The Price I Paid

I was excited as I stood waiting at Chennai Domestic Terminal for the arrival of my favourite aunt in the flight from Calcutta. I was a bit anxious that she might not recognise me for she had seen me last when I was eight years old and now at eighteen I was two feet taller and weighed double of what I was then.

From the announcement of the flight's landing and for the passengers to appear it takes quite a while. The first to appear were young men with lap top bags on their shoulders rushing out as if from an ebola epidemic. I took almost three quarters of an hour for aunt to collect her baggage and come out. She was pushing her trolley and still managed to move with the elegance that was a by word in the family. She was pretty and even from this distance the trademark dimple on her right cheek was visible. Though 32 she looked a sprightly twenty five.

The welcoming crowd was large as usual and I had to crane to get a look at the incoming passengers from my place at the back of the crowd at the railings. She was looking out for me too though I was sure she would not be able to the recognise the changed nephew. I was mistaken. No sooner did our eyes meet she was waving excitedly. I moved to the gate and she hugged me tight. I am ashamed to say that I felt the softness of her breast on my chest and I was horrified to find myself hardening.

I pushed the trolley to the car park. She held me by the arm as we wriggled past the crowds.

"You have become as handsome man Thiyagoo," she said as we got into the car.

The sisters were excited to see each other, my mother especially for Taruni aunty, her littlest sister, was her favourite.

Ours is a small house and even though we were only three I did not have a room to myself. I occupied a corner of the first floor hall. My desk was near the door and an ancient four poster that was to be aunt's during her stay was at the other end. I carried her boxes up the steep rickety stairs (so steep that Dad and Mom never venture up) and set it up on the bench.

I was at my desk not expecting aunty to come up for another hour or two.

When I was about 4 year old my mother had to be in a sanatorium with lung tuberculosis. Another sister of mother was housekeeping and Taruni aunt then at sweet sixteen looked after me for three months. She used to come to our home on vacations. I remember the fun time I had with her during her visits. I was very close to her.

Soon after graduation Taruni aunty had gone to the US for her masters in social studies. There she fell in love and married a class mate. He was a person from Bhutan, a kingdom bordering on Tibet. My mother, who like most South Indians is very conservative, was not comfortable with that but when talking to her friends and relatives she cheered herself by saying that the groom was from the royal family of Bhutan. Both Taruni and her husband were professors in the only college in that tiny mountainous country. Taruni had come down south twice after her marriage but on both occasions I was away. The first time when she came with her husband I was touring the neighbouring state of Karnataka with my school cricket team. Even though I expected to be a bench warmer there was no question of giving that up for anything. The next time she came alone. I was then away on a study tour to Bombay and Goa.

Taruni aunty was married for 8 years and was childless.

Aunty was an interesting person. Even simple day to day incidents she narrated like a mystery story. When I asked her about her student days in the US where I want to go after my engineering course she had lots to say. She said that during her first few weeks she was thoroughly confused with all the strange things going on. She needed a companion and she found the young man from Bhutan ideal for he was having the same problems. This friendship continued and ended in their getting married.

Aunt Taruni treated me as if I was her contemporary. She told me she was comfortable with young people because her students in Bhutan were about my age. I was more interested in her US experiences. She said that children in the US are very independent even when in the middle school. Boys and girls wait for their 18th birthday so that they can be officially free of parental control. She told me how the sexes mix equally at all ages. There are no schools exclusively for boys and girls in the States. I asked her if such close association of the sexes in high school results in complications.

"What complications are you thinking of," asked aunt grinning broadly.

"Well they can have sex."

"Do you call that as a complication?"

"In India it would be."

"There it is not. If a boy does not have sexual experience by the time he leaves school his class mates and friends will class him a loser and that applies to girls too." There was a sly smile on aunt's face. I knew what was coming and as an unmitigated loser I was awaiting the question uncomfortably. But fortunately mother called aunt from the kitchen and she left. But I knew that she will ask the next chance she gets. It came the next afternoon.

