondly pared down to Niren in his address. And, my sister was Lotika to him.
From the village’s main street a short flight of steps rose to the outer courtyard of Thakurda’s house. Across this yard was a ‘workshop’ where some artisans worked. On the left there ran an elevated verandah fronting the ‘Boithok Khana’ (Visitors’ Room), and ‘Poraar Ghor’ (Study Room). The main residence lay behind these, unconnected. The way to an inner courtyard was by an arched gateway that laboured along a kinked passage between the Study Room, the Workshop, and a staircase to go on the roof. The passage opened into the much larger longish inner yard, with a high-roofed pillar-less verandah running along its long side on the left, and a paved ground on the short side on the right. The verandah ran in front of four pairs of large rooms. You entered the outer room of each pair through a door opening on the verandah, and cut across to the inner room. The far wall of the inner room opened its windows, looking across the main street into a frighteningly dense Mango grove across the road. The outer room, with some scattered furniture, served as a sort of living room, and the inner one, as a bedroom. On each side of the entry door there were two wide and tall windows, with the windowsill about a foot above the ground. Opposite them, there was a similar pair in the wall between the two rooms. The arrangement was the same in all the four pairs.
The eldest brother of my father, my ‘Baro Jathaa’, occupied the first pair of rooms, sharing their flanks with the visitors’ room and the study room. Thakurda’ and Thakurma (grandmother), occupied the next pair. Their bedroom had a huge ancient four-poster with fluted legs, ornamental headpiece and footrest. The bed was so high that for many years my sister and I had to be lifted up on it, where with little to do as the evening progressed, we quietly dozed off.
On the right end of the inner courtyard, after the paved area, was a broad staircase leading up to a verandah with pillars and arches that gave into two very large kitchens. These kitchens were behind the Workshop, with a room in between storing Pat-kathi (sticks of dry jute plant) used for lighting the fire in the kitchen ovens. The remaining two sides of the courtyard had high walls meeting at one corner, where the toilet stood like a pariah. The courtyard had some flowering plants, and a disorderly kitchen garden. The prize went to a dwarfish but very fecund tree of Shiuli flower that stooped to drench the earth below with copious white flowers with orange stem in season. For water, there was a well in the courtyard that provided cold water in summer and somewhat lukewarm water in winter. The bathrooms were in the boundary wall opposite the verandah across the courtyard. A door next to them led out to the garden at the rear of the property. In this garden, which was L-shaped, extending the other arm around the Workshop, there were many fruit trees, a couple of massive bamboo bushes swaying menacingly, and a dark green pool where the algae had never been stirred by any intrusion, except when I pelted it with shells of dead snail to stir its placid facade into reluctant tremulous green waves.
***
Whether Thakurda’ was very fond of me or not, I do not remember. However, my arrival would bring him a feigned relief with which he would invariably offer me, sooner or later, these words, “Niren, would you marry your Thakurma, and take her away from me when you return?”
I cannot say I minded the proposal much. Thakurma was of a very serene and quiet disposition, smiling a sweet smile that summarily dismissed Thakurda’s glib talk. Her favourite was father, being the last child. While he had inherited many of Thakurma’s striking features, it was his eldest sister, my ‘Baro Pisi’ (auntie) who had inherited Thakurma’s beauty on a grand scale. In her early forties, ‘Baro Pisi’ was extremely beautiful. Her visage, aided by a large circle of vermillion on her forehead, raised a feeling of reverence. All her daughters (sadly much older than I was, save one of about my age) too were beautiful. Through my auntie, I would let my imagination wander off in search of my Thakurma’s younger days.
