Tarred Road

Syed and Gayatri didn't mean to fall in love. But love happens when you least expect it. It creeps up suddenly. When someone needs attention, care, conversation, laughter and maybe even intimacy. Love doesn't look at logic, or at backgrounds and least of all, religion.

Gayatri was from a very conservative South Indian family that went to a temple every Saturday. Syed bought goats for his family every Eid. That said it all. Their paths would never have crossed if it hadn't been for that fateful day. That day when he walked into the coffee shop, Gayatri wondered if destiny chose our loved ones for us. Did we have any role to play at all?

She looked at her watch. Syed was late. They met every Thursday at five pm to catch up. Their conversation lasted for hours. Sometimes at the cafe, sometimes in his car, sometimes in places that she could never tell her friends about it. They would never understand. Yet Syed made her happy.

Suddenly her phone beeped. He had sent a message. "On my way. Have something important to tell you."

Gayatri stared at it and realized she had knots in her stomach. Thoughts flooded her mind. What did he want to tell her?

After waiting for hours, Gayatri left for home.

Her hands went numb and cold after getting his message. ‘ Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky'. During all these moments, she knew only scotch could give some relief to her. She picked up the bottle of Scotch, from which she took two big pegs last night.

She read the label again and again on the Scotch bottle almost singingly, ‘Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky'. It was a good happenstance! Syed and Gayatri-they share a common interest, ‘Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky'.

She quickly swigged alcohol, from the bottle in her hand. She could feel the Scotch journey through her veins to the brain.   

The ‘Chivas Regal Scotch Whisky' opened her closed mental space and poked her that she was in a two bedroom flat, owned by her parents and the bottle, from which she had gulped the Scotch was the first ‘Date' gift by Syed, whom she loved stealthily. Her mind was running fast.

"But who am I?" Gayatri asked this question. Her brain was flooded with questions about her relationships with Syed. Was she only an ordinary lover or sex toy….Who was she?  She realized her love for Syed now.

She tried to be the excellent friend, Syed wanted her to be and she suppressed everything.

She was in love with him now.

She was desperate to see Syed who would be able to answer her query.

Her's was a conservative society. If she were a boy, things would have been different for her. But the entry of Syed changed everything fundamentally in her. She wanted to wear many hats with ease and believed in out-of-box, free thinking. But Syed was very rigid and mysterious and he was not ready to mend his radical ways with Islam. Although Gayatri was very happy with Syed but in her heart, she was always weepy and oppressed as Syed never paid much attention to her. He was always on some mysteries mission.

"Do you know Syed?" She asked herself. When Syed was with her, he was the most remarkable person she had ever met. However, the heart of this man was Islam. He always pretended to be very busy. He was always very well dressed but always busy in attending the phone calls. Whenever there was a call, he used to leave her alone and attended the calls away from her.

Whenever there was no call, he would sit cross-legged on the chair, engrossed in thoughts. As he was lost in thoughts, he frequently ran his fingers through his thick black hair. Every now and then, he pushes his chair.

Her beginning with this amazing but mysterious man came about in an exciting manner in the coffee shop.

Syed was born into an affluent family.  His father ran a thriving business of carpet in Kashmir. They owned two palatial hoses and a big showroom in the main market of Srinagar. Besides a buggy, they possessed a ford and Baby Austin. Abdullah and Muftis were their close family friends. Eminent, political and Muslim leaders, poets and other intellectuals of the state often visited their bungalow. Syed was a student at Srinagar University. Life was extremely pleasant-late night parties, drinks, romance, poetry, luxury!

Then came the terrorism in Kashmir. Months and years of deaths and bloodbath.  The family business of Syed was ruined. After months and years of feeling alone and useless in Srinagar, he suddenly found a purpose of life after meeting her. She became his confidant. He talked to her. She also loved her new role. And the more Syed shared his feeling and his past, the more she wanted to help, to the point that she started feeling that he might not be able to achieve his goals without her help and company.

Syed was attractive, slim, and quite tall for a south Indian Hindu girl. He generally dressed in salwar-kameez. He was nearly in his late twenties. His English was good and he didn't have a good accent. They blabbered on – the typical stuff of first meeting; what, they did, where they lived, which place they liked, what they had seen so far, where else they had been, where he was going, and so on and so for, for many hours. In the very first meeting, they didn't seem in a hurry to leave.

She found that Syed would cure her loneliness.  The first step was to start a frequent conversation. Syed was an expert in this art. Just make a kind and soft comment about anything and other party are in the trap, "really cold today, isn't it?"  Or, "the service is very bad." Or whatever comes to mind that can binds two persons together.

This was the scene now that she always thought about Syed. One day she was alone at her parent's house and the bright sunshine of the winter noon had just brightened the sky. Suddenly Syed came without any information. She was amazed but very happy. He gave her a very tight hug, arm-in-arm, breast to breast. Both stopped. He drew her closer and lightly kissed her cheeks, lips and eyelids, she inhaled the sweet smell of his body, kissed her chin, loitered at her throat, then moved to her tight breasts, kissing through her skirt, the nipples of her breasts. With his lips he traced her heat, red lips, then her blushing cheeks then felt the lids of her closed eyes, then kissed her forehead, until, finally his hands rested on her hips. In the room, Syed moved his hand from her hips to her thighs, then to her waist, slipping his hands, underneath her panty and slowly moving his hand up to the centre of her thighs.

She breathed in and held him more tightly. She absorbed the feel of his body. He touched the untouched.

But all of a sudden all hell broke.

Far, in a loudspeaker, a mullah was offering his prayer. Syed immediately released Gayatri.

He uttered, " Mashallah." as Allah had willed all this!. She could not disagree. She also muttered two "Mashallah." under her breath.

Syed changed his clothes. Short pyjama, long kurta and skull cap. He was looking very funny. After this, he sat on the dry and clean floor. He offered his prayers.

She slept poorly that night. Lots of thoughts as to how things would go out once I marry a Muslim. She woke, soaked in sweat.

She shared this relationship with her friends too.

‘A Muslim as your lover?' Pooja slapped her head. ‘What a stupid girl you are.'

My college friends Pooja, Aarti and Sita had come to my flat. Fat Pooja sat on my bed.

‘How did you surrender so easily like a whore?' She shouted at Gayatri.

‘I can still smell the dirty stink,' Aarti said and closed her nose tightly like a little child.

We all four of us came from religious middle-class Hindu families and none of us were the ‘classy secular' types one finds in universities and colleges.

‘Nonsense. I have taken a bath. No smell,' Gayatri retorted back. 

‘It's all useless. His stink will remain for a long time,' Aarti said.

‘You're trying to kill me for my secular love?' Gayatri argued.

‘Stop talking like that about a Muslim, Syed,' Pooja shouted.

‘O my, protective, secular and modern lover,' Sita said.

‘So, are you in a permanent relationship? Things seem to be swelling.' Pooja snapped.

‘What?' Gayatri asked.

All laughed.

‘He is just playing with you and your body.' Aarti said.

‘Did you love him and anything happens?' Sita asked.

Gayatri blushed and her face became red.

‘What?' Shocked Aarti ‘Idiot, did he just do it all with you and you allowed him?'

‘Nothing much happened,' Gayatri said in a low voice, ‘Due to his prayers, he stopped.'

‘Is he your boyfriend?' Pooja asked. ‘Entire colony talks about you.'

‘I can't stop at this stage,' Gayatri said.

‘You fool don't know? Aarti said twisting her face.

‘And he?'

‘He's not sure.'

All kept quiet.

‘You love a Muslim now,' Aarti said.

Gayatri remained silent. She has spoken the unspeakable.

‘You have shamed your family and shamed us all, we don't want to talk to you,' Shouted Sita.

‘Gone, you are so gone. You are lost forever. I can see a sense of shame and guilt on your face,' Aarti said.

‘Be careful from Muslims. They need toys for time pass or they need girls for love jihad,' Sita said. 

There was a loud and big bang on the door. The noise broke her chain of thought.

All of a sudden, a police van stopped in front of her house. Syed came out of the van, two police officers holding him handcuffed and a woman with two children followed him. The woman was his wife, Parvati alis Ayesha and two children were his sons. He was unshaven, worn out looking, very scared and had an air of desperation; it appeared that escorting police officers had given him nothing to eat.

Six huge police officers rammed into her almost darkened flat and flashlight ablaze the flat, started going through the rooms, making her open the cupboards and boxes. They were very carefully checking every item. They apprised Gayatri with a glance about the dangerous activities of Syed. A chill went up in the spine of Gayatri.

Syed requested the escorting party to remove the handcuffs so that he can offer prayers. But the officer-in-charge punched him badly fearing, Syed might flee.

Gayatri looked within and found herself as the most stupid woman in the world. Syed had other women also in his love-trap as he was a ‘love jihadi' – there were so many other woman victims too!

Gayatri could not understand Syed. He seemed, to have been fun with women and in return, he was paid handsomely by his organizations. But she became very quickly and easily too serious.

She turned and glared at Syed with intensity, never seen before. Her face was reddened. Her eyes expressed anger, possibly hate. She spat words at him. She told him very tersely not to enter into her life! "You've just made everything worse. I never want to see you again." She turned away, took a few long steps towards the main door. She concluded by shouting you was as horrible as your practices.

Two long hours had elapsed. Within these two hours, she had seen more than she should have. She slammed the door shut.

Gayatri cursed herself. She meant nothing to him! Why had she fallen in love with this jihadi? Why have all other women fallen in love with him? Now she knew the answer: those glowing blue eyes, his slim and tall young body that seemed seductive, drama to help, that she saw behind his false facade, his oft-stated desire and faith to believe in humanity.

‘What the hell did she weave around her?' It was a disaster. Gayatri was devastated. She was a reserved woman. She had issues opening up to people.

Knowingly or unknowingly, without thinking about the future, she was guided or rather misguided by her inner impulse; to enjoy or take a view of a wonder that became a ‘snake.'

She was walking out of his life.

‘What the hell did she do?'

The neighbours appeared, too hurry and comfortable in a fragile relationship of the neighbourhood. All had their windows and doors closed like hers. All fearful of the common enemy but afraid to speak, under the grab of privacy and the dark world of fashionable and modern shades.

She heard the sound of the footsteps of Syed and escorting policemen getting fainter as she walked away inside.

The black tarred and emotionless road, loyal to its arrogance and indifferent to the brutal marching rogue pouring hate and destruction on all those come to his way; bringing destruction and then charring the souls and bodies those dare to make a direct or indirect contact in any way.   

Horrified, Gayatri tried to hide behind the heavy curtains, not only from the light but from her own self. She felt as if the light and eyes could be of a wounded cobra striking with a vengeance. She was praying for the safety of herself and her family from this cobra. But not all measures can be foolproof.

‘To err is human.'

"Syed was an eclipse on her life. Solar or lunar, in Indian (Hindu,) mythology, they bear religious connotations and their occurrence are linked to the inauspicious and unfavourable phase of the Universe and each living being and life on  the earth."