It was a cloudy day but not rain clouds. It was to be the most significant day in my life. Father as usual left for his office at nine. After office he will move to his club for bridge and return only after eight. Mother after lunch went for a movie with her three friends. I call them the 'Gang of four'. She would not be back before three thirty. Aunty and I were in my room. Aunty never took post lunch nap. She usually read novels. But she preferred to chat with me.

"Have you a girl friend?" she asked. Then she burst out laughing. "What's happening? The very question makes you blush."

"What do you mean by girl friend," I asked.

"Well someone who is special to you and you are special to her. You sit side by side during lectures, go to the canteen together, attend movies, call each other and talk for hours and so on." She paused. The sly smile was there again. "Do you want to know what is included in that 'so on'?

"Hand holding and kissing may be."

"Hugging too and grinding," said aunty. "Do you know what grinding is Thiyagoo?"

"Aunty," I said with some heat for I was hurt that aunt should consider me an ignoramus in matters relating to sex, "I may not have the experience of your American school boys but when it comes to book knowledge of these matters I assure you I can beat them any day." Aunt clapped.

"I like your spirit. But you have not answered my question. Have you a girl friend?"

"I don't. Aunty, you know this place; the culture here is different. No girl from a good family would consent to be so close to a boy lest her name be spoilt and make her valueless in the arranged marriage market."

"Are there couples in your college who do what I have listed?"

"Well there are; part of it anyway."

"Are they all girls and boys from not so good families?"

"Well, no."

"So?"

"Aunty I'll confess. I want to but when I try to talk to a girl my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. That's what happens." I was close to tears.

Aunt sat by my side and put an arm round my shoulder.

"Your problem is this. With no sisters or girl cousins you have no experience moving with girls. You are in great danger my boy."

"Danger aunty. What danger."

"You will fall for the first young woman you get close to. That's the danger. The possibility is that she will be someone unsuitable. As a sociologist I have know umpteen case histories where this has happened.

"What to do?"

"I know what to do. You remember that day at the airport when I hugged you. You body became stiff. You were moving away. You know why? You were hardening. You were scared that I would feel it. True or not?"

"True aunty. I was horrified that my brain did not realise that the woman who was hugging me was my mother's sister and one who had looked after me when I was a baby and therefore equal to being a second mother."

"You are wrong there. It is normal physiology. Father's harden when grown up daughter hug them. That's how it is. Shall I let you into a secret? If you had not hardened I would have felt insulted. That's the truth. Now get up. By the time I have finished with you your tongue will no longer stick to the roof of the mouth. We'll hug and for full measure we'll grind."

Aunt pulled me up and even before I could react she hugged me. I felt her smooth breasts pressing my chest and I hardened. Instinctively I moved my pelvis away but aunty with both hands on my buttocks pressed my pelvis against hers. It was this action of aunt that snapped the chains that had held me back all these years. I let go. I held her tight and pressed my hard penis against her crotch. She responded with counter pressure. Still in a close embrace we moved to the four-poster against the edge of which I aligned her buttocks and ground her pelvis with all my strength.

"Thiyagoo darling is there anything else you want?"

"A bit of fondling perhaps aunty darling?" I said hesitantly.

"It's yours," she said drawing back a little to give me access. I gingerly placed my hand on her breast. I could not quite get over the fact that taking liberties with one who in our culture is a second mother was incest and terrifying for that reason. Aunt understood my inner feeling. She undid the hooks on her blouse. She was not wearing a bra. She exposed her breasts and taking my hand she placed it on her bare breast and for good measure she placed her hand on my hand and squeezed. I now took over.

I played with her magnificent breasts. I ran my hands over them, I pushed the nipples into the softness and I plucked the nipples. And then aunt did some thing that brought my hardened organ to bursting point. She placed her hand under one breast and lifted it up tenderly inviting me to suck. I bent down and took the soft but firm nipple between my lips.