At the time Thakurda’ made this offer, Thakurma was surely past sixty. She had crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes, and wrinkles in her cheeks. Her complexion had turned dull golden, like an ornament put away for a long time. She was of a slight frame, but of strong bones, quite wide at her hips. She had no fat in her flesh. He face was made of fine bones. Her eyes, large, eager and mildly bulging, with iris paled by age, were set in deep sockets. Yet her fine and still black eyebrows and long shadowy eyelashes rendered a certain depth and darkness to the eyes. She did not have an aquiline nose, but the bridge was strong and prominent, over which the skin lay taut, giving her a look of strong determination. The most fetching part of her beauty, of course, resided in her lips. Like two large segments of orange with wrinkled surface, they had very sharp outline. Her lower lip, which was the heavier, drooped a little, parting the lips. They were always very dry, as if about to crack, and therefore, wanting tender care, which she seldom took. Where the lips met, they formed two moist eyelets. However, this moisture failed to irrigate the arid lips. Before she spoke, her emotion of the moment made the lower lip quiver. She had a mass of curly hair, then mostly silvery white, but with a few streaks of black. She did not comb her hair often, allowing the fine silver curls to dangle like snakes about her face.
Her beauty was fragile in a certain way, probably made so by age. I held that in extreme pride, all the time keeping it a secret. Anyway, the large house, and its gardens so overwhelmed me that most of the time I remained a prince out on his most dangerous expedition, while his bride-to-be awaited him.
Thakurma, a person of few words, dearly loved my mother, and spoke most with her, and sometimes with my sister. She had a way of taming my mercurial Thakurda’. So, his benign proposal to settle her off with me did not seem to bother her much. As such, I was quiet, and Thakurma, sensing my deep and shy embarrassment, seldom made any public display of her affection for me.
We mostly visited Jitpur in summer for the mangoes, and rarely in winter. It was an occasional year when we went there for Durga Pujo – this once is the only one as far as I can remember, but I would not bet on that. The celebrations in the village were very different from the ones in Jamshedpur. The celebrations got going from early morning until lunchtime when Bhog (rice cooked with lentil, offered to the deity) was collected and taken home to eat. The evenings were not very bright as there was no electric light, and the illumination came from Petromax lamps. Nightlife picked up after dinner in the form of the rural folk theatre that everyone went to watch. Invariably the theatre revolved around a king and his beautiful princess, who always left me cold when compared to Thakurma. Also, I often recognized in the princess some effeminate cousin brother from the village, which put paid to any larking urge to compare the beauties involved.
This visit that I am talking of, the weather being mild and clear for the time of the year, the days were passing very well. So much so, that on the Ashtomi (eighth day of celebration), Thakurda’ conveyed that we should visit the temple in a neighboring village, and make the floral offering, Anjali. I do not recall why he decided – was it due to the presiding deity being alive to the followers’ earthly woes, or was it the fair at the place, or a chance for my Thakurda’ and father to meet people.
So, early that morning we were up and busy. Morning tea used to be made in the outer room over a Primus Stove, original Swedish, fueled with kerosene. Father lit it with spirit to heat the oil, streaming its vapour into the burner, where it soon caught fire and burned with a mesmerizing blue flame. This tea ritual started with the intoxicating smell of burning spirit; then a very subtle smell of kerosene burning up without soot; and finally ending with the aroma of brewing tea. I would sit on the sill of the low windows and savor the succession of smells, wafting to mingle with the slanted rays of the sun streaming in through the windows. But that morning there was no procession of smells, and the sunlight appeared to soon disappear odorless, as the sun climbed the sky.
Skipping tea, we took bath and got dressed up, Thakurda’, father and I using the outer room. Mother, sister and Thakurma used the inner room, mother helping Thakurma with her stiff cotton sari and ornaments.
When Thakurma emerged, stooping with slight embarrassment, I looked at her and could not turn my eyes away from a beauty unforeseen in my imagination. Mother had tied her hair in a braid, in which the strong silver curls snaked and struggled to escape. A few of the uncontrollable wispy strands remained free, radiating a maze of silver curls around her face, framing it in a scintillating halo. There was gold all over her, on her hands, on her arms, around her slender wizened neck under the prominent Adam’s apple. On her earlobes, there were ear tops. Also, she wore a nose ring, which accentuated the beauty of the lips, stooping over them like Narcissus over a stream. All that glittering gold threw a soft golden radiance over her coppery-golden skin, enhancing its own glow.
