Poem - Dawn (19 Oct 2009)

My name is Dawn
Wet sidewalks and fresh rangoli
Bird calls and sleepy heads
Making breakfast while others dream.
I am dreams left unlived
Waiting another day
Another way.
I am nightmares bursting
Into light of life
Gnawing at your mind and heart.
Thought you could forget us in sleep?
Thought the magic of night would erase
The worries and pain and fears?
My name is Dawn
Daughter of the sun and earth
I bring with me
Both clean and dirt
So sweep the sidewalk
Wash away the dust
Draw a new design
To stay the evil.
Smile
And face another day.

Short Story: Something to Hold On To

We met on a rainy night, just like tonight. I know it sounds clichéd, but that is exactly what happened.

It was around 3 am, and I was on my way home on my motorcycle when the city decided to give one of its famous rainstorms out of the blue. I had to find a place to park and hide from the torrential downpour; a bus stand appeared and I took it, parking and running under its meager cover.

He was there already. I had fleetingly seen another bike parked near the stand, but had not focused on it much as I wanted to stay as dry as one can under such circumstances. I was in the process of unsnapping my helmet when he spoke.

“Hey.” His voice was deep, but audible above the rain drumming on the roof. I was startled, turning with helmet held like a weapon.

He laughed, but held up his hands as if to show me he was not a threat. A smile split his face. He was as soaked as I was. Our eyes fell to checking out each others’ bodies presented via soaked shirts and wet jeans. Our eyes returned to each other faces at the same time. And he smiled even wider.

“Hey,” I answered. I lowered my helmet to the stand bench and ran my hand through my hair. He was dressed in a light t-shirt and jeans and a backpack on his back. “Coming from work?” I asked.

He nodded. “You?” It sounded like a text conversation.

“Yeah.” I sat down beside my helmet. “But then this….” I gestured at the pouring rain.

He sat down beside me. “It’s a rainy, stormy night and you pass a bus stand in your car.” He spoke slowly, as if telling me a serious story. “You see three people inside: A sick old woman, a friend who once saved your life and the perfect partner you have been dreaming about. Who do you help?”

I stared at him for a few minutes, partly trying to figure out the puzzle and partly trying to figure out why he was asking me. “Am I the friend, or the partner you’ve been dreaming about?” I do not know to this day why I blurted this out into the rain-punctuated silence that followed.

But it seemed to be the right answer because he leaned closer to me and whispered in my ear, “Both.”

————————————————————————————————

The rain is slashing viciously at the hospital window, the world outside dark and chilly, the world inside dim and smelling like medicine, unwashed bodies and wet ceiling tiles. They are operating on him. They had rushed him from the ambulance to the operating table like we see in hospital shows.

I am covered in his blood. Everyone is avoiding me.

I will die without him. When did it come to this? When did he become as important to me as my own life?

————————————————————————————————

After that night, when the rain had stopped and we had both gone our ways, I figured I would never see him again. We had exchanged business cards. His was a handsome ivory colored note, declaring him to be John. He worked for an IT company. Like I did. Like many of us do. I never really saw him clearly in the rainy darkness, but he was charismatic. Nearly all of us have met people to whom we feel an instant attraction. That was how I felt about John. Those few minutes that we shared under that bus stand had been electric.

But that was a few minutes in a rainy night. Life established itself soon after. His deep voice still lingered in the back of my mind, but customers and cases and late nights were in the front of my mind.

It was early Saturday morning a week later as I was leaving the office, that I got his call on my mobile. I was in the office parking garage putting my helmet on when the phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize. I answered it impatiently, wanting to be getting home to start my weekend.

The voice on the other end of the line was deep and full of that smile and brought back the smell of rain and queen of the night. He was outside my business park. Did I want to go some place and talk?

I thought, “What the heck? Why not!”

John knew a tea stall near a bench where we could sip tea and look at the stars and talk. And that’s what we did. Our second date (John always insisted that the rainy night under the bus stand was our first date) was spent over hot tea, the cool breeze in the African tulip tree, the occasional honk of a cab plying people home in the wee hours, and his slow, deep voice.

He made me laugh. Me. Serious, overworked, constantly worrying me. Laughing. His body was a warm glow beside me. Had he asked, I would have gone home with him in a heartbeat. But he didn’t ask. He said that was for another date.

————————————————————————————————

They have been operating on him for over two hours. I don’t know exactly how bad things were because it was dark and wet. Like the night we met. Only this time, we decided to ride out the storm. This time, a lorry with no headlights turned a curve in the road into a bowling alley, and we were the pins.

A nurse comes up to me, asking me to change clothes. She thrusts a set of doctor’s scrubs into my hands. She says she knows I am worried, but I am scaring the other people waiting.

I see a few other waiting people: Their eyes are red and raw like mine must be. They also saw their loved ones vanish into the swinging doors of the operating wing. They stare at me like I am the new enemy and not the accidents and disease that harmed their loved ones.

I take the scrubs and go to the nearest bathroom. The window is open, and I can hear the rain, still falling like a waterfall. Just like the night we met. Why hadn’t we just waited it out under a bus stand?

————————————————————————————————

After that night, John and I met at least three times a week for as many months. Always outside somewhere…a park, a restaurant, a tea stall he knew of. By now he knew that my family didn’t know I was gay. By now I knew he lived alone, his family in another part of the country. We had finally seen each other under light – in restaurants, in the sunshine on a Saturday afternoon in some park.

He was tall and thin, but broad-chested. He was three years older than me, but already had laugh lines around his eyes. They lit up his face whenever he smiled, which was often. He had dark skin, and his arms were covered with thick, black hair. Even his head hair was thick and loosely curled except for a spot about the size of the top of a tea cup where he was starting to go bald, right on the top of his head. He was clean-shaven. His eyes were a rich brown, large and covered by long lashes when he closed them. He was infinitely alluring without uttering a word: when he spoke in that slow, deep voice, I felt myself falling for him like I had never fallen for anyone in my life.

What he saw in me, I didn’t know. I was an ordinary looking 25 year old IT professional. I was of average height, thin, with wheat colored skin, with straight, short black hair above a serious face. My eyes were brown and often pensive. I worried about everything, and this showed on my face, in my posture, in my gestures and the careful way I spoke. He sometimes teased and said he would not call me by my name, Sachin; rather, he wanted to call me ‘Professor’. He said he never saw a guy my age worry so much.

But I didn’t understand how he couldn’t worry. He was alone in a city that was far from his native. Everyone he had ever known his whole life was thousands of kilometres away. My parents and my younger sister and I were not close – in fact, they didn’t know me much at all. But the thought of living without them, their familiarity and security, was hard for me. How did he do it, I asked John.

He was silent for a few minutes and then answered, “We all need something to hold on to in life.”

“Like what?” I wanted to know.

“Like sunrises and the wind in the trees, like good books and those moments you see between lovers that others miss because they are walking by too fast.” He was looking at me intently. In my mind, I imagined this as a movie scene, only with two heroes and no heroine. He reached out with one of his long fingered hands and curled it around my arm. “Like holding on to you.” His voice was just above a whisper, somehow still audible in the clatter of the coffee shop where we sat.

His words gave me the jolt he probably intended, though knowing John, he meant every word. Even as a part of me thrilled to be thought of that way, another part worried. I was falling in love with someone my family, my society, my country wouldn’t approve of.

————————————————————————————————

They have been operating now for over three hours. I have discarded my blood stained clothes for the green scrubs and sit alone in the waiting room. The other families have left, either in tears or in relief. I feel neither emotion yet: I won’t know until I see him just how I should feel. For now, I am simply terrified.

We had been spending hours of the week together for some months, and still not made much physical progress with each other. It was not for a lack of desire. It was clear to us both that we were attracted to each other. In the rare moments that our hands touched, we wanted more. When we sat thigh against thigh, we wanted more.

Motorcycle rides were torment for me. I rode behind him, our bodies close, sometimes needing to hold onto him as he navigated the pot-holed streets in the darkness we often met in. At those times especially, I wondered what he was waiting for. Why didn’t we express these pent up desires in some way more fulfilling than deep talks, of which we had plenty? Don’t get me wrong – I loved our talks! He really got me, all my worries, my deep thinking, my questioning mind. Our talks were relaxing and invigorating. But not like sex!

One night, riding along our usual route, my body pressed against his, we went over a speed breaker and the bike swerved in a dip in the road. As usual, my hands fell onto his thighs to gain balance. Suddenly I reached further around him, and let my hands fall between his legs. I was not surprised to feel him hard, straining against his jeans. I propped my head on his shoulder, my cheek pressed against his helmet, and held him through his jeans. I heard his breath catch.

Suddenly he swerved the bike from our usual route, and it wasn’t long before we parked in the garage of a high-rise apartment complex with darkened windows. I realized he had finally brought me home.

