- 4 -
Somanath motioned Krishnaswamy closer. Krishnaswamy, who was dying to move towards the gleaming crevice in the rock, went towards Somanath, feeling irritated.
’Hold both my hands tight.’ Somanath let go off the branch and stretched his right hand out. Krishnaswamy turned quickly, dangled his legs over the edge and asked Somanath to grasp his waist. To ease his feet, Somanath lifted them off the groove on the rock one by one. He smiled at Krishnaswamy. Krishnaswamy was taken aback by his friend’s expression. Somanath’s eyes were gleaming with mischief.
’There was a Muslim girl who was terribly attracted to you. What was her name?’
‘Haseena.’
’She changed her name after she met you …’
’Tushara’
‘At the time of her death in the Bombay blasts last year her name was Nargis Michel. You didn’t know that? Never mind … her daughter’s name?’
’Paapi.’
Krishnaswamy felt shaken by what seemed like an agenda to unravel him. But he concealed his feelings and put his hands on Somanath’s shoulders with the camaraderie of college days, as if the whole exercise of question and answer was but a game.
’Her mother used to call her Paapi. But what was her real name?’
Krishnaswamy remembered. The little girl with two braids and rashes all over her back. Jyoti.
’Yes, it’s the same Jyoti, who’s my student. The one who has come from Paris. Her mother has told her everything about you.’ Somanath winked.
Krishnaswamy wanted to desperately move away from physical contact with his friend. ‘I think I dropped my pen. Shall I go get it?’ he lied.
‘Come,’ Somanath said. The change in position had left him rested and he held on to the branch again. ‘There are many things that you don’t know; Haseena was like the glorious goddess Durga. Come let’s go.’ He lit a beedi as he had done before.
Krishnaswamy went to the gleaming crevice on the pretext of looking for his pen. Whatever it was that had shone before had ceased to shine, nothing was visible. Perhaps it was films of mica, famous in the region that had been gleaming. The sun had shifted its position and maybe that’s why they were no longer doing so.
Krishnaswamy met the round, indifferent eyes of the chameleon. It was still there to his right, exactly at the height of the picture. The glimmering object had been on the left, at the opposite end, below the picture. At the point where the rocks met. Suddenly terrified for his life once more, he stooped. He was at the level of the picture and ran his fingers over the deer, bent further and crouched under the drawing. His eyes ran along the surface, searching. He spotted a small boat-shaped aperture. It was the place which had gleamed in the sunlight, the place he had seen from the shade. There were pieces of glass bangles in it. Red bangles, green bangles…. To lead Somanath to believe that he had found his pen, he picked up a piece of bangle and put it into his pocket. Instantly he felt as if an unknown woman’s fingers had touched his private parts and it electrified his being.
In the peak of passionate physical consummation, some woman must have thrown up her arms, must have rolled in ecstasy, lost to herself and to the world. Some unknown woman, from some unknown time. Yesterday, or the day before, or a hundred years ago, or even before the rocks collapsed. How did one comprehend these gestures that haven’t been discovered even by the divine thief? What or who is the couple that rolled here passionately, a single body with four arms trying to communicate to me?
Facing Somanath who looked like a sage from the times of the Rigveda, he dropped his hands into his pocket stroking the bangle piece. He had stumbled upon a secret that he wished to share with Somanath right here where he had found it. He said joyfully, but softly, to himself, ’Hey, you pompous fellow, it seems there was someone who came to your precious, secret place thousands of years ago and spent euphoric moments here. And here is a chameleon that has constantly resurrected itself and is as old as your picture.’
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