***
Leaving the house, we cut through the village to come out in the open fields. We filed along the bank of the river, in a queue as is wont in villages. Thakurda led the parade, while discussing important issues of land and property with father. Mother followed, holding sister’s hand. Then walked Thakurma, and I brought up the rear. From behind her, I watched Thakurma, her thin frame in a graceful yet humble cotton sari, cream in colour, with a brick-red border. Carrying a plate of fruits and sweets covered with a lace scarf to offer to the Goddess, she walked barefoot, daintily in tender steps, as if afraid to tread on the dew and soil her sari. Her gait bore a femininity that her body seemed to recall from her teenage, whose shy diffident sway still lingered. From time to time, she stopped and looked back at me, rendering me a chance to catch up with her blooming beauty. In spite of the cool morning breeze, a dew of perspiration began to appear on her forehead, nose and the high cheeks. Distracted by the pastoral beauty in the morning haze, I kept falling behind. Yet, as soon as she looked back, attracted by this pinnacle of feminine beauty approaching divine apparition, I ran forward to catch up. I had then a strange vision of being in the company of the Goddess of Beauty making no claim of love and affection; allowing me to be myself, by myself; indulging me to explore the beauty of nature, to quench my primeval yet infantile thirst for beauty itself.
Reaching the village, we first offered the Anjali, and then waited for the prayers to be over. Thakurda’ and father utilized the time in catching up with whatever familiar faces they could find, while sister and I toured the fair. Finally, after a couple of hours we started for home, having eaten Prasad, and finding little else to hang around for. The sun had risen and the breeze had slackened, raising the temperature. In the lingering humidity of the just ended rainy season, we started sweating, and Thakurma’s face began to glow with a flush and sheen, their combined radiance lifting the patina of age off her face.
When we reached home, everyone heaved a sigh of relief. There was still some time before lunch. We all changed, mother helping Thakurma. When she came out in her day’s wear, she still looked as ravishing, and more so because of the radiance on her face. The flush had subtly worked on her sebaceous glands, expelling a fine film of oil on her face that shone bright like the gleaming face of the Goddess Mother. Her lips were flushed too, and had taken on a glowing rosy hue, moist now. I looked and looked at her. She saw my gaze, looked a little puzzled, and then commanded in a soft tone, “Niren, come to me!”
As I went up hesitatingly, for some unknown reason mother prompted me to touch Thakurma’s feet. I bent down, but Thakurma arrested me, and taking my cheeks in her hands she drew up my face. Slowly bending down, she kissed me on my forehead ever so lightly with her flushed, soft, moist lips, holding it for a fleeting moment. Then still looking into my eyes, she smiled, raising herself, and announced, “Niren took good care of me today”. I blushed, as my earlobes burst with rushing blood. My eyes grew moist and tear welled up. I released myself from Thakurma’s palms, and bowed down to touch her feet, a few teardrops rolling down my cheeks to fall at those white little feet framed in red Aaltaa.
When I raised my head, Thakurda’ was looking at me with serious, quizzical eyes. He allowed for a moment, and then asked me with quieting gravity, “So, tell me Niren, may I now solemnize your marriage?”
© Indroneer - Member WaaS
From Jamshedpur, we would travel by train to Behrampur, changing at Calcutta. After spending a few days with Dadu, we would leave for Jitpur. We would take a bus for Amtola, and get off at the point on the road closest to river Jalangi. If we took the bus from Behrampur late afternoon then we reached the kheya-ghat (jetty) there, just before sunset. It was not really much of a jetty - just a few split bamboos nailed together, and laid on the almost flat riverbank, to make for a landing that just allowed one to avoid the soft and slushy riverbank.
Thakurda’ would have sent down a boat for us. This last leg of our journey by boat was the most thrilling, at least as far as I was concerned. First of all, there was the anxiety whether there would be a boat at the jetty. Getting off the bus, therefore, I would run the short distance to the jetty, and then exult upon finding the boat, tied and rocking gently over the undulating river water nibbling at its underbelly. The boat usually had one boatman to row, and another to pilot it. Rowing upstream to Jitpur, a distance of some six miles (those days distance was measured in miles), the boat would take about two hours, take or leave a quarter-hour, depending on the current. At times one of the boatmen would get off, and pull the boat by a rope, walking along the high riverbank.