I was not a virgin. Not only had I messed around with college mates in the PG where I had stayed, I had even been with a girl once to see if I was somehow mistaken about what I was attracted to. But these experiences had been fleeting, secretive, short-lived. Within minutes of being with John in his dark flat, I realized he was no virgin either, nor had he been oblivious to the tension that had been growing between us all of these months. He took control as soon as the door was closed behind us.

His lips pulled at mine as his hands removed my clothes. When he pressed my body to his chest, I fit perfectly against him as if made for only him. He sat down on the couch, his hands loosely around my wrists, and looked up at me. I pulled free and slowly began to undress him. For once I was not worried about what I looked like, if I would do something wrong, if I would please my partner or not. In his eyes, I saw no expectations, only passion and longing.

That moment when our bare bodies finally touched is indelible in my mind, duplicated thousands of times over the years we would be together, but never quite like that first time. Our passion started out as if we were two bodies yearning to be one. And every time we laid together, we achieved that unity – mind, body and soul.

————————————————————————————-

It’s been four hours now. A nurse tried to tell me to rest. I cannot rest until I know he will be okay. My hands are gripping the arms of the chair where I sit. I need something to hold on to, but this chair is not what I need.

 ————————————————————————————

“I needed to know you were ready.” That’s what John told me when I asked him why he had waited so long before making our relationship physical. “And when you finally touched me, I knew you were ready. I was ready the first night we met. But I am not in this for a short walk. I’m in it for the long run.”

Lately, I had been having what months ago I would have called dangerous thoughts. I was thinking I should tell my family that I didn’t want the bride they were planning for me. That I didn’t want the life they were planning for me, with or without the bride. I had done as they had expected from practically day one. I had lost sleep and lost weight slaving over exams for as long as I could remember, until finally I had landed the IT job they had charted for me on their long list of expectations. I was 25 now, and the long list continued: In my personal world, they expected a bride from a suitable family and at least two children – a boy and a girl if god was willing. In my career, they expected me to climb the corporate ladder until maybe one day I was the director of an IT company somewhere. Money, status, reputation. These were the constant ingredients expected for each and every milestone in the life they had decided for me.

What I really wanted was John. A job for basic needs. Maybe to travel. No kids, no corporate stress, no worries over money, status and reputation.

John never told me I should tell my family about him, about what I really wanted in life. But I knew he had told his family. They had disowned him, of course. They had thrown him physically from their home into the streets at the age of 16 when he had decided to confide in them. Then he had no home, no security, no money, no future. He could have gone back and denied what he had shared. He knew that was what his family had hoped he would do.

But he had not. John never told me all that he had been through to come from that distant city as a 16 year old to now, 28 and living comfortably. But I knew the journey had been hard.

But somehow, John had made it through without becoming hard himself. He was strong and confident of himself. But still vulnerable enough to confess his love for me while we laid in the dark, our arms and legs tangled, his lips in my hair, his words falling like bougainvillea flowers into my heart.

————————————————————————————

I can’t believe it’s been over five hours now since that terrible screech of tires, that scream of metal against metal, that clash of machines, bodies and road. I had been thrown from the bike as soon as John had tried to brake to avoid the oncoming lorry. I landed with minimal scraps in the bushes along the road, somehow managing to not crack my head on the curb.

My John had not been so lucky. Though the lorry had not run over him, it had collided with him, slamming him from the bike which it then crushed. A nearby tea walla had seen it all and had acted fast, calling an ambulance service on his mobile before rushing to try to help us. I had been dazed, my head ringing, my mouth forming a scream that never quite came out as I dragged myself in the pouring rain to John’s bloodied body. The lorry driver ran away. The tea walla tried to stop me from touching John; by then I was crying and calling his name. But he neither answered, nor opened those brown eyes.

There was no sign of life in him at all.

————————————————————————————

I started lying to my family, trying to figure out how I could balance what they wanted with what I wanted. I had never thought in my wildest dreams that I would meet someone like John. I guess if I had thought about it at all, I would have married whoever my parents found for me and continued to have fleeting, secretive meetings with other men trapped like me in marriages and lives they had never designed.

At first, they believed my lies that a late customer call had made me spend the night in the office’s sleep room, when in reality I was staying with John. But the more I wanted to be with him night and day, the more irritable and moody I became at home. And rather than discussing it with me, they decided that they just needed to find me a bride even sooner.

“How did you tell your family?” I asked John one night as we lay under the fan in his bedroom.

“I just … told them.” His voice was low. “I knew what they had planned for me, and I couldn’t do that to me, to any woman they made me marry, to them even. I knew what they planned would make me unhappy, bitter, even suicidal. I wanted free.”

“Were you free?” I asked softly, tracing with my finger the outline of his hand on my thigh. “After you told them, did you feel free?”

John was silent for some time, perhaps remembering all he had been through after he had been kicked out of his family’s life. “Sachin,” he said at length. “When I left my family, I had no one. But you have me. Whatever you plan, whatever happens, you always have me.”

Of course I kissed him for that. Who wouldn’t? He was always saying these sorts of things, but better than that, he always meant them. I wondered if he meant this one too.

Days later I told my family. I screwed up courage I didn’t even know I had, I sat them down, I told them I was gay, had known I was gay all my life, that I didn’t want a bride, that I didn’t want the life they had planned. I didn’t tell them about John. I wanted them to know this was me talking, my decision.

Their reactions were inevitable: They ran the gauntlet of anger, disappointment, disbelief, horror and back to anger. Deep and hateful anger. We like to think that the people who are our families would never hate us, but things like this somehow trigger hatred in some. I know there are people out there whose families accept them. Here and in other countries too. But my family made the choice to not be part of those statistics.

When I stood on the street outside John’s flat, what few possessions I had cared to bring with me when my parents told me to leave packed in a bag, I did feel free. I really did. I had no idea what the future held. But I was free.

————————————————————————————

Somewhere behind those swinging doors, I can hear someone crying loudly. I wonder if it’s a family member or someone waiting to be operated on. Or someone waking from an operation. I wonder if it’s going to be me soon, crying over someone who didn’t wake up.

————————————————————————————

When John opened the door for me that evening, he knew right away that something big had happened. He shut the door after I stepped inside, and watched me, not saying anything. I was shaking from the adrenaline of standing up for myself, from fear of what I had just done, from the sheer exhaustion of trying to live two different lives all these months: one with John, one for my family.

I collapsed on the couch while he made tea. He still didn’t talk as I finished the tea. Later, he led me to the bedroom and we sat in the dark. Suddenly, he pulled me against his chest tightly and whispered, “Thank you! Thank you!” like a mantra.

It was not until that moment that I realized how much he had stood to lose if I had not found courage. I realized for the first time how much he had wanted me to do this, but that he had respected my right to choose.

It was the first time in my entire life that I had truly felt needed.

I got up and walked onto the balcony, feeling all the emotions of the day. He followed and stood behind me. His body fit along mine as if we were interlocking puzzle pieces. I could feel the entire length of his body holding me, his arms around my chest, his neck against mine, his cheek against my cheek, his breath my breath. “What do you feel, Sachin?” he whispered. “What do you feel?”

I clasped his arms with mine as I answered, “Something to hold on to.”

————————————————————————————

We have been together now for over 13 years. We have seen our first grey hairs in the mirror together. We have shared the death of family members from afar, still not allowed to come home. We have seen the country’s attitude change, though not as much as it needs to. We have seen the stares of others when we kiss in public, but we do not care. We have united our bodies in passion countless times and still feel like it’s the first time. I cannot imagine life without him.

The doctor has come now. He looks grim and tired. I taste my heart in my throat. But he is telling me John has made it out alive! He is saying that the injuries were severe, and that they had almost lost him on the table. He is saying that John has a strong will to live because somehow, against all odds, he survived. He is saying John will need a lot of time and help to recover. They are leading me to his bed, trying to prepare me for all the tubes and repairs they have made.

But in my mind I know whatever I see will not be as terrifying as the thought of facing this world without him. And whatever medicine they give him, whatever therapy he will need, I know what I can be for him. That which he has always been for me:

Something to hold on to.

THE END


(First published on Gaylaxy)

Short Story: Bringing The Light

Part 1

The first time I laid eyes on Vasu’s blue eyes was when he came to the office to pick me up for a meeting across the city.  They were striking, those blue eyes, set against the light brown of his skin, topped by his black hair which was neatly trimmed but curled a little around his ears and across his forehead.

He was dressed in a checked blue and green shirt and blue jeans, not the usual shapeless white uniform of the company drivers. He had been hired specially for this meeting because my boss wanted me to make an impression showing up with a fancy car and driver. I didn’t have my own car – I didn’t even dare drive in Bangalore’s traffic and even after five years living in the city, I often rode in the cabs with one eye covered and the other squinting in fear as the driver aggressively rammed through traffic.

