Both women were wet between the legs almost instantly as Saroja initiated the discussion. And yet, the words that came out of Suguna's mouth were hypocritical in the extreme.
"You want me to do what?" exclaimed Saroja's former maid Suguna.
Saroja had come looking for her maid Suguna many months after she had moved away and changed her residence just to avoid coming face to face with her. It was embarrassing to be back but Saroja had no choice.
It started very innocuously with Saroja looking for ways to fill her hours. She started taking classes for kids that lived in that apartment block for classes 6, 7 and 8; basically all the 13- and 14- year olds. Soon she was handling a gaggle of may be a dozen kids.
All was going well in her life. She had had one episode of her husband Arvind's uncle coming down to fight with her. She had conquered that by exposing Uncle's sexuality and then dousing and quenching it with her own so that the old man could no longer take the high moral ground.
Having distanced herself from everything in those steamy months when she fucked her nephews and brother-in-law, got spotted by the maid, allowed that woman to manipulate her, unwillingly tasted the animalness of the maid's husband and then Arvind's uncle, Saroja settled down to the relatively tame life of the typical south Indian housewife.
In many ways the kid's tuition classes drew the curtain on a sexually sordid phase of her life. She enjoyed it. But her upbringing did not allow her to live like that. Her confrontation with Arvind's uncle scared her that a wider scandal would endanger everything she had stood for. She and her husband were after all the glue of the family. He did not know that in fulfilling this role she had gone sexual with the younger men to keep them focused on their life-goals.
Initially Saroja rationalized it that way. For a brief while in the middle she luxuriated in her unleashed sexuality. And then having done so, withdrew back into the classical mode, prim and proper.
She relived those moments in her mind occasionally and convinced herself that it was something to be grateful for, but not to want again. She had experienced intense pleasure in a variety of ways. Enough for this lifetime. Enough to smile over. And she had gotten away with enough without endangering the rest of her existence.
Things would have been fine and Saroja would have got on with it had not one of the lady's Chakku mami (Chakku being the name and mami meaning "auntie" in the local language had not brought her recalcitrant son into the picture.
At eighteen the boy had failed his tenth class exams thrice, mainly because of math.
Saroja protested. "I don't teach those classes," she explained to Chakku.
But Chakku mami would have none of it. "His basic math is not good. I hear good things about your teaching skills. If you sort out some of the fundamentals I am sure he can handle the rest," she pleaded with Saroja.
"Ok," agreed Saroja reluctantly.
The 18 year old showed up for class and sat at the very back of the hall which Saroja re-arranged every afternoon for the classes. He interacted very little, wore an insolent look on his face and did his own thing. Every now and Saroja asked him questions which he was able to answer reasonably well, to her surprise.
As classes progressed and Vikram kept responding to her questions Saroja's curiosity was aroused. Was he really solving all the sums? And if so, why was everyone treating him like a dud?
She decided to check out his note book to see if he was really solving the questions because quite often she thought the pencil movements suggested that he was doodling. Since she never walked up to him and he sat at the very back against the wall, he did not expect her to come up or even see her coming up.
Otherwise he would have flipped the page. But he did not flip the page and Saroja was shocked by what she saw. There, on the sheet at the back of the book, Vikram had sketched her. The face was a good likeness of her face. He was really a good artist!
But the shock came from what else he had drawn. He had sketched Saroja's chest and torso. Her breasts were accentuated and larger than they actually were. But they were proportional and suggestive. He had even drawn the curve of her belly and her navel. Saroja found herself spreading her saree out to cover her body now, though she seemed to have given the young man all the views he needed.
She snatched the book, "What is this?" she yelled. Immediately other kids jumped to take a look. Saroja quickly shut the book and shouted at them to sit down quietly.
When she opened the book again it was at the beginning. There he had solved all the problems. But once a page was used he seemed to come back to it later and on the space still free he had made sketches. More sketches. And not all of them were like the first one she had spotted.
That first one had her fully clothed, even if sexily projected.
These other sketches were all sorts. In one, her saree pallo was nowhere to be seen. She was in her blouse. Her breasts were full and the blouse was stretched in his imagination. The shading was so beautiful that all dimensions were seen. Her nipples were seen as a contour of the cloth of the blouse.
In another, her nipples were outlined. In a caricature of her the blouse was hanging open and the boy had imagined Saroja's nipples, large and engorged. Her breasts were thrust up and larger than life, jutting outward towards the viewer. She could see where that might go – these young, uninitiated men always wanted to suck on breasts.
And in yet another Saroja was seen coy, arms folded under her breasts – still full, bursting and proud. She was blushing and bashful like a woman being gazed upon by her lover.
She looked down at him from the corner of her eye. He was a wonderful artist, indeed. No wonder he was not so good at math. The system – you could not get ahead if you did not crack math in the tenth class. His head was down but his shoulders were not slumped. There was defiance in his posture; insolence as some would call it.
Her anger evaporated as she admired his talents. But she realized that this young man was looking at her through very different eyes. She had just some distance between her nephews and herself. There was justification there. Here, it was only danger.
She slapped him on his head with the notebook and simply said, "Ask Chakku mami to come see me."
She walked away and ignored him for the rest of the class. Though every time she saw him from the corner of his eye busy with the pencil she wondered how he might be depicting her now.
By involving his mother, Saroja hoped to insulate herself from what might happen next if things were left unchecked. What it might mean for the youngster was a different matter.
As per Saroja's plan for tackling Vikram things would still have been fine had it not been for a visit from her nephew who was now studying at IIT. Schedules were tight and the young man had not been able to come by very often. But on this occasion he made it a point. He had spent enough nights reliving those moments with his aunt and later the maid. He thirsted for the real thing.
He arrived on a morning and Arvind left for work late that day to spend time with his nephew of whom he was now very proud. They all decided to go out for dinner that evening. Sundar could not wait for his uncle to leave. As soon as he left, Sundar tried to initiate a conversation with his aunt that started where they had left off a couple of years ago.
But he found Saroja manni distant. The young man pressed all on morning, through the cooking and the lunch. Saroja kept the conversation within acceptable limits by interjecting with questions about studies and so on.
