A Letter (2013)

Dear You,

I have never written a letter to you. This is the first time. All those mails and SMS, phone calls and chats. I like when we Skype. I love to see you and hear your voice when you are so far away. It is the closest to you I can get these days. I am writing you a letter because I want you to have something to hold on to when things are not going too well. Like now.

But this letter is not to complain or argue, to tell you that things should be different. I am writing this letter to tell you a story. I call this story ‘Love Drunk’. It is about a man who – while others finish one pint after the other – he gets drunk on love. For him, love is the only thing that makes his life worth living. It is the only thing that makes him want to get up in the morning. When people offer him a glass of beer, he politely declines it with a smile saying ‘No need my dear, I have love’.

Interestingly, no one has ever seen him with a woman. Everyone at the pub banters with him and many times he has heard people say ‘Oh come on Charlie, just admit that she doesn’t exist’. He responds with a smile and doesn’t say a word. He knows, that’s all that matters.

One day he didn’t show up at the pub. His friends got worried and decided to pass by his house to check on him. He was in his garden, weeding. ‘Charlie, why didn’t you show up at the pub today?’ ‘She is coming home tomorrow!’ His friends got excited. Who was she? What would she look like? And where had she been?

The next day they all showed up at Charlie’s, with flowers and chocolates. A small woman was sitting on a bench in front of the house, next to Charlie. Holding hands and saying nothing. Upon seeing his friends Charlie got up: ‘How nice of you to come here. Meet Natalia. We met two years ago on a holiday in Georgia. We saved up money for two years and now she is finally here.’

His friends got excited: ‘You should have told us, we would have put some money together’ – ‘We would have helped you’ – ‘Is that why you never had a drink with us?’

‘Don’t worry about it. We are love drunk. Time means nothing to us.’

I love you.

Me.

Tick-Tack (2013)

‚Tick-Tack. Tick-Tack. Tick-Tack’

Sameer sat up straight in his bed, staring at the clock. 30min to go. He glanced across the room. Leela was asleep. Sukhwinder lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. Pinky was playing with a few pieces of wood she had gathered the other day. Chotu sat next to him.

He was the oldest and he had been here the longest. On his papers it said that he was 14. He looked 12. Leela was the youngest and he felt protective about her. So far he was successful at it. Most of the men who passed by were looking for young boys anyway. He often thought of a way to get Leela out of the room, the building, the city. He would draw maps in his mind. Sometimes he did it while a man had come to visit. They liked him. Most of the men who came were regulars.

Ajit, Preet, Amar, Naveen, Harmeet, Nigam, Omar, Raghu, Jaspreet, Dinesh, Sohil, Vipul, Manendra.

So many names. He remembered most of them. Some were kinder than others. Some brought food or laddoos when they came. Some gave him new clothes. Some got him liquor. But after that they all were the same. The laddoos and liquor didn’t change any of it. A numb pain inside him, sweaty hands all over him.

No, Leela had been lucky so far. He would get her out. She was small, she looked up to him, she called him ‘bhaiya’. He had to protect her.

‘Tick-Tack. Tick-Tack. Tick-Tack.’

15 minutes to go. Chotu sighed. Sameer buttoned up his shirt. He looked at the books next to him. A gift from one of the man. ‘Read and you might get out of here one day’, he had told him. He couldn’t read. He had never been to school.

Pinky had stopped playing and was now just staring at the door. She was around 10. Sameer always thought that she was pretty. Long black hair; big, round eyes and pink lips. Sometimes at night he would climb into her bed and touch her. She never stopped him. The first few times she had tried to push him away but not anymore.

The other day Sukhwinder had tried to climb into Leela’s bed but he stopped him. Leela had to be protected. She was small and innocent. She was the only pure thing in the room – maybe in the city. One day he would get her out of here. He would get her married to a rich man. And they would be happy. He would be happy. They would provide for him as well. He would eat everything he wanted to – just no laddoos.

Five minutes left. Leela was now awake. She sat in her bed and stared at the fan. Chotu switched on the radio.

A knock at the door. All of them sat up straight. The door opened. A man walked in he hadn’t seen before. He looked at him, then at Leela. No, not Leela. He wanted to scream, get up and stop the man. Don’t take her!

‘I want her’, he said pointing at Leela and a few seconds later she was gone. A few seconds that felt like eternity. He had to stop this from happening. He had to. He couldn’t.

