He hit her black and blue but her darker skin hid most of it. She had
luxurious black hair that cascaded down her back in a waterfall of silk,
he loved to wrap his wrist around it and pull, sometimes in a heady
embrace that resulted in ecstasy, sometimes in an effort to break her
head open. She loved him. They met in computer class, a wasted effort to
learn something that paid well. She went on to work as a receptionist
for a accountant and he worked erecting huge billboards along the roads
of the city. They would travel every Saturday to the ayyapan temple in
the crowded 21H and he would point out the hoardings he had worked on
while she was content staring at his lips move. Both praying that the
fights ended. Then came a ban, upon their life and love. As many have
said before an empty stomach is not conducive to the softer human
emotions. Love existed but hunger ruled, anger wrecked havoc. He loved
Jackie Chan and she got him tickets for a show. He smiled for the first
time in months. The movie took 3 hours, the traveling 1 hour. She
cooked, she cleaned, she waited and he did not return. She visited every
mortuary, every hospital, every police station. Her hair fell in clumps,
her black skin became grey.. The pillow was soaked and the bedsheet
unchanged. Her mother came and took over, savings for the child went
into relatives weddings. She saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing
except the nine to five ring of telephones and the petty cash register
figures. He came back on a Monday morning. He was bald and had a gut
hanging down, hiding his zip. He had come without knowing she would
still bet there. She walked inside and took down her wedding sari.
Yellow brocade on an expanse of purple. The thali also in yellow tangled
up in the fraying threads but by then the life had left her body. Just a
dry clump of hair left in his palm after he had taken her down.