"Darling don't suck. Cover your teeth with your indrawn lips and bite." I did so. "Harder." I hesitated. "As hard as your lips can stand." she said. She moaned for the first time. Her blouse was rubbing against my face. Aunt noticed it and in one swift movement she removed her blouse. She was now bare above her waist. She then offered the other breast and I worked on that too and she moaned again. Her hand was now searching for my penis. She pulled off my dhoti and held my penis in her hand and gently worked her hand up and down the shaft.

"Big one," she complimented. My hand was on her bare waist. I reached for the tucked in pleats of her sari and pulled it off. Her sari slid down in slow motion. She had no skirts on. She was bare. My darling aunt was naked before her adoring nephew. I reached for the vulva. I ran my hand over it. It was soft, very soft. By touch I identified the major lips and minor lips. I followed the wet inner lips upwards and I was smack on the clitoris. When the tip of my finger touched the clitoris aunt wriggled and moaned softly. She now pulled off my shirt. Both of us were naked.

One of my favourite fantasies was to see a beautiful woman walk naked before me.

"Aunt darling," I said, "would you walk up and down this hall."

"To satisfy my darling's fantasy I certainly would," she said. Very understanding and intelligent woman my aunt. She walked up the length of the room. Her beautifully rounded buttocks swayed delicately. She turned and walked back with all her elegance. Her large but shapely breasts, the broad waist and narrow hips and the cleanly shaved puffy vulva were quite devastating to behold. At first she was looking away but then she looked up. Our eyes met and suddenly shame overtook aunt. Covering her breasts with one hand and her vulva with the other she ran into my arms. We kissed and hugged and ground our pelvises as never before. What follows was instinctive.

Aunt was up on the four poster bed with her buttocks and feet resting on the edge. I threw a pillow on the floor and knelt on it. It was the perfect height for licking her vulva. With her fingers she opened out her inner lips and her clitoris emerged from inside its hood. I touched it with the tip of my pointed tongue. Her body shivered. One more touch and one more shiver. I then commenced licking in earnest. Soon her buttocks were heaving up and down.

"Pause for a moment and swipe in broad swipes," she said. When I swiped she climaxed. Loudly she moaned in a guttural voice and when in the finale I bit on her clitoris with lips sucked in she screamed. If mother had been down she would certainly have heard the scream.

"Come up darling, I need you inside me," gasped aunt. She was on her back with thighs spread out. As I came up she caught my penis and inserted it into her vagina. We were in such a state that we climaxed soon with aunt lying gasping under me. I waited and gave her two more. I lay on her exhausted.

Then something happened that was not in any of the sex books I had mastered. Aunt pulled a pillow and inserted in under the small of her back. Then she asked me to pull out my penis and as I was doing so she asked me to pinch her vagina shut so that no semen spills out.

"I want the semen inside me as long as possible," she said. "I want to bear your baby."

When she said that I felt my world going round and round. Everything from the hug to the penetration had happened so fast that I had no time to think of the enormity of my action or the consequences of it. I was having sex with my mother's sister who was a married woman whose baby I could become the father of. Can anything be more horrifying than that? But like a robot I obeyed her command. I managed to draw the lips of the lower part of the vagina together. I curled on the bed with my head resting on the mound of her vulva I shivered as if I had a malarial attack. Aunt must have felt me shuddering for she rose up and bending down she kissed me tenderly on the cheek.

"Thiyagoo darling don't be disturbed. My husband and I desperately want a child, he more than I. He has not enough sperms in his semen. He can father children but the chances are not good. We tried for 8 years and now he is thinking of therapeutic insemination. I am not too happy about that. I asked him to let me try once more by praying in our Kodiyanur temple. That is why I have come. Three days ago your mother and I went to the temple. The priest told us that surely I will get pregnant this time. God as we all know performs His miracles in strange ways. The deity of Kodiyanur is answering through you. In my mind I have no doubt that it is so. I do not feel I am being unfaithful to my husband for this is His will. I know I will succeed this time." I calmed down.

After half an hour we washed and aunt went down and soon came back with a tumbler full of milk.

