Wednesday 19 November 2014

Damsel in Distress

She is being chased on a lonely road by a group of four people. She cannot run any more. She wants to keep running, she wants to save herself, but she is exhausted. She is just about to faint when she runs into the arms of a man at the turn of the road. She looks up at him but cannot see his face.

Veena always woke up at this point of the dream, panting, and then spent the rest of the day wondering who the man in the dream was. She’d had this dream quite a few times, and she worried that it may come true. She didn’t know how she would react if such a situation happened in real life. Or whether there ever would be a man to save her at the turn of the road.

Her friends said this was her repressed desire to be rescued from a dying relationship coming out subconsciously through dreams. Maybe. Her relationship with Suraj wasn’t exactly going well, despite the façade they maintained in front of the family. Five years of marriage and a baby had already taken a toll on their relationship. The spark was gone. There was no affection between them any more. They did not talk about anything except groceries, household expenses and the baby. Veena didn’t even remember the last time they made love. Of course she wanted to be rescued.

Though it was sacrilege to think that she would find someone else who would be interested in her, she often thought about having an extramarital affair. She wondered how people managed to have affairs – how did they find another person, develop trust, and fall in love all over again? She felt like she no longer knew what it is to fall in love. To be tactile and to want to be with each other all the time. To love and be loved. To be wanted, needed, pampered… Oh! Just the thought of someone giving her that kind of attention again turned her on.

Suraj and Veena had fallen in love seven years ago. She was doing her MBA and he had just finished MCA and was working in a company near her college. When they first met, she was waiting at the bus stop and he had come to drop his colleague there. He had taken one look at her and decided she was the one. And then the wooing, the motorbike rides, the secret one-day picnics where they first discovered their passions, the gifts – she was never short of attention. And the love-making was so good, so fulfilling. But by the time they had their wonderful, now two-year-old, son Veeraj, they had turned into parents of the child, and were no longer a couple. Suraj even slept off on the couch watching the TV nowadays.

***

It was a Saturday and she decided that she needed to relax a bit, hang out with friends, take a day off from being the mother and homemaker. She told the ayah she was going out in the evening and won’t be back until late in the night and to make sure the saab and Veeru have their dinner. She then dialed Suraj, but he did not pick the call. Must be another meeting, she thought in annoyance.

She called up two of her closest friends and fixed a dinner-and-club meet-up, much to their surprise. She chuckled as she heard Rekha scream from the other end of the phone, “Dude! You are coming to hang out with us! What happened, hubby jumped off the building?”

“Don’t be mean, silly. You know Suraj has never stopped me from coming anywhere with you gals. It’s always been me, unsure, depressed. But today I feel like shaking things up. I wanna drink, dance, just have fun, you know.”

“Good for you, babes! See you at 8 then!”

She was actually hoping to lay her hands on someone sexy and handsome at the club. A hassle-free one night stand. Just the thought of it was exhilarating. She decided that this called for special make-up.

She spent the entire afternoon pampering herself, warding off her son with video games and chocolates. She took a long bath in the tub with lavender-scented body oils, waxed herself free of body hair, blow-dried and curled her hair, gently massaged her favourite body lotion on to her supple skin, manicured her fingers and applied some baby pink nail polish, and dug up a pretty halter-neck magenta dress that complemented her figure well. And just as she was about to apply mascara to her eyelashes, the doorbell rang. She wondered who it could be. And to her horror, she heard the door open to the sound of Suraj hullo-ing Veeru. How could he be back so soon, that too on a Saturday! He usually went out with his buddies on Saturday nights.

She wondered what she should do – should she carry on, or walk down meekly, seek permission and then leave? Or should she cancel? But no, she did not want to cancel, so she decided that it would be best to pretend to take his permission first. She slipped out of the dress quickly and wrapped the bathrobe around her. Suraj walked into the bedroom a second later.

Suraj smelt her before he saw her. Then she smiled divinely at him and brushed his arm as she took the laptop case from him. He could not explain what came over him in that one touch. It was as if he had been blind all these years to the awesomeness of this woman before him. And before he knew what he was doing, he had enveloped her in his arms. He was kissing her neck, her earlobes, her shoulders. And she was giggling. She was moaning. She was beaming like an angel.

“Oh god, one minute, Suraj! Give me a second, I have to call Rekha and tell her I’m not coming!”

“Coming where?”

“Never mind, let me just make this call,” Veena giggled and wriggled again before dialling. She had to tell Rekha there was no damsel in distress to be rescued any more.

This is a blog written during Indiblogger Happy Hours for the Parachute Advansed Body Lotion #BringBackTheTouch campaign. Watch the campaign video below: