The Other Side of Limits/4
“What lies on the other side of limits, hon?”
Sinjan murmured to himself as he slid a hand under Soumi’s top, and then reached right up to her bra hook… for the first time. Here, he let his fingers rest for a while, as he felt Soumi’s rapid breathing against his collar bone come to a sudden halt. Slowly, deliberately, Sinjan rubbed his fingers against the hook, and then the skin under it. Without an iota of clumsiness, he proceeded to fiddle with her straps for a few brief moments. Then he pulled his hand out without notice and nudged Soumi to gather herself. He wouldn’t unfasten today. A game had its rules. Slow and steady. One step at a time.
Triumph filled Sinjan as they walked out of the dark alley, amid honking cars and yellow streetlights. The alley winked at Sinjan even as they left. The streetlights knew what he had been up to. Sinjan smiled and wanted to hum a happy tune.
Soumi, on the other hand, was overwhelmed. She knew that those fingers would rule her thoughts for the next many days. They would make her blush in her daydreams and keep her awake all night. And this fiercely challenged the notion of who she thought she was. Her joy mixed with torturous embarrassment, “Lord-make-me-disappear-from-the-face-of-the-Earth” kind of shyness, and some elements of self-doubt. She saw that she was permitting, that too rather shamelessly, which meant that the next day the hand would be bolder. Also, amid the bullfight of confused emotions in her mind, there lurked a particularly bothersome one — fear. Soumi noticed it, and made a particularly conscious decision to bury it. Of course, she didn’t know Sinjan well enough, but her heart strongly, strongly wanted to trust. Soumi always put her heart at a slightly higher pedestal than her brain.
Sinjan marched with his head held high, as if the world (or some tiny part of it) had just crowned him the King. He felt this royal pride the first time Soumi had allowed him to touch her, just a few weeks back, and then the first time he had kissed her, taking her by complete surprise.
Soumi walked looking towards her feet. From the last few weeks’ experience, Sinjan knew that it would take a good 10–15 mins for Soumi to utter a word again, and 30–45 mins for her to be able to lift her head. And she wouldn’t look him in the eye for the rest of that evening.
Girls are strange creatures, he thought. They want it and yet they resist, till a point. In his mind, he couldn’t wait to see what Soumi would do once he brought her to that point. It’s a strange game, and nothing beats the thrill of this anticipation. Sinjan earnestly believed that love was as much physical as mental, and anybody who claimed otherwise was a top-class hypocrite.
And yet, amid this sure-footed clarity, Sinjan had this gnawing feeling that he was p-r-o-b-ably dealing with something vulnerable. Something that would shatter into a thousand pieces unless he held it with utmost care. And with that very, very bothersome thought that had barged into his mind for the very first time, Sinjan the King felt fear. He had an inexplicable urge to protect Soumi from his own self. But he also knew that he wouldn’t be able to.
The mute high-rises of the City of Joy watched Sinjan’s hand extend towards Soumi’s. The hand looked a little lost; it didn’t quite know what it was looking for. But Soumi’s hand knew instinctively that it was begging for forgiveness in advance, for in the coming days, it would breach territories and claim them as its own. And further into the future, it would wring her heart as if it were a soggy towel. With that, Soumi’s wise and stupid hand clutched Sinjan’s poor, scared hand tight, and provided it the reassuring refuge it much needed. Her head, foggy and unaware of this transaction, still hung low.
The two hands and ten fingers wrapped around each other and talked in a language unknown to other organs of the body, organs like heart and brain, as the latter debated on to negotiate the limits of propriety in love.