"It is almond milk," she said. She took a few sips and then asked me to take the rest. "You need strength." I drank the lot. She held me in her arms and kissed me on all parts of my face. It was a tender moment. The door bell rang. Mother was back from the movie. She could not have known that her sister and her son had acted out a drama the like of which Kollywood, Bollywood and Hollywood combined cannot match.

That night we had it and early the next morning. For the next three weeks we had it at least twice a day, one post lunch and the other at night. When in the mood we had one at day break. The post lunch one was special. On some days aunt will lie on her back naked with me over her. It was an indescribable pleasure to feel her soft breasts and body against mine. After a while she would kiss me in all parts of my face and then push my head down. That was the signal to me to lick her. Aunt always demanded a climax from licking before the real thing. On some days Aunt will lie on her back with thigh spread reading a novel. I will be crouching between her legs with cheek on the vulva. From time to time I would kiss the vulva or insert my nose, which is rather sharp and prominent, between the inner lips. The nostrils' duty was not to smell but to feel. Sooner or later the nose will become moist. That indicated that she was in a state of arousal. Her thighs would spread further and I would take the clitoris between the lips. Aunt's invariably got good orgasms.

Aunt had another week to go before her return to her mountainous kingdom. One day she asked me to accompany her to the Kodiyanur temple. She had visited that temple twice before but both times with mother. This time mother had a wedding to attend. I drove with her to the temple that was fifty miles away. The roads were not good. It took almost three hours to reach the temple. Kodiyanur temple was a small one but had a great local reputation of answered prayers especially popular with barren women. Aunt asked me to park the car some distance away. I was soon to know why.

She produced a brocaded dhoti and an angawastharam, a cotton shawl that goes with dhoti. I took off my pants and shirt and wore the dhoti with the angawastharam thrown over my shoulder. I had to be bare bodied above the waist. As we entered the temple aunt held my hand. It was then that she mentioned that she was undertaking a special puja for fertility in which the husband must also participate. She asked me if I had any objection to acting as her husband. I said I did not.

It was a long drawn our ritual. We had first to sit in front of the holy flame with the priests, not one but two of them, reciting from the scriptures. Then we had to walk thrice round the flame. After that we trooped to the sanctum and after more recitals aunt made her offering. It was a cradle made out of silver. She then produced another cradle this one made of wood. The priest placed this object at the foot of the deity and then gave it back. We all moved to the holy pipal tree at courtyard of the temple where both of us tied the wooden cradle to a branch. The branches of the tree were crowded with such cradles that hundreds of barren women had tied in years gone by.

As we were tying the cradle our eyes met. There was such tenderness in aunt that if the two priests had not been there I would have held her head and implanted innumerable kisses on that lovely face. No, it was not lust. Strangely at that moment I saw her as she was when she took care of the four year old me. I never felt closer to her than at that moment and on the drive back.

When we returned mother greeted me with the news that a close relative was ill in a hospital in Madhurai and was to undergo surgery the next day. I had to be there to represent the family in this time of need. I stayed in Madhurai for three days. When I came back I rushed to my room but aunt was not there. Her boxes had gone too. Mother told me that aunt had left for Bhutan on urgent summons the very day I had left for Madhurai. She had asked mother to give me the news but there was not even a pencilled note anywhere on my desk.

I was thoroughly confused, but mother was not. She knew more about the habits of royal families no doubt from watching Raja Rani movies. She said that crisises were common in royal families and by their very nature it would be dangerous to let the outside world have even a hint of what they were about. A week later we had a long letter from aunt addressed to my mother. Emailing from Bhutan was not easy. She said the crisis had passed. A week later I received a letter which again said nothing. But a month later the mystery was cleared for me anyway. Aunt wrote to her sister giving the news of her pregnancy. Mother told me that the deity of Kodiyanur was so powerful that Taruni had got with child immediately. Now I knew why aunt went back in such a mad hurry. She had to. No sooner did she realise that her period was missing she had to rush to her husband.

In due course the child was born. We saw photographs of the little fellow. His nose was straight and his eyes round and wide.