Angela
I wasn’t shy, or bashful. Neither was I easily overwhelmed by pretty words or a handsome face. Otherwise, I would have chosen Sundaran to be the object of my desire.
I worried that I would end up a cliché. It had happened before. A blue-eyed foreigner falling for a dark-eyed Indian. I loved India, but I wasn’t here to discover myself or curb my restless spirit. I was here to research and finish my dissertation. I didn’t want a relationship of any sort. Yet, with Koman, I felt the edge of attraction getting sharper and sharper.
I could see that he too felt the pull, but he worked hard at resisting it. I could see that he thought it was wrong to admit his attraction for me. I was his student.
I don’t know when I stopped seeing him as my master and saw the male in him.
Perhaps it was at the exhibition performance of Kuchelavrittam they held at the institute once. I had decided to document every step of the performance. So, as his face was being made up, I sat by his side watching him change. Later I sat in the front row of the audience, waiting for the performance to begin and suddenly, there he was. Krishna.
In him I saw the shaping of my desire. A man who was playful and mischievous, affectionate and teasing, generous and romantic.
My heart stilled. The redness of his eyes drew my gaze. Suddenly his eyes met mine. I let him see the desire in my eyes.
When Krishna threw a handful of thechi flowers at Kuchelan’s feet to welcome the poor brahmin and to show him respect, a flower fell into my lap. It occurred to me that he had intended it to happen. I felt a secret smile tug at my lips. I held the dainty flower between my fingers and slipped it between the leaves of a book. An imprint of his desire, I thought.
The next day in class, I said, ‘I’m going to attend all your performances while I am here.’
He looked up in surprise.
‘It helps me in my research to see as many veshams as possible,’ I said. ‘I know my understanding of kathakali is negligible but when I see a vesham, I come a little closer to understanding it.’
Koman smiled. For a moment, he searched my eyes. I knew he was asking: Is that all you’ve come for?
I could see that some instinct told him there was more.
I met his gaze for an instant and felt my eyes drop in a wave of confusion.
I sat in the front row. The rest of them made way for me. My obvious foreignness invited comment. Everywhere I heard, ‘Madaama is Koman Aashaan’s student.’
And I would smile secretly to myself. I am not just his student, I am more than that. He wants it to be more than that. I felt a flush of power then. This magnificent being was mine. He would like it to be so.
Could this be termed an obsession? I didn’t know. But every role he played, I saw myself as the woman who stood alongside. It didn’t matter who she was, I was her. So I was Urvashi the heavenly nymph, wanton slut, beseeching Arjuna to let her taste the nectar that resided in his lower lip. When she cried, the arch of your brow fills me with a desire that is as painful as a whiplash, I wanted him to cast away the demands of the libretto and pleasure me.
When he was Arjuna disguised as an ascetic, I was Subhadra, the princess, now his handmaiden. I was prepared to forget my loyalty to my brother’s wishes, set aside my modesty and elope with him.
It was pointless and fraught with danger and yet I couldn’t stop myself.
On the second day of Nalacharitam, I watched him carefully. Was this Nala or Koman, I wondered. What did it matter? They were one and the same.
I watched his face, the dancer’s face. He seemed to be addressing me rather than Damayanti. Then he turned and looked at me from the corner of his eyes. I saw a repertoire of glances. Lust. Shyness. Sorrow. Affection. Valour. Respect. Suspicion. With each of these he told me: It is your hesitation, your shyness that is my enemy now.
Kalayallo veruthe kaalam ni
. Aren’t you wasting time, my precious?
I met his eyes. The desire in his gaze kindled a certainty in me. He is, I thought, a man who knows how to love. A man who knows no mortal limits to love.
Later we quarrelled even about that, hurling accusations, each seeking to blame the other: you seduced me.
But when we resonated with that first wild yearning for each other, who could tell who made the first move? Was it him or me?
A widening of the eye. A touch. An embrace. A love affair begins with all these and more. Who could tell who leaned into whom? When we finally sought each other, it was in a frenzy to satiate suppressed desires. An ashtakalasham of lust and want. The dance of all dances. A complex sequence of steps that was the natural culmination of all those months when we had done nothing but watch each other.
Our days and nights became one. A matrimony of limbs, thoughts and oddments. My suitcase found a place alongside his in the attic and my mirror-work cushions lay scattered on the mattress on his floor. My body lotion stood beside his hair oil and his comb nestled amidst the bristles of my hair brush.
We read poetry together. I read Neruda aloud to him and he fashioned my words into mudras, each gesture pulsing and alive.
I lit incense sticks and let the coil of smoke bind us together. A wedding ring of smoke and fragrance.
He braided my hair and adorned it with flowers. A jasmine star into every twist. He held a mirror for me to admire my hair in. ‘Do you see this?’ he asked.
‘I do, I do,’ I said in amazement that he, godly being, was doing this for me.
He brought leaves of the mailanji plant from a house nearby and ground them into a fine paste. Then he daubed my fingertips with it and forbade me to move or use my hands for the next hour. He pressed down my eyelids and then flicked the dried paste off my fingertips and showed me the colours of the sunset that tinted them. ‘Do you see this?’ he whispered.
‘I do, I do,’ I murmured in wonder.
He laid me on the bed and peeled my clothes away. He dripped oil into the well of my navel and with his fingertips he drew the oil
into my skin, anointing me his woman. I lay on my back, a willing supplicant to his administrations.
I do, I do, I cried. What could be more perfect than this? You and me, and our life.