The door opened again. A familiar face smiling at him. ‘Hello Sameer, I got you some laddoos.’

‚Tick-Tack. Tick-Tack. Tick-Tack’

* Laddoo - an Indian sweet, Bhaiya - Hindi for 'brother'

Amid the Waves (2013)

“There is nothing I hate more than going on a cruise”, he said to his wife after entering the cabin. He looked out of the window – nothing but water. Maybe he would just jump overboard and drown himself. The thought of it made him chuckle.

“I really don’t understand why you take me on cruises. You know I hate them.” He walked over to the mini-bar and glanced at the collection of miniature bottles. “Amy, are you listening?”

Amy stopped unpacking her bag for a moment. Her eyes met with Harry’s across the room. “They are serving dinner at 8. You might want to freshen up before that.”

Harry looked at himself in the mirror. There was no need for him to freshen up. He was handsome. Old, but handsome for his age anyway. “I think I’d rather go for a little walk.” He put on his hat and sunglasses and made his way up to the ship’s rail.

The wind was cold and the sun was hiding behind clouds. Harry thought to himself that there was really no point in taking sunglasses on a cruise. There was never any sun in the middle of the ocean. Only water, just water everywhere. He walked around for a few minutes until he found an empty bench. He sat down and stared out at the horizon. ‘Travel broadens the mind’, they say. It certainly did not broaden his when all there was to see was nothingness – besides the water of course. God damn water!

He could feel the discomfort growing inside him with every wave that hit the ship. Amy liked water. She always did. She would swim and go boating, and she would always take a bath, never a shower. He had told her many times that it would use up less water if she would take a shower instead of filling up an entire bathtub with water every second day. She did not care. She was probably taking a bath right now while he was out here, in the cold.

Tomorrow he was going to write a postcard to his daughter and tell her how awful the ocean was and that there was absolutely nothing to see. That it was just empty and that all he did was to wait for the ship to reach the next harbour. He would write the card secretly. He didn’t want to upset Amy. He lit himself a cigarette.

After a while he slowly made his way back to the cabin. Amy was sitting in front of the mirror and prettied herself up for dinner. “Anything special up there?” – “No, just water. Nothing but water.” He kissed her on the forehead and took a miniature whisky from the minibar. “She was a pretty girl once”, he thought to himself and looked out over the ocean.

Maturity (2013)

The sun was burning brightly the day she arrived. The moment she got off the plane she could feel the hot wind blowing into her face. This was the first time she travelled alone – without her parents, without friends. Just her, on her own. She would wake up in the morning when she felt like it, eat whenever she wanted to and go wherever her legs would take her. At night she would promenade along the shore and maybe she would meet a nice young boy, fall in love and cry her heart out when she had to fly back home. At 18, she felt like her whole life was ahead of her. Anything was possible. It had taken her almost a year to convince her parents to let her go on a holiday alone. In a few weeks she would start university.

A few hours later she found herself sitting in a small bar at the beach. He walked up to her, smiled, got her a drink, complimented her, made her laugh. She blushed, completely taken in by this first wave of affection any guy had ever shown her, inexperienced and overwhelmed with the situation, unable to tell right from wrong and see beyond any façade, so beautifully created by young men out to seek pleasure. She felt that at this moment, she grew up. From one moment of the other, the girl she had thus far been was now a woman.

The next day she spent with him, watching the waves hit the shore, feel them crash against her body. She tumbled, with every wave that hit her, almost unable to keep any kind of balance, to tell up from down, and left from right. Everything was beyond her, exposed to everything at once she felt as if she was watching herself from the outside being a different person. Everything happened so fast that she was unable to comprehend a single moment, give any of her actions a single thought. Another wave. She felt his lips on hers. His tongue touching hers. His hands running up and down her body, taking off her top and shorts. His fingers found their way to those parts of her body she had hidden away so far. Those parts that you don’t talk about.

A short pinching pain, she screamed, then it was over. He collapsed on top of her. She found it hard to breath. Then he got up, put on his shorts and shirt and walked away. She wanted to scream ‘Wait, where are you going?’, but she didn’t. She was overwhelmed with the situation, embarrassed, alone, not able to understand what had happened. She quickly put on her clothes and ran back to the hotel. The rest of the holiday she spent in her room, only sometimes she would walk down to the beach, looking for him. Maybe he was looking for her.