Β© 2007. All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
* * * * *
LIKE SO MANY NOW IN OUR GROUP
, my first
sudra
lover was a servant, a
naukar
. I was just past 18 at the time. I was still a virgin which isn't uncommon at all in Indian society. If anything, it's the rest of my life that's been unusual.
Mum had had an horrific accident five or six years earlier that left her pretty much in a vegetative state. Dad seemed devoted to her and to us -- I mean he was always there for her, attended to her every need but I suspected he had his affairs. I didn't resent him for that.
But it was a quiet and gentle life on the whole. We lived in a quiet neighbourhood in those days, me and my parents and younger sister. Home was a nice large ground floor flat with every convenience and gadget, separate bedrooms for my sister and me, and a lovely little garden that was my joy and passion. I'd worked at it since I was 12 and it looked really pretty. Over time I had put in a little rockery and garden lights hidden in the flower borders and lighting the big fragrant jasmine and frangipani trees, a little garden swing. We had a nice stoop or porch, too, where we'd sit in the evening, Dad with his magazines and newspapers, me with a book and Madhu humming to something on her Walkman. Most days we'd bring Mum out in her wheelchair, too, and converse normally with her. That's what the doctors had advised, so we followed that, trying to include her in our daily lives.
There was very little to disturb us -- our neighbours were friendly and kind, and the flat was in a lovely old ground-and-two-floor building with beautiful woodwork and lots of greenery around. It was a sort of private enclave of ten or twelve similar buildings and it felt very safe. It was a good place for a kid to grow up, given the state of the rest of the city.
We had a part-time gardener who came in to do the heavy and tedious work -- laying out brick or stone-work, weeding, putting in the flower beds and so on. Raju -- short for Rajesh -- was lean and tall and dark and had those intense good looks of a Maratha: sharp features, dark eyes and hair, a square, strong jaw. Plus, he wasn't skinny; he actually had a well-developed physique, broad across the shoulders, a wide, deep chest, muscular arms and thick forearms and the most amazing abs.
I knew because he went through this little ritual before he went to work. Our garden was like an inverted L, with a broad front area before the porch and long narrow stretch that ran along the side of the house all the way to the back where there was a little toolshed. Raju would come in through the wicket gate, latch it behind him, greet whoever was on the porch with a polite namaste with just a little duck of his head and a quick flip of both hands to his chest. He'd ask after Mum. Every single time. Then he'd kick off his battered yet sturdy open-toe sandals and put them neatly together by the steps leading up to the stoop and go around the corner of the house. I knew there was a small wooden strip with clothes pegs on it there -- - I usually kept a smock or overalls for when I had to handle paints -- - and a while later he'd return with his baggy trousers rolled up to his knees, his shirt off and wearing just a tight sleeveless vest or, sometimes, not even that.
All right, let me be completely honest. He excited me. He really did. I loved his body, smooth and strong and dark, the torso so sexily muscled and quite hairless, and I loved him for his gentleness with my flowers and buds and shrubs and herbs and garden, for his obvious distress when a sapling or cutting did poorly. The garden was as much his pride and joy as it was mine.
Whether it was the nature of his work, or the serenity of our home, or me or just his character I don't know, but he was a truly gentle, kind and decent soul. I never once heard him raise his voice in anger. He was genuinely sorrowed when someone so much as plucked a flower. "It's not right," he'd mutter, shaking his head. "It is just not right."
How could I not be drawn to him? At times like this, I felt my heart go out to him, for I shared his pain. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to rest my hand on his arm or my head on his chest, just be him and me and our little flowering world. I thought I loved him.
But there was something else too. One look from him and I just felt different, as if some searing heat had pierced me through. My pulse would quicken, there was a rush of blood to my head and, yes, to other parts as well. I suppose I was relatively innocent in those days and didn't quite know what to make of this sensation. It felt good, yes, but it somehow also just felt
right
.
I wasn't totally unaware of what sex involved. No girl is, I guess, in a city, even an Indian city. There are just too many reminders -- film stars, models, public outcries, television, magazines. It's a sexual carpet-bombing. I certainly knew what the relevant parts were meant for and what went where, but then every single girl in my class did, too.
Maybe I knew a little more than most.