As the boat set off, a reluctant electrum evening would gently descend from the heavens, smearing the tall white plumes of ‘Kaashful’ flowers on the riverbanks with passionate colours, and setting the river surface on fire. The reflection of the dying sunlight and the darkening sky in the river surface would break up into innumerable shards of different hues, gradually melting and dissolving into an unfathomable blackness. The tall riverbank would rise up and up into the silent enveloping darkness, like the sinister wall of some ancient fort. Into its million gun-holes would return formations of birds clamoring and fluttering, homing like a thousand boomerangs coming back without result.
At last, as the calm darkness descended, a velvety canopy of black sky would come up from the east, studded with a million sparkles. And to outshine their glory, a creamy moon would rise with the omniscient smile of knowing every secret that scurried to hide in the darkness. I would feel as if I was embarked upon an endless voyage in time standing still under a perpetually twinkling sky, sentinel of the scintillating water of the sluggish moat running by the unending wall of a fort abeam, changing side as the river meandered.
Eventually, I would be wrenched out of the reverie, suddenly jolted by the boat striking against the jetty at the village. And, Thakurda’ would appear like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, with a lantern in his hand raised above the eyes.
Thakurda’ had named me Nirendro, fondly pared down to Niren in his address. And, my sister was Lotika to him.
From the village’s main street a short flight of steps rose to the outer courtyard of Thakurda’s house. Across this yard was a ‘workshop’ where some artisans worked. On the left there ran an elevated verandah fronting the ‘Boithok Khana’ (Visitors’ Room), and ‘Poraar Ghor’ (Study Room). The main residence lay behind these, unconnected. The way to an inner courtyard was by an arched gateway that laboured along a kinked passage between the Study Room, the Workshop, and a staircase to go on the roof. The passage opened into the much larger longish inner yard, with a high-roofed pillar-less verandah running along its long side on the left, and a paved ground on the short side on the right. The verandah ran in front of four pairs of large rooms. You entered the outer room of each pair through a door opening on the verandah, and cut across to the inner room. The far wall of the inner room opened its windows, looking across the main street into a frighteningly dense Mango grove across the road. The outer room, with some scattered furniture, served as a sort of living room, and the inner one, as a bedroom. On each side of the entry door there were two wide and tall windows, with the windowsill about a foot above the ground. Opposite them, there was a similar pair in the wall between the two rooms. The arrangement was the same in all the four pairs.
The eldest brother of my father, my ‘Baro Jathaa’, occupied the first pair of rooms, sharing their flanks with the visitors’ room and the study room. Thakurda’ and Thakurma (grandmother), occupied the next pair. Their bedroom had a huge ancient four-poster with fluted legs, ornamental headpiece and footrest. The bed was so high that for many years my sister and I had to be lifted up on it, where with little to do as the evening progressed, we quietly dozed off.
On the right end of the inner courtyard, after the paved area, was a broad staircase leading up to a verandah with pillars and arches that gave into two very large kitchens. These kitchens were behind the Workshop, with a room in between storing Pat-kathi (sticks of dry jute plant) used for lighting the fire in the kitchen ovens. The remaining two sides of the courtyard had high walls meeting at one corner, where the toilet stood like a pariah. The courtyard had some flowering plants, and a disorderly kitchen garden. The prize went to a dwarfish but very fecund tree of Shiuli flower that stooped to drench the earth below with copious white flowers with orange stem in season. For water, there was a well in the courtyard that provided cold water in summer and somewhat lukewarm water in winter. The bathrooms were in the boundary wall opposite the verandah across the courtyard. A door next to them led out to the garden at the rear of the property. In this garden, which was L-shaped, extending the other arm around the Workshop, there were many fruit trees, a couple of massive bamboo bushes swaying menacingly, and a dark green pool where the algae had never been stirred by any intrusion, except when I pelted it with shells of dead snail to stir its placid facade into reluctant tremulous green waves.
***
Whether Thakurda’ was very fond of me or not, I do not remember. However, my arrival would bring him a feigned relief with which he would invariably offer me, sooner or later, these words, “Niren, would you marry your Thakurma, and take her away from me when you return?”
I cannot say I minded the proposal much. Thakurma was of a very serene and quiet disposition, smiling a sweet smile that summarily dismissed Thakurda’s glib talk. Her favourite was father, being the last child. While he had inherited many of Thakurma’s striking features, it was his eldest sister, my ‘Baro Pisi’ (auntie) who had inherited Thakurma’s beauty on a grand scale. In her early forties, ‘Baro Pisi’ was extremely beautiful. Her visage, aided by a large circle of vermillion on her forehead, raised a feeling of reverence. All her daughters (sadly much older than I was, save one of about my age) too were beautiful. Through my auntie, I would let my imagination wander off in search of my Thakurma’s younger days.
At the time Thakurda’ made this offer, Thakurma was surely past sixty. She had crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes, and wrinkles in her cheeks. Her complexion had turned dull golden, like an ornament put away for a long time. She was of a slight frame, but of strong bones, quite wide at her hips. She had no fat in her flesh. He face was made of fine bones. Her eyes, large, eager and mildly bulging, with iris paled by age, were set in deep sockets. Yet her fine and still black eyebrows and long shadowy eyelashes rendered a certain depth and darkness to the eyes. She did not have an aquiline nose, but the bridge was strong and prominent, over which the skin lay taut, giving her a look of strong determination. The most fetching part of her beauty, of course, resided in her lips. Like two large segments of orange with wrinkled surface, they had very sharp outline. Her lower lip, which was the heavier, drooped a little, parting the lips. They were always very dry, as if about to crack, and therefore, wanting tender care, which she seldom took. Where the lips met, they formed two moist eyelets. However, this moisture failed to irrigate the arid lips. Before she spoke, her emotion of the moment made the lower lip quiver. She had a mass of curly hair, then mostly silvery white, but with a few streaks of black. She did not comb her hair often, allowing the fine silver curls to dangle like snakes about her face.
Her beauty was fragile in a certain way, probably made so by age. I held that in extreme pride, all the time keeping it a secret. Anyway, the large house, and its gardens so overwhelmed me that most of the time I remained a prince out on his most dangerous expedition, while his bride-to-be awaited him.
Thakurma, a person of few words, dearly loved my mother, and spoke most with her, and sometimes with my sister. She had a way of taming my mercurial Thakurda’. So, his benign proposal to settle her off with me did not seem to bother her much. As such, I was quiet, and Thakurma, sensing my deep and shy embarrassment, seldom made any public display of her affection for me.
We mostly visited Jitpur in summer for the mangoes, and rarely in winter. It was an occasional year when we went there for Durga Pujo – this once is the only one as far as I can remember, but I would not bet on that. The celebrations in the village were very different from the ones in Jamshedpur. The celebrations got going from early morning until lunchtime when Bhog (rice cooked with lentil, offered to the deity) was collected and taken home to eat. The evenings were not very bright as there was no electric light, and the illumination came from Petromax lamps. Nightlife picked up after dinner in the form of the rural folk theatre that everyone went to watch. Invariably the theatre revolved around a king and his beautiful princess, who always left me cold when compared to Thakurma. Also, I often recognized in the princess some effeminate cousin brother from the village, which put paid to any larking urge to compare the beauties involved.
This visit that I am talking of, the weather being mild and clear for the time of the year, the days were passing very well. So much so, that on the Ashtomi (eighth day of celebration), Thakurda’ conveyed that we should visit the temple in a neighboring village, and make the floral offering, Anjali. I do not recall why he decided – was it due to the presiding deity being alive to the followers’ earthly woes, or was it the fair at the place, or a chance for my Thakurda’ and father to meet people.
So, early that morning we were up and busy. Morning tea used to be made in the outer room over a Primus Stove, original Swedish, fueled with kerosene. Father lit it with spirit to heat the oil, streaming its vapour into the burner, where it soon caught fire and burned with a mesmerizing blue flame. This tea ritual started with the intoxicating smell of burning spirit; then a very subtle smell of kerosene burning up without soot; and finally ending with the aroma of brewing tea. I would sit on the sill of the low windows and savor the succession of smells, wafting to mingle with the slanted rays of the sun streaming in through the windows. But that morning there was no procession of smells, and the sunlight appeared to soon disappear odorless, as the sun climbed the sky.