He smiled pleasantly, introducing himself as he opened the door to the back seat of the clean, shiny car. The AC was running and a car freshener smell wafted out to me as I bent to seat myself. He said his name was Vasu, and he had a friendly voice to go with his handsome smile.

As we pulled into traffic, I realized right away that Vasu was not a typical aggressive and loud driver: he was careful, using his indicators, judiciously beeping his horn and travelling a safe distance in the lunch hour traffic. He kept his eyes on the road which meant I couldn’t see them again. And I wanted to see them again.

I tried small talk. “How has your day been?” I asked, clearing my throat to get his attention.

“Fine, fine,” he answered. “Yours, sir?”

“Oh, ok,” I answered. “I have this meeting – have to make a good impression.”

“Yes,” he repeated. “A good impression.” He glanced at me in the rear-view mirror and yes, there were those blue eyes, flecked with brown. My heart nearly skipped a beat.

I sat back, adjusting my tie and wishing I could just remove it. But then, that wouldn’t make a good impression would it? Lately, I’d had a lot of job stress. A pensive mood fell over me, and without realizing it, I sighed heavily.

“Sir?” Vasu inquired, glancing again at me in the mirror. “Shall I turn up the AC?”

“Oh no, I’m fine!” I held those eyes and smiled my best smile. He returned the smile.

“Sir, can I ask you – where are you from?” Now he wanted small talk, and I was all too happy to oblige.

“I am from the US,” I shared. “But for the past five years, I have lived here, in Bangalore. You?”

“From Bangalore only.” He said it with pride. “Five years you have been here, sir.  How are you liking it?”

“I like it a lot,” I answered, truthfully. “The weather is great. The people too.” I couldn’t help but smile at him again. Especially blue-eyed you, I silently intoned.

“Ah yes, the weather is perfect, I think?” he asked, smiling. “But very hot soon.”

And so the conversation went as we drove to my meeting. He spoke English far better than my Kannada, but sometimes we had funny confusions, laughing comfortably before figuring out what the other meant. By the time he dropped me off for the meeting and told me he would wait for me, I wanted him to wait for me his whole life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was very young, I dreamed about who I wanted to marry when I grew up. I confess I loved to play house, but not the traditional game the neighborhood kids played. I wanted to be the husband, and I wanted a husband in my game of house. The boys all thought this was funny, the girls got their feelings hurt and in the end, I carried on conversations about my future bad day at the office with thin air.

In college, I dated a few men. I had a serious relationship my last year of college, but it couldn’t last outside the graduation hall when he decided to go to one end of the country and I wanted to stay. My parents were older and had health problems. My father had struggled to stay employed for some time due to health issues. I elected to stay and work near them, helping them with their bills and doctor appointments.

When my parents died, I went through a deep depression. But slowly my heart began to yearn for another place. When I had been young, I used to pour over the atlas, struggling to pronounce the names of cities and countries, mesmerized by photos of faraway lands, and dreaming of visiting at least one, if not more. Suddenly the idea of waking up every day to what I had known all my life was more terrifying than that inevitable day when I wouldn’t wake up at all.

What was I waiting for? I began to search for jobs outside the US and settled on India. How much more different from the US could I get? I did my research, I got my resume and degrees in order and I applied for jobs. When I received a place in a multi-national company which had an office in Bangalore, I was thrilled.

I looked at myself in the mirror and my plain brown eyes looked back, set in a pleasant looking face. Short dark brown hair and a fine sprinkle of freckles across rounded cheek bones sometimes made me look younger than my 30 years. But there was tiredness around my mouth, pulling my lips down. I needed this new lease on life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vasu was my driver on several more trips from the office to some other office across the sprawling city. By this time, I knew he was not married, but had a brother who was and a nephew whom he adored. He lived with his parents, and his brother and his wife also lived with them. It was a crowded house. He spoke briefly about having to marry soon – he was 29 years old, and that was pushing it for an Indian man – but a suitable girl had not been found. He didn’t elaborate on that part of his life, and I chose not to think about it either.

He had a dream to quit driving one day, once the loan was paid off on his parents’ home. He wanted to set up a little general store, the sort one can find all over India: selling daily needs, like bread and snacks, lentils and rice, a few cool drinks and bananas on a hook. He described it with a small smile, as if he had seen that store in his mind a million times. No more clients, no more deadlines and worries about traffic, his back sore from sitting long hours.

I tried to help him with his dream by having the office always request him. And I tipped him generously, uncomfortably aware of all the special things he did just for me: a copy of the magazine I liked to read tucked into the seat pocket, fresh cool water, a stop at the bhaji stall I liked on the way back from a meeting, helping me with my bag when he dropped me at my house.

One day I convinced him to eat lunch outside with me. An early meeting had turned into a past lunch marathon and as we returned to the office, I realized the office canteen would have stopped serving food by then. I asked him if he knew anywhere we could stop for some lunch, and he suggested a local hotel.  Until that moment, we had always maintained a friendly relationship, which never overstepped boundaries culture had built for us: he was the driver, and I was the client. Eating together was stretching those boundaries.

We were the only customers at the hotel. The juice boy idly watched us as we looked over the plastic coated menu under a slow turning ceiling fan. We ordered the lunch thali, one each, and sweet lime water. Vasu fidgeted nervously as we waited for the food, as if worried his boss would leap out from behind the filtered water machine, waving and screaming at him about indecorous behavior.

Without thinking, I reached across the metal covered table and grasped his hands in both of mine, attempting to calm him. In that instant, everything else faded except for the feeling of his warm hands. The traffic outside, the bang of the cooks, even the whir of the fan blurred to silence, just like in a movie.

He stopped fidgeting instantly. I stared at our hands, light and dark, clasped on the table top. Slowly I looked up, and then our eyes locked. I was certain that his registered the same electricity I felt. At that moment, all I could wonder was what it would feel like to kiss his full lips. I half feared that my wonder was written like a question across my face, and part of me hoped it was: it was obviously not a question I could just ask.

The server at the counter behind us interrupted our moment, slamming our thalis down and calling out our order. We both rose, our hands pulling apart, each muttering that we would get the meals. My voice was louder, and for once, Vasu listened to me and allowed me to fetch the thalis, allowed me to serve him. His eyes avoided mine as we started our meal. But as we scooped up the last of the curry and rice, our eyes met again, and he smiled.

Maybe it was just me, but I read a lifetime of possibilities in that smile.

Part 2

After that, all I could think about was how to see more of Vasu. Work carried on, but my private life was spent wondering how to get Vasu to myself, outside the rigors of office transport. He was not likely to spend his time off with me: he had already told me that he spent what little time he had off with his family. That was the way here, and I wasn’t going to keep him from his family. His parents both had diabetes and struggled with health. It reminded me all too painfully of my own parents.

The only thing I could think of was to hire him for weekend excursions in and around Bangalore. It would give me the time I wanted to spend with him and give him money towards the loan that was always looming in his mind.

I broached the subject by asking him for suggestions for weekend getaways, places people tired of office stress could go to relax. He suggested a few spas and resorts, and I planned for one.

But when we reached the spa, he immediately said he would park the car in the lot which was several meters from the welcome center, and that I should message him if I needed anything.

This was not going to help!

The next outing was a resort about one hour’s drive in Bangalore’s traffic from where I lived. When he tried to drop me at the welcome center, I held up my hand. “Come in with me,” I requested. “I don’t want you to have to sit in the hot car.”

“Sir,” he started to say.

“Scott,” I reminded him. I had been trying to get him to call me by name. Formality was ingrained in him, but he had finally started calling me Scott. Except when a situation spiked alarm in him. He seemed uncomfortable to join me in the resort. He said the other drivers in the car park would talk about it.

I understood all too well what face and reputation meant to many people. I had briefly dated a man named Ganesh from an office near mine who refused to be seen with me in public because he was afraid a relative would see him holding hands with a foreign man and report back to his parents.

Reluctantly, I let him drive to the lot and didn’t enjoy one minute of my day’s stay at that resort.

As we were driving home, I racked my brain over how I could get Vasu to come up to my flat and not just drop me and drive off. I had some light bulbs that needed changed. Would he believe that I needed his help to do such a trivial job?

When we neared my flat, I tried to find out. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror and bobbed his head. He would come up and help. As we rode the lift up to my flat, it was me now who wanted to fidget. For days, I had dreamed of this moment, and now that it was here, so much pressure had come with it. How to get him to stay without making him again feel the differences that always seemed to stand between us? How to explore that electricity I swear we had felt in that hotel weeks before? How to break a few more light bulbs without him catching on?

Once inside my flat, he stood looking around in his socked feet. The company pays for my flat, and it’s a nice one, open and sunny. He was appreciating the view from the front windows when I asked him if he wanted some water. He started to protest, but then conceded and accepted the glass from my outstretched hand. I invited him to sit on the chair, and I sat on the couch opposite him.

