I was cooped up in my room and my mind hardly stayed on my laptop, unseeing the lehengas and the stage arrangements that the wedding planner had sent. My head tipped back against the pillow and I stared into the void floating by the ceiling nook. I exhaled and my hand on its own accord pulled out the pin that had kept the bun in place; the hair cascaded down my shoulders and I ran my fingers through them, parting them as I thought of those days again, nearly a year after the events had transpired.
It was the month before I moved out of the old house and bought this apartment - wanting to stay away from old memories that never let me sleep the way I did here. It was the voices there, the silence and the old records that mother played often that had soaked into every brick and wood of the house and had a way of making itself be heard in the middle of the night. Father had never stayed with us and the old house had become an invisible shrine to her one love, the unattainable romance, that the whole world had witnessed in reels and reels of her scenes with D while she'd played Anarkali. Once she was gone, and in my opinion of a broken heart than a heart condition, I decided mother's records wouldn't play in my home again.
I had shut myself at the old house for long, when the invitation for a few parties came and I turned up at will for some of them. Almost in every party, I went to he was there. Unruly and untoward with men and woman alike. I slipped into corners and kept out of his way for most part until that night and yet he'd found me by Marine drive. It wasn't alarm that he was a wild child, or that he didn't know how to treat a woman right, but it had been a bizzare intuition that our meeting would make for a risque story. And that same instinct was made true - as if by negative affirmation that I had intended to avoid him only to end up running into him - when I had asked the driver to leave me by the sea for a while and asked to be picked up after a half hour had passed.
Brute! That was what I made him to be, at first, however, he turned, one soft giant in his white suit, when he suddenly tempered during that kiss. Again, that softening too left me surprised.
And for the life of me, I would never understand why I did kissed him back then.
That night, I didn't sleep and huddled myself in one corner; in constant fear that I was in the grasp of something else. His fingers that had run up my arm and the way he'd held my lower lip for a long minute stayed with me for many hours.
When morning light showed up in the sky, I finally felt my eyes close on me and as I wafted under a thin cover of sleep, a loud thud and a creaking noise at my window got me out of bed with a knowing anxiety. As expected, it was him and I stood there stock stunned in my night wear. He paused there and folding his arms, he leaned on the wall by the window and ran his gaze over the length of my body. Thinking it was best I wrap myself with something, I turned to pick up my sheet, but it had been a bad idea, come to think of it, when he'd sped across the room and had pulled me back to him by both my elbows.
He was close, but except his breath over my ears, he didn't touch me elsewhere.
"Madhubala..." He took my name, slow as a prayer, in a whisper and I had thought then that my name had never been desired as much as he had in that second. My eyes closed and it was the strangest thing that I had felt the need to rest my head back on his shoulder. But I didn't. Not because, I thought, he wouldn't understand any gesture that showed a deeper sense of attachment, but because, I had a feeling he would perfectly understand that, more than I would ever do.
"You should go, Rishabh..." I managed to speak with some measure of steadiness in my voice.
In another unguarded instant, he pulled out the pin from my hair and let them fall out in a frenzied manner. I gasped, then.
"I was just beginning to think, you would never ask me to leave," He said with a laugh and I rolled my eyes when I faced him; he held a smug smile on his face.
For all the misbehaving and the protesting, I expected, he left without a complaint. "I will see you around..." he said, before climbing onto the tree branch that would lead him down.
That day onward, there were a few phone calls every day. It was always the one word - my name: Madhubala - as if his only interest in making that call was to spite me that he knew my name, but sometimes in the last silences that we shared, there was something else that I didn't want to hear.
He called from every place imaginable and I stayed stubborn and a mute, never allowing myself even a 'Hello', if I could anticipate his calls that is.
Then one day, the same day as the party that was being held in memory of my mother, he called and said he looked forward to seeing me at the hall where the occasion was organized. A strange apprehension set in, as I dressed in a near similar costume as that of my mother in the song "More panghat me Nand lal..." for I was performing one of her songs. It had become a usual request in that year. When they said how much they saw my mother in me, her eyes and her poise, I knew well, they only cared for my bared mid-riff. Albeit, I plaited my hair, wore the gauze of a dupatta over my head, adorned myself with the painful nath and the rest of the adornments and walked out with my shawl.
When the car reached, the hall, I looked for him everywhere and as always, he found me in the least suspecting instance: as I came out the bathroom after adjusting the knot of my floor length skirt.
He placed me back against my green room door with soft violence and braced his hands on either side of me, while he slanted his head to one side; his eyes amused from how very uncomfortable I felt then. My veil was half way over my face and yet, I could see it all, through the thin film of material, the earnestness in his eyes to prove himself that he could only be dishonorable and something along the lines of how proud he was of such intentions.
"Madhubala..." He spoke my name with a caress.
"If all you care about is chanting my name, then you can do that to the wall," I said, with my gaze fixed at his lapel.
"I doubt that is all I care about" He said, mocking me.
Hooking a finger under my chin, he raised my face as if he wanted to study the curve neck and with that thought in my head, I couldn't help but unconsciously swallow. It was when his finger left my chin and traced down a path that I swallowed again, sensing a intensity stir in the path of his eyes, until he drew the finger to the dip of my collar bone and kissed me there. A light one and I felt dizzy; my head tipped far back, allowing more of my neck to him, but it was also then I realized what he was doing to me and I shoved him away from me. He caught me around my waist and crushed me to him, "Aren't you the least bit curious why I didn't kiss you on your lips?"
His eyes stayed with me; a swirl of darkness without guile; and may be for one second I was willing to comprehend all the madness I saw in my mother's world, conceive fain the surrender that temptation seemed to be; when a man unabashed and brazen held you in his arms; claim you without so much as a care for your own impression of him, when the world saw you as an idol and in awe, but never once as you should be seen or just as the way he saw me then.
"No" I said when I found my voice and bit back the shiver in it, reigning in the sea of sensations that gathered where his arm came in contact with my bare skin, "I don't think there is any rhyme or reason to anything to what you do"
His eyes took me in with a look of displeasure. "And if I said there were reasons that may appear sane to you, then would you ask me?"
The mild revolting I heard in my words, allowed me to find a steady tenor, "No..." my eyes flickered to him in horror. No! I didn't want to hear anything then.
"Rishabh..." I said and he had an odd request asking me to repeat it again, an asking in his eyes. "No one ever calls me that," he said.
"No," I said, without giving in when my body felt raked by unforeseen vulnerability. Let me go! I wanted to shake him up and then I wanted to reach in and hold his face too. And kiss him and tell him that it will be all better.
There had been an acceptance that moment. An acquiescence that I yielded to.
"I'm betrothed" I lied and he looked at me confused as if he refused the meaning of those words to dawn on him.
"I met him at Sorbonne. We will be married the next year..." My eyes remained with his as I said that.
He released me, but continued to corner me by the door. Bending his neck to meet me at my eye level, he said, "Sorbonne, eh? Then I presume you must have been into arts. Fine!" he nodded as if that was any explanation to what I said a few seconds ago, "That also tells me, you must have read Raven, by Poe." He did that trademark twist of his head again, "The Raven has only one answer to every question that the author has to ask: 'No!' So, the intelligence has to be applied on the part of the person stating the question. Though, I won't be the intelligent one here by asking the questions, I want to make it difficult for you and ask you to be the Raven. Let's see..."
He faked a contemplating look and turned to me, "Was there any ounce of sense in you to let me kiss you, if you were already betrothed?"
It wasn't a game at all, I knew; it was his idea of transferring his pain onto me, when all the answers were predetermined to be 'No' and that in-turn gave me a sense of the questions coming my way.
"No..." I managed.
"Did you not feel one bit of anything for me, when I did kiss you?"
"No..." I said after a beat and closed my eyes. I needed my strength for the questions he was lining up. But when I did see the darkness behind my eyelids, there was a burn and a touch of scalding tears rose into my eyes; tears that hadn't come in a long time, came then.
"Would you leave him for me?"
"No..."
His inquiry came more forcefully, "Is there anything I could do or say differently that will change your mind?"
"No..."
"Its true I don't know anything about you except your name, but I'm willing to spend the time. Would that make any difference at all?"
I saw what was happening then. With his questioning, he'd set up a framework - a maze - inside which I could either be the Raven or not and the problem was, if I didn't want to be the Raven, then there was only one other path to take. I could deter all I want, but at the other outlet, I would find him either ways. That left me with no other option, but to be the Raven till the end.
When I didn't speak for a while, he yelled at me, "Answer me Dammit!"
"No..." I crushed my eyes from the searing pain that coursed inside me and a few tears spilled into my cheek.
"Did you not ever think of me for one second after our kiss?"
Our? I held my head with one hand, "No..." I said in a whisper.
"How could that answer be a no, Madhu?" he sounded hoarse, weary at best, "When I saw something else in your eyes and heard it in the words you didn't speak?"
"No!...No!...No!..." I said with vehemence and pushed him to step around him.
"Just one last question. Do you love this man?"
A deadlock. Oh! dear god. Telling him 'No' also meant I had to tell him the truth and I reckoned that all those other questions were only to set me up for this finale; the one question he truly cared about.
"No! I said, No!...dammit!" I cursed back and spun on my heels to look at him, but realized a second later as I met his eyes, that with my response, the fight in him had gone out too.
"I thought so..." he scoffed and applauded me with derision, "Well played, Ms. Madhubala. You stayed true to your part till the very end. Putting aside your feelings, you became the character itself. The Raven...and you proved me right that I had indeed done a good job of thinking up that name for you - the night you had left me on the beach..."
"And now...I think I will kiss you on your lips, after all." Even as he said those words to warn me, he kissed me tight on the lips for the one last time and left me standing there; transformed into a Raven! or something that he would never come to know of.
