Under The Moonlight - Part I
An owl hooted. I opened my eyes. Idly I watched as my hands drew circles in the rocks with a twig. A gentle breeze tumbles around my body – it does not know of the embers inside my heart refusing to die. My eyes seek the stars and moon above, admiring them, exulting in them. The full moon peeks out from the leaves of the tree under whose shade I lie, on whose trunk my back rests. The moon is quite vain of her beauty and not without cause – an ethereal aura that pervades without bias. But tonight the moon and the stars know that though my eyes admire them, it is not for them that I thirst. They know of her, it is to them alone that I have spoken about her. And yet she has not come….. This part of the woods is not known to many but we meet here. Not as frequently as we would have liked, but not scarcely either. I have spent the whole evening to reach here from tracks where now few tread and now….. now I wait. The river courses through drowsy with fatigue. On both the riverbanks a stretch of sand lies before the glade begins. A pair of leaves play around without a care in the dust. Two moths wheel around my head, a couple of wolves slink by the periphery of my vision. Why am I alone? Where is my mate?……. The diamonds that adorn the tresses of the night twinkle above – this is in contrast with the frustration which creeps like a vine around my heart. Though I stay calm outside, demons devour me from within. Their faces shift through emotions laced with anger, frustration, despair…. darken with suspicion. But then maybe I hope for too much, ask for too much. I have to think about her too – while I am alone, a family depends upon her…. Devoid of parents from a young age, she has brought up both her younger sisters with the help of her frail grandmother. She will be truly free only after their marriage. It is not easy to elude their eyes but…. it is not easy on me either. As I resign myself to just a few more moments of solitude before I begin the long trek home…my eyes close. The breeze changes direction ….and brings with it the lovely scent of jasmine. Wait….I know that scent. She comes!! Dying embers blaze white-hot and swirl into a huge inferno through my heart. My fevered eyes burst open and searched through the trees of the opposite shore. The breeze now grows into a gentle wind and….there!! She is well hidden…. it was her locks dancing like black flames that caught me. She reveals herself only if I come out myself and I did. I walked out into the sand with my blood throbbing in anticipation. She ducked under the branches and came out in a regal poise. Underneath bare shoulders, a single piece cloth of pure white tied behind refused to show me the twin peaks I hungered for. Beneath her naked navel , white veshti was wrapped around her legs in a kalari style knot for the long journey. Exposure to kalari at a young age had given us both a lean musculature – while it gave her the soft curves of the sand dunes, I acquired the condensed build of a leopard. Bare-chested I too had a veshti wrapped around my legs but it was black, the colour of her obsidian irises. How is it that the very sight of this woman causes my blood to sing in deranged ecstasy? From far away she appears slight, but like smoke rising from a bonfire – I feel her mind expand into the sky, teasing, beckoning, mesmerizing me. I am a man, the most powerful animal on earth but now I descend the echelons of evolution. Pumped up hormones transform me into an animal, an extremely intelligent one. A thousand tigers roar through my blood. Aaarrgh….. Woman, you do not know what you seek to unleash…. Between us in the middle of the river lies a rock structure carved from a black monolith. The base though embedded deep in the river bed ended in a spherical floor a feet above the water level. Seven pillars rise up in a circle to support a dome above, the relic of an ancient era. Whatever purpose it was built for lies forgotten, it now serves as the temple where we worship each other. Startled frogs jumped as we dove into the river from opposite ends, swimming towards the edifice. I reached there first, dripping wet, climbing onto the smooth floor. She came close enough, cleaving through the currents and stopped short of the stone. The moonlit water concealed everything below her eyes while she watched me like a hawk. Then she slowly rose onto the stone, the water playing around her bronzed skin, down her navel, her clothes forming a second translucent skin, wet tendrils of waist-length hair hugging her cheeks. A wet woman is not a sight one forgets easily. The droplets streaming down her navel paralleled the course of molten energy pulsing through my veins. Inspite of the sparks arcing through the light hair of my forearms and chest, my face remained blank. There was no need of further expressions and she knew that. A shadow of apprehension passed through her face which disappeared when she looked into my eyes. Through the intensity of my eyes she gauged the effort with which I held myself. I then opened my arms and she rushed into me, held me tight. The way the earth bears the holy Ganges, she pulsed on my chest, her warmth a welcome solace for my arms. She worried her lower lip with her teeth and peeking through her eyelashes, she said “Are you angry at me for being late? It was because…” I placed a finger on her lips and said, “I was… but now I feel something else”. She felt my manhood pressing into her and her eyes became twin pools of black fire. I grasped her hair and slowly inhaled a potent mix of jasmine and warm female scent, the jasmine flowers of her hair has long since been carried away by the water. I softly bit her earlobe and a delicious shiver passed through her. Cupping her cheeks, I planted kisses on her forehead, eyebrows, eyes, the tip of her nose and blew on her slightly parted lips.