Skipping tea, we took bath and got dressed up, Thakurda’, father and I using the outer room. Mother, sister and Thakurma used the inner room, mother helping Thakurma with her stiff cotton sari and ornaments.
When Thakurma emerged, stooping with slight embarrassment, I looked at her and could not turn my eyes away from a beauty unforeseen in my imagination. Mother had tied her hair in a braid, in which the strong silver curls snaked and struggled to escape. A few of the uncontrollable wispy strands remained free, radiating a maze of silver curls around her face, framing it in a scintillating halo. There was gold all over her, on her hands, on her arms, around her slender wizened neck under the prominent Adam’s apple. On her earlobes, there were ear tops. Also, she wore a nose ring, which accentuated the beauty of the lips, stooping over them like Narcissus over a stream. All that glittering gold threw a soft golden radiance over her coppery-golden skin, enhancing its own glow.
***
Leaving the house, we cut through the village to come out in the open fields. We filed along the bank of the river, in a queue as is wont in villages. Thakurda led the parade, while discussing important issues of land and property with father. Mother followed, holding sister’s hand. Then walked Thakurma, and I brought up the rear. From behind her, I watched Thakurma, her thin frame in a graceful yet humble cotton sari, cream in colour, with a brick-red border. Carrying a plate of fruits and sweets covered with a lace scarf to offer to the Goddess, she walked barefoot, daintily in tender steps, as if afraid to tread on the dew and soil her sari. Her gait bore a femininity that her body seemed to recall from her teenage, whose shy diffident sway still lingered. From time to time, she stopped and looked back at me, rendering me a chance to catch up with her blooming beauty. In spite of the cool morning breeze, a dew of perspiration began to appear on her forehead, nose and the high cheeks. Distracted by the pastoral beauty in the morning haze, I kept falling behind. Yet, as soon as she looked back, attracted by this pinnacle of feminine beauty approaching divine apparition, I ran forward to catch up. I had then a strange vision of being in the company of the Goddess of Beauty making no claim of love and affection; allowing me to be myself, by myself; indulging me to explore the beauty of nature, to quench my primeval yet infantile thirst for beauty itself.
Reaching the village, we first offered the Anjali, and then waited for the prayers to be over. Thakurda’ and father utilized the time in catching up with whatever familiar faces they could find, while sister and I toured the fair. Finally, after a couple of hours we started for home, having eaten Prasad, and finding little else to hang around for. The sun had risen and the breeze had slackened, raising the temperature. In the lingering humidity of the just ended rainy season, we started sweating, and Thakurma’s face began to glow with a flush and sheen, their combined radiance lifting the patina of age off her face.
When we reached home, everyone heaved a sigh of relief. There was still some time before lunch. We all changed, mother helping Thakurma. When she came out in her day’s wear, she still looked as ravishing, and more so because of the radiance on her face. The flush had subtly worked on her sebaceous glands, expelling a fine film of oil on her face that shone bright like the gleaming face of the Goddess Mother. Her lips were flushed too, and had taken on a glowing rosy hue, moist now. I looked and looked at her. She saw my gaze, looked a little puzzled, and then commanded in a soft tone, “Niren, come to me!”
As I went up hesitatingly, for some unknown reason mother prompted me to touch Thakurma’s feet. I bent down, but Thakurma arrested me, and taking my cheeks in her hands she drew up my face. Slowly bending down, she kissed me on my forehead ever so lightly with her flushed, soft, moist lips, holding it for a fleeting moment. Then still looking into my eyes, she smiled, raising herself, and announced, “Niren took good care of me today”. I blushed, as my earlobes burst with rushing blood. My eyes grew moist and tear welled up. I released myself from Thakurma’s palms, and bowed down to touch her feet, a few teardrops rolling down my cheeks to fall at those white little feet framed in red Aaltaa.
When I raised my head, Thakurda’ was looking at me with serious, quizzical eyes. He allowed for a moment, and then asked me with quieting gravity, “So, tell me Niren, may I now solemnize your marriage?”
© Indroneer - Member WaaS
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