We made idle talk about the cost of the rent, the location and the neighbors. He was keen to learn if the neighbors were friendly with me, and I realized he wondered if they would ask me who he was after he left. I assured him that the neighbors never even spoke to me.

For a few minutes, we sat in silence, the traffic on the street below a dim cacophony and the birds in the tree outside the window making sweet music. Suddenly he seemed to break from a reverie and asked me about the light bulbs.

I looked at him, weighing if I should tell him I didn’t really want him to change light bulbs with what his reaction might be when he heard my subterfuge. He looked at me with such frank blue eyes that I hated to lie to him.

“You don’t need to change light bulbs,” I said, throwing all caution to the wind.  “I mean, it’s just that I want to talk to you more than have you change light bulbs.”

Vasu didn’t answer me, his eyes drifting away from me while he sipped his water. He didn’t leave either, which I thought was a good sign. “What do you want to talk about?” he finally asked.

Indeed, I thought. Actually, it was less what I wanted to talk about that was the trouble and more if I dared to talk about it. I wanted to talk about the feeling I had when I looked into his eyes, how when our hands touched or our bodies contacted in passing, I felt an attraction which kept me awake at night. I wanted to tell him that I was not “sir” or an employer, but Scott and a potential…dare I say…lover?

Instead, I asked him how his family was and how his nephew was behaving these days, and the conversation stayed level, sharing about family, about weekend plans.

I got up to use the loo, and when I came back, Vasu was sitting on the couch. I hesitated just a fraction of a second before I sat next to him. Our thighs nearly touched – a breath away from each other. I could smell his sweat and hair oil. I don’t think I had ever been so close to him before.  I started to speak.

He beat me to it, saying my name, just my name. His hand was on my thigh now. It felt like fire, and I was instantly aroused. I tried to turn away, not because I didn’t want his hand there, but because it was inches from my physical arousal.

“Scott.” He said my name again, his voice low, urging me to look at him. I did and lost all resolve to turn away. Those eyes were as beautiful to me as the first time I saw them. And his lips as full and achingly kissable as the first time I dreamed of kissing them.

But before I could make a move, his head fell back resting against the couch, and he closed his eyes. His hand was still on my thigh. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. For several minutes, we sat like this, his neck a smooth curve, his eyelashes fanning his cheekbones, those lips parted ever so slightly.

I compromised my desire and put my own head back. I closed my eyes. The traffic and bird song faded. I became aware of only his breath. The couch shifted. A weight fell across my lap.

I opened my eyes, and looked down. Vasu’s head was now where his hand had been. His eyes were still closed. His legs stretched out on the couch, one arm dangling over the side, resting on the floor, the other laying across his chest.

I reached down and pushed my fingers into his thick, dark hair. He didn’t stir. I traced the line of his cheeks with my fingertip, smoothed his brows, lightly touched each eyelid. He didn’t stir. I could feel the beginnings of stubble on his cheeks. I touched his broad nose. I dared to touch his lips. They were soft and warm. He still didn’t stir. I let my hand fall to his chest, inches from his own hand, and put my head on the back of the couch. My eyes drifted shut.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I woke, it was dark in the room, and Vasu was sitting up, grunting with stiffness from lying in one place for a long time. He stretched loudly, his hands arms above his head and his shirt creeping up to reveal his stomach in the dim.

I switched on a light, and he rose, stepping around my legs, to go to the loo. When he came out, he gathered his mobile and keys from the table.  I stood up, watching him.

“I never changed the light bulbs,” he said, looking around. His eyes settled on me. Something subtle has shifted in the relationship between us, and his smile brought warmth to every part of me. “I’ll do it next time,” he said, heading for the door.

I saw him out the door. He wanted there to be a next time!

Part 3

Vasu started coming up to my flat regularly, but still only if I called him to go some place – shopping or a weekend office event and so on. When he drove me home, he would come up to my flat, making himself at home. We would watch TV together: cricket or some English movie, snacking on something I had gotten at the store or a chaat he thought I needed to try. Once he brought chili bhajis, which he had picked up on the way home, and he marveled I could eat them so easily. He joked that because I had been in Bangalore for five years, I was becoming Indian. He said I already had the South Indian head nod mastered.

When he teased me, he always touched me: pushing my chest, pinching my arm or hitting my leg. I looked forward to his teasing. And when I teased him, I tried touching him too – poking his side, thumping his shoulder. He seemed to enjoy the contact. I didn’t push my luck, wondering where this was headed, just how much he understood from my feelings which I was sure were written plainly on my face every time we touched.

When he was in my flat, he called me Scott; when we were in the cab, he didn’t call me anything, as if he was confused himself over where this relationship stood.

Sometimes he fell asleep when he visited my flat. I knew he worked hard, sometimes driving long hours or waiting for hours for clients. During the week and even some weekends, he was not always available, having been hired for out-station trips by businessmen or regular clients who appreciated his safe driving and conscientious work habits.

When he fell asleep, it was always on the couch, his head on my leg, his body abandoned to sleep. If he felt my caresses on his face, my hand on his chest, he never gave a hint. On the one hand, it was torture for me. Every fiber of my being wanted to meld with him, make love to him, taste him, share him. But I couldn’t make the first move – somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. What if this was not leading where it seemed to lead? What if he didn’t want anything past just this level of intimacy?

Homosexuality was still mostly taboo in India, despite the law making it illegal recently being thrown out. Now, section 377 was being bandied about in the courts, and India’s LGBT community had taken to the streets in protest.  Also men often shared closeness in India that in my native country might mean they were gay, but which in India didn’t mean anything of the sort. How many times had I seen colleagues who I knew were straight holding hands as they walked down the office corridor?

I was too afraid to lose his friendship to make the first move.  I enjoyed his company on the weekends, even if he was shouting at cricket and teasing me. I especially enjoyed his naps, even if they were torture to my desires.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I expressed a need to get away from the city and relax, it was Vasu who suggested a vacation in a resort some five hours drive from Bangalore. The season for staying at resorts was almost over, the summer heat just around the corner, so it would be less crowded. Vasu said he knew of a resort called The Green Getaway, nestled inside the national forest in the neighboring state. He said he could be my driver for an entire week if I wanted to get away because his usual clients were either out of station or otherwise didn’t need him. It sounded perfect.

The big day arrived. I had already contacted the resort, booked a jungle shack and planned activities to do to just relax and forget the tension of work. It was my assumption that Vasu would come with me not just as my driver, but as my friend as well.

The drive to the resort was fun. We chatted as he drove. We stopped at places he knew along the way for lunch, for coconut water and snacks. The weather was perfect: not too hot, not too chilly, sunny and breezy. As we approached the forested areas, we saw deer and birds, stopping to take pictures with our mobile phones.

The resort was located at the end of a bumpy, hilly drive that gradually wound lower and lower until we found ourselves in a clearing dotted with a handful of shacks and the welcome center, the forest a dark green blur in the distance. The ghats loomed high above us, speckled brown due to no rain.

 As soon as we pulled up and got out, a change came over Vasu. He actually called me sir in front of the resort manager; he carried my bag and left his own in the van, asking the manager where he should park.

His behavior instantly communicated to the manager a lower status, and the manager spoke accordingly. He told me there was a driver’s facility where Vasu could sleep and get food. It was instantly assumed that Vasu was hired to drive me and was not a friend of mine.

To say that I was confused over this shift would be an understatement. Suddenly Vasu was not meeting my eyes. He shuffled off to park the van, telling me to call him if I needed anything. His receding back told me that saying I needed him was out of the question.

I was tired from the trip. I ate, and asked the manager to make sure Vasu also got food. He said the kitchen had already served the staff and that the driver would have eaten with the staff, had we come sooner. I told him I didn’t care. I was aware that my voice was rising as I told him to give my driver food.

My driver. I hated how that sounded. I had always been uncomfortable with class divides. In the US, people were also divided across classes, but less rigidly than in India. More than any time, I hated that divide now. I wanted Vasu with me, enjoying this time that he deserved as much as I did.

Was his sudden reticence his way of saying he didn’t want this intimacy, even though we had been so close over the past weeks it sometimes hurt? Was he again concerned with appearances, knowing that the staff might talk about him if he was too familiar with me?

I listened as the manager rattled off the activities I had at my disposal: a nature walk, the nightly bonfire, night safari on the resort grounds, an exercise room etc.  He said my bag had been sent to the shack, and I could go check the room if I was ready.

The room was perfect – a big bed dominating the space, the bathroom nearly as big with a shower and water heater. When the boy who handed me the keys left, I was surrounded by the sounds of nature. Birds called repeatedly outside, the chorus interspersed by calls from the jungle from unknown beasts filling my mind with excitement, despite my confusion over Vasu’s behaviour.

I tried to call Vasu, but the signal danced between none and a lonely bar. The room phone worked fine though – its ring shattered the natural symphony. It was the manager informing me that the nature walk would start in 15 minutes and that the night safari would need to be cancelled for that night as the jeep was being serviced.

I decided not to let Vasu or a broken jeep darken my mood, and prepared for the nature walk. The boy who came to guide me was friendly and curious over where I was from. Once we entered the forest, he fell silent. He would whisper from time to time, directing my gaze to a bird, a flower, a paw print in the dirt. We heard elephants trumpeting deep in the forest. We saw a herd of semi-wild buffalo and several kinds of birds.

We walked back past the watering hole and climbed to the machan to look out over the water as the sun started to set. The boy explained that the elephants we had heard come to this watering hole every morning in the wee hours, and that’s why I needed to stay in my shack after dark. Even a tiger had been seen several times or her paw prints buried deep in the mud around the riverbank. He impressed me to stay safe!

The sunset was brilliant but swift. I returned to my shack for a quick bath before dinner. I checked my phone. Though there had been a signal at times and I had once sent an SMS to Vasu, there was no response.  I dressed and walked up to the lot where the van was parked.

As I approached, I could see him watching me from his seat in the van. He held up his hand, shaking his head. It stopped me in my tracks. His eyes flicked to some of the staff standing nearby, looking towards us. When his eyes came back to me, they were full of pleading, as if begging me to understand his perspective.

I understood but felt a keen disappointment. I didn’t care what these people thought about Vasu and me. But he did. It was Ganesh all over again – worse, because Vasu had the weight of class differences burdening him as much as the worry over what people would think of two men sharing time together.

I respected his wish and walked away to have my dinner, my hopes for a week spent with him going down the drain. I made up my mind to confront him tomorrow, if we found time alone together. I wondered if it would make any difference.

After dinner, I wandered back to my shack, the boys’ warnings to stay inside still bouncing in my ears. For a long time I sat on the porch, huddled inside my jacket. As the sun had sunk, so had the temperature.

This solitude was nice, but was not how I had thought this week would go. I sat until the sounds in the resort kitchen faded, until the voices of the boys silenced, and only the sound of insects, night birds and beasts filled my hearing.

Finally, I went into the shack, locked the door, and crawled into bed, sleeping almost instantly.

I don’t know how long I had slept when I was awakened by a steady, soft knocking at the door. I sat up in the dark, every hair on my body standing on end. I gathered my courage and crept to the door, peering out through the peephole but seeing nothing in the darkness outside.

Suddenly I saw faint movement and heard a whispered voice: “It’s me, Vasu. Let me in, ya.”

I opened the door and pulled him inside, images of prowling tigers and stampeding elephants in my mind. I locked the door and turned to him, his outline slightly lit from a nightlight on the wall. He was rubbing his hands together and rocking, obviously cold. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“You have any light bulb to be changed?” His joking voice was just above a whisper.

“Vasu!” I hissed. I started to search for the room light. “It’s dangerous to be walking outside….”

He moved to stop me in the dark, our bodies colliding. “Scott.” Just my name, but it was all he’d ever had to say.  I felt his hands cupping my face, pulling me towards him.

Part 4

Within seconds, two things were clear: Vasu had little experience with this level of intimacy, but he wanted it badly. His hands grasped at me, his physical desire was hard against my body and his lips pulled at mine roughly.  We stumbled in the dark to the bed, shedding clothes along the way, and fell onto the sheets. Only moments ago, we had both been cold; now we were sweating and almost panting. Release came fast and left us both breathless, our bodies sinking into sweaty stillness.

After a few minutes, Vasu started to rise from the bed. I groped for his hand in the dark and dragged him back down.

“Where are you going?” I demanded. I wanted more than physical release. He wanted a shower, he said. I laid in the dark while he showered, the door prudently shut between us.

When he came out, the bathroom light outlined his nakedness as he stood a second, hesitating, not sure what to do next. I pulled the covers back and invited him to lie back down. His still damp flesh was so cold it shocked my skin, and I pulled the covers over us both, pulling him roughly against me. He laughed, still awkward in this new intimacy, his hands and arms hitting me clumsily as he found a space to lie.

He finally settled with his arm across my belly, his face against my chest, my hand in his hair and an arm around his shoulders. It was incredible how right this felt to me, and I hoped it was for him also.

For several minutes, we laid in the dark, his breath steady, my hand stroking his hair. Then he spoke, his voice quiet against nature’s symphony outside.

“You have done this many times?” he asked.

“Had someone come to change light bulbs in the middle of the night in the jungle?” I joked.

He stirred so that his head was under my chin, not wanting to joke. “This – what we just did,” he persisted. “I have not done this so much.”

“When have you done this then?” I wanted to know.

He shrugged against my arm. “Cousin brothers. Classmates in school. Once or twice with PG mates.”

I considered his past partners. Cousin brothers were relatives – cousins – who were like brothers to each other, often spending a lot of time together. Classmates and PG mates – probably sexually frustrated heterosexuals, possibly closeted gays.

He nudged me with his head. He wanted me to share my experience. So I did. I told him how I knew I was homosexual since I was 4 years old. How I had always been attracted to boys, to men. That I had had flings as well as serious relationships with gays in the US, with hetero guys who had wanted to experiment, with other Indian gays. He listened and was silent even after I was done talking.

Finally, he said, “I’m not gay.” Though he sounded unsure of himself, my heart sank. I had felt the exact opposite from him since the first day we had seen each other. And most of our experiences until now, though hardly that intimate, had carried an electric attraction tempered with friendship. I couldn’t be the only one who felt that.

He continued, softly, “I can’t be gay. If I was, my family would kill me.” His words saddened me, filling me with a strong protective feeling. I suddenly and violently wrapped my arms around him, dragging him roughly against me. He didn’t protest but allowed me to pull and tug him, abandoning himself to me.

“Whatever you are,” I said fiercely, “you’re mine for the next week.”

His laughter tickled my chest where his head pressed, and then he was the one pulling me, rolling onto his back and bringing me to sprawl over him. There was no barrier now between us – no class differences. Just skin against skin and shared arousal. I leaned down and kissed him, slowly and deeply. This time I would show him how slow and intimate release could be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Morning came sneaking through the windows, spilling grey light where the sun found a way through the curtains. Vasu slept, and I laid and watched him wake. Then, he stirred, pushing back the covers, with his eyes shut tight and wrinkles on his forehead. When his arms hit my chest, his eyes flew open, vividly blue in the dim light.

“Shit!” he exclaimed, and flew out of bed. “Shit!” he exclaimed again, now trying to find his clothes still scattered all over the floor.

I sat up, mystified by his frantic actions. “What are you doing, ya?” I asked.

He stopped long enough to say he needed to get back to the van or everyone would know he had slept with me! I couldn’t help it – I started to laugh out loud. He again stopped his frantic dressing, his underwear in one hand, his undershirt dangling comically from his neck where he had just drawn it over.

“Don’t laugh!” he cried. “Help me find my pants, ya!”

“Do you really think no one spotted you when you came down here last night?” I asked. “These guys live in a jungle! Any strange noise is probably noticed.”

He tsked at me, searching through our mingled clothes.

I got out of bed and caught his flailing arms in both of my hands. “Vasu, why do you care if these people know we slept in the same room together? We won’t ever see them again. They aren’t going to tell a soul about it because they want their money for the room. Besides, I have a suspicion about the resort manager.” I pulled him back to the bed.

He sat down, his body half adorned in what clothes he could find. “What about the manager?” he asked, letting me push him down. He was already half convinced by my words.

“He is all alone out here, surrounded by young men in the middle of a jungle,” I teased. “No wife, I guess. No women at all out here that I saw. Hmmm?”

I was removing what few clothes he had managed to wear. He grinned up at me, and I continued, “He has gotten his money for the room.” I straddled him, feeling his physical desire rising, and kissed first the tangle of hair on his chest and then moved to his neck. His breath had quickened.

“They will probably think I asked you to come and stay to protect me from wild beasts in the night.” I grinned and pulled back to look into his eyes. “And I do want you to stay here. With me. In this room. What can they say?”

In the growing light, Vasu was turning shy. He no longer wanted to leave. He was convinced, it seemed, that money and wild beasts would keep anyone’s mouth shut. But what darkness had left anonymous the night before, morning was highlighting: boundaries shattered. My pale skin against his dark. The differences in our bodies, both aroused and pressed together.

His hands slid up to cover my chest. “I have never done this before,” he said softly.

“Done what?” I wondered what he could mean, our activities from the night before still vivid in my mind, at least.

“Stayed, you know?” He wanted me to understand, talking slowly, but with gravity. “With cousins, classmates, PG mates – they just wanted…release. Then gone – him to his bed or out, me out or wherever. Or with cousins, he would go home until next time, if there even was a next time. I never…stayed after. What do I…what do we do…now?”

His vulnerability was sweet and suddenly I wanted to teach him all the things he should know between two men sharing with each other.

I grinned down at him. “You have a lot to learn,” I said. “And we have a week to teach you.” After that week was over…well, we would wait and see.

Part 5 

I told Vasu, if there was anything I had learned in my short years on earth, it was that life is just that – short. My parents had been relatively young to die from diseases and heart attacks. That realization of how short and fleeting life can be is part of what drove me to live in India, to experience the ever-different culture, the ever-changing view. And that same philosophy drove my week with him.

Our days found a rhythm. We woke at the first light, intimate together as the sun rose. We showered together and dressed. I ordered breakfast, and we ate before either setting off to explore the areas of the resort that we could access alone or to drive the bumpy road up to the world outside to go on a safari in the nearby forest or explore some other little hill station or town.

To avoid the resort staff, we mainly ate outside at hotels and stalls. He still ran ahead to secure tickets for tourist places, for the toy train ride, and he insisted on carrying my bags. But he was finding a compromise between how he thought he should appear to the public and how he knew he was to me: a friend, a lover, an equal.

At the resort, we continued to be the only guests, the grounds devoid of all other human life besides Vasu, the staff and me. Even the manager lost interest in us after I cut short his delicate but obvious inquiries of whom Vasu was. We went on night safari every night the jeep was able to take us, and we saw wild elephants, a new sight for us both. We saw herds of deer even by day, and the cry of peafowl shattered the early morning every day, signalling a new start. Every night we seemed to rediscover our physical need for each other and our intimacy grew stronger and more powerful every time we lay together.

By the last day of our time together, Vasu had become very adept at intimacy and being relaxed even when the staff approached us to build the nightly bonfire or to serve our dinner.  That night, we waited until the whole resort had grown dark, until just the tiny lights along the walls of the welcome center shone from the buildings where the staff was sleeping. We took our blankets and crept bravely out to the machan, the sky full of bright stars and a cold breeze rustling the leaves in the trees, making us jump and muffle our laughter, lest we wake the staff who would tell us to get back into our shack.

We laid together on the machan overlooking the watering hole, lost in each other, oblivious to the trumpet of the elephants slowly making their way to the water, and not even thinking of how our cries of release must sound to the animals going about their nightly routines. Afterwards, we sat looking out at the water, wrapped in each other’s arms and in the blankets, and we talked.

We talked about his dream store, his childhood memories growing up in a village not far from Bangalore, his pet dog, the day he got a tattoo, and how he had always wanted to learn to cook and make good food at home so that his mom could rest.

We talked about my crazy work stress, and how my dream job was to write for a living. I shared my childhood growing up in the largely homophobic  Midwest, about losing my parents within a short period of time, about how India made me feel alive and how even the thought of going back to the US made me feel like a bird whose wings were clipped.

When the tiger came to lap at the water below us, we had fallen into intimate silence, our bodies warmly fused, our thoughts blissful so that we almost missed seeing her. But we saw her at the same time, leaning forward silently, staring at her dark shadow and grinning from ear to ear at each other. With less than 1500 of her kind left wild in the world, we both knew that what we were seeing would be with us for a lifetime. The whole week would be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But the silvery fog of morning found us facing the end to our paradise. We needed to check out, get into the van and drive back to the city. He would drive back to his family, to his loan, to his long, hectic hours and fussy clients, to his looming marriage. I would go back to my empty flat, my own hectic job, my dislike of class divide and my own wonders of whether I was destined to live my whole life alone.

On the way back to the city, we argued. It was inevitable. We knew the intense happiness and intimacy we had reveled in was over and life as he and as society saw it was soon to reinstate itself.

I broached the subject of him telling his parents that he didn’t want to marry, or at least didn’t want to marry a woman. He told me it wasn’t that easy, that for me it was easy to be gay, no one judged me the way his family would. He said the shock would kill his already ailing parents. His uncle, who had promised the deed to a small building lot as a wedding gift to Vasu, would obviously take away this big part of his general store dream. His family would disown him, leaving him without a home, without their protection, without a reputation that anyone could respect.

I tried to tell him that living a lie was worse than all of that, that he would be harming any woman he married if he wasn’t in love with her, didn’t feel attracted to her and was marrying her just for the sake of society. I tried to say I would be his new family and would help him find a reputation that others would respect in the LGBT community I was part of in Bangalore.

But in the end, when he dropped me at my flat, he refused to come up with me, and when he said goodbye, his voice held a steel resolve that boded ill for our relationship.

Before he drove away into the night, I tried one more time to convince him that what he and I shared, what we felt, was worth the fight and uncertainty. I leaned in his window and caught his eyes, those blue, brown-flecked eyes that had first set me on this path of what I realized now could only be called love, and said, “I once asked you to come up and change light bulbs for me.  You know by now that I just wanted you to come up and become a friend and a lover. But the truth is, you have been bringing light into my life since I first laid eyes on you. Isn’t what we feel worth a fight? Don’t you want to keep bringing light to our days?”

His face was a battlefield of emotion as he stared at me, not even bothering to wipe away the tears that welled up and spilled down his cheeks, weighing down his eyelashes and wetting his shirt collar. He started to speak, but then shook his head hard as if he could just shake away the emotion, the pain he was feeling. He seized my shirtfront violently and pulled me in for a long, breath-taking kiss. Then he pushed me away roughly, starting the van. “I have to go. You know it’s a long drive back to my place,” he mumbled, his voice husky.

I let him go. I had no choice. Either he had courage, or he had family and society. And it was not a decision I had any right to make for him. As his van pulled out into the busy evening traffic, I felt his tears on my face and my own slowly mixed with them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How could life return to what it had been before? Memories of Vasu surfaced everywhere. Even work was not safe: though I continued to go on crazy cross-city meetings, the transport coordinator said Vasu no longer took his calls and didn’t seem free to drive me.

He also didn’t return my SMSs or my phone calls. And I didn’t try repeatedly:  I knew he needed his space, time to make a choice.  He could also just pretend none of what we had shared ever happened. Either way, my calls and SMSs wouldn’t help.

I supposed it was too much to expect that Vasu choose courage over family and society.

But it was JRR Tolkien who said, “Courage is found in unlikely places.”

One night, over two months after that rough and tear-filled kiss, I came home from work, late as usual, the cab dropping me at my gate. I stood for a minute looking at the stars through the branches of the tree in front of the building before heading for the gate.

I became aware that someone was sitting on the step in front of the gate just as they rose to their feet. In the dark, it startled me, and I stepped back defensively.

“Scott.”

I knew that voice. “Vasu?” I stepped forward to look at him, his face coming into focus as my eyes adjusted to the dark.

He looked almost nervous. “I’m sorry,” he started without more preamble. “Sorry I didn’t answer your messages or your calls. I…I…A lot happened after….” When I didn’t respond, he sat back down on the step. Surprised, I sat down also, setting my workbag beside me. He took a deep, ragged breath. “Three days after we came back from the jungle, my father expired.”

I reached for his hand and found it, holding it hard. He allowed it, squeezing my hand in return. “Yeah,” he went on. “He had been sick. But we didn’t expect him to go so fast.”

We sat silently for a few minutes, before he continued. “There were a lot of rituals. So many family came. But I came to realize that most of them didn’t even know my father. They came for…duty. Because it was expected.  Afterwards, I kept remembering what you said to me about life being short. And I thought, ‘What if in the end it’s this? Family who don’t even know me?’ It made me think a lot.”

He squeezed my hand more, as if by doing so, he found more of that courage I had asked of him. He turned to me, and I could see tears shining in his eyes.

“I told my mom…told her I didn’t want to marry a girl. She said she already knew…that a mother always knows. She and my brother don’t really understand but… Anyway, she spoke to uncle. Somehow he agreed to give me the building lot anyway when I am 30.”

“That’s great!” I exclaimed, putting my arm around him and hugging him.

He grinned. “Yeah, it is! Just one more year on the house loan and one more year before that store is mine!” I clapped his back in appreciation, and he ducked his head, his face full of smiles. He held something out to me in a bag.

I took it. “What’s this?”

“Open it.”

I got up, carrying the bag with me to the streetlight, Vasu tagging along. I opened the bag and pulled out a box, holding it up to see it better.

It was a light bulb.

I turned and found Vasu smiling at me, his hand outstretched.

“Yeah?” He nodded his head back and forth in that typical South Indian way, both asking and confirming. I understood his question, though that was all he said. I grasped his hand, and nodded back, pulling him to the gate, a smile slowly spreading across my face.

THE END


(First published on Gaylaxy)

Short Story - First and Foremost

"He was a police officer first and foremost,” Rahul told himself as he looked in the mirror. His dark eyes looked back at him, his hair regulation short, a thick but trimmed moustache just above his lips which were parted slightly, reflecting his introspective mood.

Rahul had worked hard to get into the academy, had graduated at the top of his class and landed a good position in the police force. He had sworn to enforce the laws, even if he didn’t always understand them, and he took his job seriously. He reported to work every day at 6 AM sharp, his uniform pressed and spotless, his shoes shined and his mind cleared for the day ahead. He took pride in his duty and always had.

