Shivering under the blanket, and with some Indie-pop
band playing in the background, we were sipping cheap whiskey that one of our friends
managed to arrange.
We were pretty broke by that time of the month, and
had to rely on beg, borrow, steal ways to quench our thirst for alcohol and get
our bodies warmed up in that cold.
It had been just a week away since the whole scene
of love coming out announced happened, and we were pretty much a couple by
then.
Doing the usual things that lovers are expected to do
stereotypically- holding hands, eating out together, roaming around the bushes
at night talking of stars, exchanging music, having our inside jokes, having
our ‘our times’ behind closed doors; the absolute kind that people and friends
get irritated with.
But I was in the other side of the river then, and
on my side, all the grass was damn bright green.
Anyway
coming back to cheap whiskey.
You get know absolutely after five pegs whether a
Malayali is really into you or not, because precisely all the Malayalis I’ve
drank with, couldn’t remember their name after the fifth peg.
The quirk was no exception. Can’t drink but will
drink. So there we were, in a winter that was some 5 degrees down in the
mercury level and we were number of pegs down; that amount that makes you
forget to count.
So there we were, out on the streets of Bolpur, at
around 3 at night, to get our spines screwed and chilled in the winter. Drunk
mind usually does not care of consequences or reasons, and we don’t know why me
and the quirk lingered around a house, that would look to normal eyes as
plainly haunted.
Devil’s hour, and me and the quirk climbed the
dividing wall of the house and jumped inside its fence with the sole motive to
inspect the interiors of the house, because our drunk minds had decided to buy
that house jointly.
Don’t
question me of reasons here.
Anyway we went inside, it was pitch dark, and by
that time we had forgotten where we were.
After the time, when our eyes have got seasoned with
the darkness and were seeing things, out of focus though, we saw a well, went
beside and sat on its platform.
The quirk pointed to me stars and my mouth gaped as
I was inhaling the chill and the sky.
And
there, right there, below the stars, illegally inside a haunted house porch,
with so much alcohol in the system that we could hardly see each other, we made
love.
To be continued...
