I first set my lusty eyes on my mother-in-law when we visited her parents this summer. It was the annual obligatory visit for me.
"We must visit my parents too", she has said may times before and I nodded, while looking far, with a blank face.
"So that's is settled then. I'll tell amma, we will visit the first week of summer holiday every year". I agreed for just this year and not for perpetuity, I wanted to say but held back.
After 7 years of these annual visits, I got into a routine. Appreciate the bad coffee, bury myself into the newspaper all morning and sleep until later afternoon. A never ending stream of relatives come to see the loving daughter and stare at the city slicker son-in-law.
I have always pictured amma (my mother-in-law) as an unkempt and poorly dressed 55-year-old, who tried too hard to please her son-in-law but only manages to increase my contempt every year for her and her lot. I actually hated being at her house.
On the morning we arrived at Madurai I entered the kitchen to wash the coffee cup and my eyes caught the shape of her left breast. The sari was pushed up the shoulder to give her arms freedom of movement around the kitchen and the left breast covered by the blouse was outside the sari's thin confines. The red blouse was drenched in sweat and the outline of the white bra was clearly visible. The breast was round, large and a little saggy. The cloth stretched under the weight and I caught my breath at that sight. I felt my penis growing. Over the years I haven't felt a thing like this on seeing here but the raw look of her shabbily clothed and sweating lit a spark.
"Nice coffee", I said and was about to turn back when she reached up with both hands to take a large rice container from a top shelf of the open cupboard above the cooking stove. The sari rose up even further and exposed her blouse more. The tight red blouse strained against her wide circular breast.
I'll take it. I said and carefully placed the container down.
"Could you pick the container with pulses too?" And then she bent down to open the container. Her breasts were jiggling and struggling to get out of the tight blouse as she scooped rice out in a cup.
When she got up and straightened her back the breasts stood out majestically. Instinctively I stretched out my hand and placed my palm on her left breast and gave it a mild squeeze and kept it there as I looked into her eyes. The kitchen does not have a door and anyone sitting in the living room or walking near the dining room could have seen my shameless act.
She moved back immediately and my hand fell down. I continued to look into her eyes without expression and saw her going through a multitude of emotions in a few seconds. Guilt for being indecent and triggering such a thought in her son-in-law, anger that she could be subject to such an act of abuse and tense for the situation we both were in.
I have crossed a line that I can never turn back and this is going to be in the back of our minds forever. I walked out and hid behind my newspaper for the rest of the morning.
My father in law was paralyzed on the left side and is recovering now and is mostly in bed or is helped to a couch in front of the TV where he sits for hours. We talked about the local elections and agreed that none of the candidates were going to make any meaningful change to the small city. Having completed my customary conversation for the morning I went back to paper.
My wife had to go out to see the doctor and she offered to take my father in law to for his monthly check up. Amma and I were going to be alone for the next two hours and I wasn't sure how it would turn out. Will she fight with me or threaten to tell my wife about the incident? How do I handle this? I realized that when I didn't have the balls to go through with it I should have held back in the first place.