As much as he knew it sounded like the plot of a Hindi film, he had vowed to become a police officer when he was just a 10 year old boy and his father had committed suicide rather than pay a bribe to a corrupt police chief who was blackmailing him. Rahul had vowed then and there to become a police officer when he grew up. After that, his intentions became decidedly less movie-like: He had no wish to avenge his father, to fight and murder the chief who had stolen his father from him at such a tender age. Rather, he wanted to be an upstanding officer of the law, not the sort of corrupt one who triggered pain and suffering in the lives he touched.

This decision had not always won him respect from everyone in his station, but then it was not the respect of such people that he wanted. Even the people on the street were confused when he refused a bribe, refused to look away. It wasn’t always easy. But at least he slept with a clear conscience at night.

But that was not all he slept with at night.

Rahul sighed and turned away from his reflection. He crossed to the balcony doors, open to the evening air, and stepped outside. It was drizzling and bougainvillea flowers drifted onto the balcony from the vine that grew up the side of the building. Somewhere, queen-of-the-night was blooming, its heady perfume drifting to him on the little gusts of damp wind which came now and then.

The evening traffic rush was just fading from the street below, and Rahul knew Satheesh would be home soon.

Rahul still remembered the first time he had seen Satheesh. The software engineer looked then much like he looked now- wavy hair always in need of a trim, brown eyes under thick brows always looking half lost in thought, half in the real world. A sweatshirt at least one size too big, ragged jeans, scuffed shoes. He looked like a serious fellow until that rare smile would flash across his face, lighting his features like sunrise on a new day.

But the first time Rahul had met Satheesh, the engineer had looked completely out of place. He had come with colleagues to a pub to celebrate someone’s birthday, and a fight had broken out. Rahul had been called. By the time he arrived, most of the colleagues had left, leaving Satheesh behind, a bewildered look on his face.

Rahul knew within seconds that Satheesh had not been involved in any fight, but he was so charmed by the nervous, but honest answers Satheesh gave to his questions that he interrogated him anyway. When he learned that Satheesh was a software engineer, Rahul asked if Satheesh did any freelance work – he had a laptop that kept giving him errors. Would Satheesh mind looking at it some time?

Even more bewildered than before, Satheesh had agreed. They exchanged phone numbers, and Rahul sent him home. To this day, Rahul could not articulate what had attracted him so much to Satheesh; some things were in the language of the heart and only the heart could translate.

That had been six years ago. That ruse to get to know Satheesh was the closest Rahul had ever come to being dishonest in his relationship with Satheesh. Of course, once they had become friends and later lovers, he had confessed and they had laughed over that night. They had moved slowly in their relationship, moving in together just days after the Supreme Court had ruled that at long last, homosexuality was not a crime in India. They had celebrated then, but both knew they would still need to be careful. Society was largely still not accepting of what they shared, regardless of the court’s decision.

Rahul bent and picked up a magenta bougainvillea flower. He twirled it thoughtfully in his hand. Until Satheesh, he had never had a serious relationship with anyone. He had known he was gay as early as 4 years of age, before he even knew what the word was. But he lived in a society that disapproved of many things, homosexuality being near the top of that long list. He had never dared to speak of it, not to family, friends and certainly not to colleagues. He still remembered how empowering it had felt to come out to Satheesh, to be allowed to fall in love with and bond to such a wonderful mate of his choice.

It had crossed his mind many times before the Supreme Court’s ruling on homosexuality what he would do if he was called on to arrest anyone for being homosexual. How could he arrest someone for being what he himself was? But how could he not enforce the law he had sworn to uphold? Fortunately, he had not had to face that decision before the court’s ruling.

But now, the Supreme Court had again made a ruling: upholding Section 377. The LGBT community had exploded with outrage, taking to the streets, protesting. So far, Rahul had not had to monitor any of these peaceful but powerful events.

Satheesh had proposed that they should join one of these events. Tomorrow. On MG Road. He had good reasons: besides the fact that this ruling hugely impacted their lives, it impacted the lives of every member of India’s LGBT community. Did Rahul really want every LGBT boy or girl to grow up like he had, Satheesh wanted to know, hitting at the heart of the matter like he always did.

Rahul had felt strongly opposed to the idea. How could he, as a police officer, stand up and protest against a law he had to enforce by oath? If he joined any protest, his superiors could learn about it, and he would probably be fired from his post, maybe even arrested. Yes, he disagreed with the court ruling and agreed that it was a huge step backwards for the LGBT community of which he knew he was a part. In all of his time on the force, he had never had to choose between his job and his personal beliefs. But wasn’t he himself in violation of the very law being protested?

To his credit, Satheesh had understood Rahul’s dilemma. But these days, there was a touch of disappointment in Satheesh’s normally approving eyes. When he kissed Rahul goodbye in the morning, his lips seemed to say, “The law says we should not be doing this.” And when they were intimate, when they lay tangled in each other’s arms afterwards, a part of his own mind dwelt on how insane this law was and how many people’s lives it impacted…including his own.

He heard the clang of the building gate some floors below him and glanced at his watch. Satheesh was home, somehow he knew. Then, he heard the hum of the lift, and it stopped on his floor. He heard the jangle of keys in the door. He threw the flower over the edge of the balcony, watching as it drifted down on the breeze and raindrops.

No, he decided. He was human first and foremost. He had a right to love, to hope. To seek happiness and equality. He had a right to kiss and make love to the man who loved him. He hoped the rain would clear up in time for the protest tomorrow morning.

(First published here.)

Poem - What If Hope (9 Feb 2014)

What if hope were simply
The clear blue sky of a summer afternoon,
The cooling breeze under a full moon,
The falling rain on a spring night,
The winter's blanket of snow, white?

What if hope were found
In a bird's nest,
In a good rest,
In a flower's color,
In a storm's power?

What if hope was when
Lovers are safe under a rainbow wave,
Children are taught all life to save,
Animals are free from plates and cages,
Plants are protected for the ages?

What if hope wasn't a struggle
To envision and believe,
To find and receive,
To feel and hold
To grow and mold?

What if hope wasn't needed at all
Because Earthlings united,
And for goodness sided,
Caring for Earth as one,
Together under the sun?

Speculation on 31 August 2013

Aah this fetid, heaving mass called humanity, smelling of sweat and exhaust, sickness and greed, coloring the world with the sound of suffering. Though an infestation on Earth, we are just a flea on the butt cheek of the animal called the Universe. One day, the Universe will scratch....

Introspection on 13 Jun 2012

We are losing the safe wild places: the forests where a person without fear in his heart could walk and even should he face an animal, he would whisper on the winds that he meant no harm and they would part ways without bloodshed. Instead, we have the urban wild places: the streets and ghettos, the cities and slums where a person walks with constant fear in his heart, and when he faces another human animal, even should he scream that he means no harm, harm is likely to befall and when they part, one lays in shed blood.

Brule 'N Airo "Brave Hearts"

Reflections on 25 Jan 2012

When the winds of memory
Blow softly through my ashes
What will they say to you
And to you
And you?

Poem - The Colors of Midnight (22 Sept 2011)

The colors of midnight
are rose and maroon shadows,
yellow and cream houses,
and the dusty green
of trees
with the smell of jasmine
and dried leaves,
while over all
a single star shines
in a violet sky
as the distant cry
of a departing train
declares
"It's midnight on the lane."

Poem - Morning (11 Feb 2011)

The morning smells of regret and sorrow

Hollow...

Redemption in bird song,

In waking breeze,

In the promise of light.

As much as we may wish

To never see a morning again

When we feel hollow

Smelling of regret and sorrow,

Would you really miss this -

This wafting, filtered light symphony?

Prose - If I Die Before I Wake (11 April 2010)

“If I didn’t wake up tomorrow, the world would not be worse off.” A simple truth I have often thought, especially now that the brainwashing of a nation which claimed I was special and could do anything I wanted and was destined to great things because I was born under a certain flag has worn off and my anonymity and mediocrity have bleached through the colors of that proud banner to show the world and myself what my true worth is. A grain of sand makes up the beach which holds the ocean in check but the beach would not miss one grain of sand and the ocean’s fine currents would not falter if one grain of sand disappeared.

I think I started preparing for death when I sat in the dark of my parents’ empty apartment, my mother dead and my father in a coma, awaiting death. Starkly, I realized that death was indeed the finale I had thought it would be but somehow I never counted on how final the finale would be. Finales came at the end of plays and acts of grandeur. And though a play or other act of grandeur can never be done the same way twice, they can be done in some way over and over, even the finale. But not death. Death is the END. What a cheat death is that it makes its victim look as if she is only sleeping. For a few bare, bald seconds you are convinced that the eyes will open, the smile will break through the pallor and what you loved and now miss more than anything in the world will be alive and whole again. But then reality hits you silently when held breaths become torment and you have to breathe but she will never breathe again.

I remember organizing the belongings accumulated over the few years my parents had lived in that apartment. My brothers and sisters helped me but somehow I don’t think that gathering of knick knacks, books, daily utensils and clothes meant to them what it meant to me. It represented the sum of physical life, could never represent the mental and emotional beings who once possessed them even if a blouse reminded me of the last birthday I spent with my mother or a cow figurine was the one I gave to Dad when he got out of the hospital the first time he was admitted for something that should have killed him long before the shock of my mother’s passing did. For me, all these things were just that – things. I took a few as mementos: a smiley coffee mug, a smiley doll for my mother memories, a cow toy and a set of deer figures which reminded me of my father and a picture of my parents, frozen in time. The rest held nothing for me. And within days of distributing the remainder of possessions among siblings, neighbours and charities, I stood in my own apartment and started culling my possessions.

When I moved from that apartment three years after my parents died, I fit all I possessed into seven medium sized boxes. Most were filled with things I thought I might sell one day, a few simple possessions, clothes and computer things. If I were in my room in the US right now I would reduce these seven boxes to maybe three or even two.

Even now, sitting in my flat in India, I realize I have acquired too much stuff. Granted, some of its paper – puzzle books, notebooks, language books. Some are possessions – a washing machine, the computer I type on now, the DVD player which I never use now that I have the computer. A bunch of clothes no one here would fit into or rather into which two or three average Indian woman could fit. The smiley doll, the picture of my parents and two or three other simple knick knacks given to me by friends. And the cat.

If I died in the night, the cat would surely find a home with one of the few colleagues I have who like cats. The rest of my things might be shipped to my brothers who would surely have no use for big shirts, Learn Kannada in 30 Days books and a peacock made of shells. Not one of these things would capture who I was, even as pale and mediocre as I am. Would any of these things be imbued with my sense of humor, my love of animals, my desire to help the environment? Would any of these items packed into boxes and banged and bashed across the ocean convey my love of writing, my lifetime of knowledge, my dreams, my failures?

Here is the thing about death. There is no word to describe it or replace it. Death is death, inexorable, non-negotiable, adamantine. I am not so foolish as to believe that by paring my life into a few boxes, I prepare myself for death. Rather, I prepare my loved ones for my death – maybe. “If I didn’t wake up tomorrow, the world would not be worse off.” I am pretty sure that’s true but for sure, I hope that the world will have an easier time erasing me from its memory. I’ll pare down my belongings here in India, starting tomorrow...

Prose - What Hands Will You Take? (circa early 2000s)

It strikes me that we are all here in this life for a very short time in the scheme of things. I guess there are people we want to have with us as we walk the trail from the start to the finish and others we meet along the way who we speak to then leave. Still others we just take their hand to help them get over a rough spot or to get their help for the same. Lastly, there are so many that we pass with only a nod or nothing at all and leave them in the dust of their deeds and thoughts on their own journey. What makes the difference which causes us to take one fellow's hand forever and another's for only a while...or not at all? And why is it that sometimes we don't even know if we are alone or with friends until we have reached trail's end and we are not certain it matters any more? Do we choose the people who walk with us or do they choose us? Why is it that many times we meet someone who we would like to share the journey with – a friend, a lover, a partner, a brother, a sister, a mentor, a student – but they choose otherwise for no apparent reason and leave us in the dust of their deeds and thoughts?


In the end, whether we are old or young, fat or thin, average or spectacular, deformed or perfect, learned or uneducated, owners of material wealth or curators of heart’s treasures, great with words or mute, full of insight or blind, able to hear the whisper of the soul or deaf, able to run a marathon or only able to sit, we all bring something to that journey, to the trail. Would we reject the jack fruit as inedible because it sports a bumpy bright green skin and seek a more aesthetic meal? Would we pass by the Joshua tree in the desert because it is twisted by life’s travails and search a prettier tree to find shade by? If we had only the people who walk the trail with us to help us survive, would we really reject them because of the husks of skin they travel in? Yes – we do. Where we might save a dirty antique because we think it has monetary wealth, we turn away the hand of a deformed child because what could she possibly give us? Where we value the car that shines and vrooms and draws the eyes of our neighbors, we reject the love and support of a woman because she is scarred. Where we stand back in pride at our houses, our degrees, our neat wives and well-paid husbands, we hide our parents who brought us to this prideful moment and forget that once they wiped our spittle from our lips but now they just sit and drool alone. Where we admire our own bodies and hurry to make it better so as not to be judged for an ounce too much on our abs or our chins, we judge the same way and rebuff the friendship of a fat man because he falls short even in our own imperfect eyes.


And yes, I know what you might be thinking…this is the way things are, what can we do, we are a society – a universal civilization – that puts value on what we see rather than what we know. Our perceptions of things guide our receptions of things. If we perceive one woman as being fat instead of smart and good, we will select the thin one and not care if she is mean or selfish. We will pick the unflawed man over the one whose face is scarred because we perceive that the unflawed one is more handsome and assume that handsome equals better. We will offer care and education to the able child and pity the one who cannot walk, pushing them somewhere where we cannot see him so we can concentrate on the able child because we perceive that the able child can give back to us and society things we don’t perceive the disabled child being able to give. We will look to the young in our cultures as the trend setters because the old forget their own names and never mind that they raised the young we look up to, perceiving that anyone who cannot even remember her own name cannot possibly contribute anything of value even though her womb bore even us into this world.

But my friends, this cancer that grows among us, this acceptance of societal norms over acceptance of life as it springs forth, is not a force of nature over which we can only shrug, prepare our homes, and hope the worst doesn’t hit us. It is not a hurricane that we can only move inland to escape, it’s not a tsunami that we have to pray doesn’t reach our homes. It’s not a strike of lightning that we cannot predict falling victim to. It’s not a forest fire that we can run ahead of, hoping we are not consumed. It’s a pervasive, detrimental attitude that invades every aspect of our thoughts, our actions, our past, our present, our future.

One day our very existence may in some way depend on the advice and actions of a person we perceive as outside our reception. Are you willing to die because you cannot accept their skin color, their weight, their poverty, their deformities, their religion, their age? Are you willing to risk getting the same help from someone we perceive as better on the outside without a care to their insides? How much happiness, how much advice, how much perspective, and how much time have you lost because you already have rejected such a person’s hand as you journey?

We are creatures of judgment. We no sooner are born and we start complaining, screaming our confusion to the world. From that first moment we are judging our perceptions of reality for reception in reality. Our first steps on the journey of life are taken clutching the hands of any who can help us. When does it all change so that we start to be so selective and forget that we can learn something even from a murderer let alone a good-hearted fat man or a scarred wise woman or a deformed sweet child?

When your hand is rejected for its color, for its form, for its religion or its wealth, do you hide it in your pocket and fall behind in the trail dust? It’s easy to do. I want to every day. I have many times before only to again stride forward. Because I realize that to hide myself because no one perceives the inside me is just adding fuel to the fire, wind to the hurricane, charge to the lightning bolt. Life is compulsory. We have to live it. Who we live it with is optional. Perception is not always reality and reception mimics perception. What hands will you take on the walk of life?

Poem - When You are an Old Man (circa early 2000s)

When you are an old man

You will raise chickens;

Not so old

That you cannot care for them yourself

But old enough

To enjoy with leisure

Their soft sleepy sounds.

I see you now

As though through a window

Into time:

As morning paints the houses

In colors, bright as rangoli,

You lead your pota by the hand

To help you feed the chickens.

You watch

As he throws them greens,

The smoke from your cigerette

Drifting as lazy as an eagle

And you sigh,

Content

That in these golden years

Of your life

Mornings bring to you

The sounds of laughter

And chicken cackles,

Mingling like a heartbeat

With the sounds of your birth city.

Poem - The Difference Between Minutes and Miles (circa early 2000s)

The difference
Between minutes and miles…..

Is when I wait for you
For hours.

When you spend minutes with me
But leave me miles away.

When I call you
Just to hear your voice for 2 minutes.

When I see a sunset
And know you are seeing a sunrise.

If I could cross the miles
Would the minutes be longer?

If I could stretch minutes to hours
Would the miles be shorter?

I sit alone at midnight
While you see morning,

And the miles are too many,
The minutes too few.

But not one minute passes
That I don’t think of you

And the difference
Between minutes and miles.

Poem - For Others...One Day, Me (circa early 2000s)

No tempered steel
Pulled out of the heat
Can match this intensity
So sweet
Of poignant lust
And hours of longing.
What more do you need…
I’m not one for flaunting.
I’ve accomplished a sense
Of belonging
And have a confidence
In the strength of my knowing.
And love is not a word
Fully known by anyone:
Not poet, scientist
Activist or clergy.
You complain of abstract meaning?
What do you make of this:

I need you
I want you
Don’t try to own or overcome
Simply gently join with me
For all eternity.