One divorce, two long-term relationships and a number of one-night stands later, Meera was on a prepare to Kandivali, standing on the doorway of a basic compartment, clutching like a nervous stripper the metal pole that often anchors commuters within the face of waves of incoming and exiting crowds. It was 12.45 am, there have been barely ten folks sitting within the compartment, and standing subsequent to her was Jeet, the Kandivali resident who was positively in his twenties, had been her junior for the previous two years that he’d labored on the similar newspaper, and whose house she was going to with the intention of getting intercourse. At least that’s what Meera thought she was doing. Surely nobody travels an hour by native prepare to only make out? Turning her again on the blazing blue neon contained in the prepare compartment, Meera regarded out and tried not to consider how a lot older than Jeet she was. Not that she knew his age precisely. She actually didn’t know a lot about him, aside from the truth that he had pores and skin that felt like polished cotton.
The prepare hurtled previous neighbourhoods she nearly recognised regardless of fifteen years spent within the metropolis. Meera might see squares and flashes of sunshine, silhouettes framed towards home windows, and darkness. She felt Jeet transfer to face beside her.
He was tall, Meera thought to herself, taller than he’d felt an hour in the past when he’d been sitting by her facet through the farewell dinner her colleagues had thrown for her. Colleagues, together with him. She reminded herself that they weren’t colleagues anymore. Today had been her final day. Jeet’s hand tentatively curved round her waist; a few fingers on the sting of her shirt, so near the underside of her breast; the opposite fingers touching her pores and skin.
It was when the prepare rushed previous Goregaon station that Meera, aged forty years and 4 months, clutching a metal pole and pressed towards the erection of a person whose age she didn’t know and whose article she’d corrected final week, confronted as much as the truth that she was going by a midlife disaster.
Jeet’s flat was a ten-minute auto experience from the station. Inside the rattling three-wheeler, he put his arm round Meera and pulled her near him. Meera regarded on the reflection within the rearview mirror. The two of them have been in shadow. Occasionally, the yellow of streetlights slashed the darkness and he or she might see Jeet’s eyes, the sharp line of his nostril, his lips pressed shut collectively. She turned his face in direction of her personal and, closing her eyes, kissed him, as soon as, twice; the third time, she touched her tongue to the seam of his lips. His hand round her shoulder tightened. They opened their eyes on the similar time. Jeet darted a look on the driver.
The man was wanting forward with the studiousness of somebody decided to not acknowledge {that a} middle-aged girl and a person in his twenties have been making out behind his car. Jeet’s nervous face broke right into a quiet little snigger. His enamel have been starry white. A small puff of his breath settled on Meera’s pores and skin. She smelt a budget rum he’d been consuming. She’d drunk vodka with tonic. She puzzled if her breath smelled bitter. Jeet held her face in his palms and whispered, “I can’t consider I’m doing this in an auto, however what the hell. Open your mouth.” And as he kissed her with intent and tongue, Meera melted, and in a far nook of her mind, the few cells that have been nonetheless useful crossed their fingers within the hope that there wouldn’t be a moist patch on her sari once they received out of the auto.
The guard did a double-take when he noticed Jeet and Meera enter the constructing premises. The silver lining, Meera informed herself, was that clearly Jeet didn’t convey too many ladies house at 1.30 am.
“Hello Pandeyji,” Jeet stated warmly to the guard. “All good?”
Meera realised she would in all probability have intercourse with Jeet quickly. Except she didn’t have a condom. What if he didn’t have one? What if he didn’t use one? She began when she felt a hand on the small of her again.
“The carry is over there,” Jeet stated to her. She smiled brightly at him. He lived on the tenth ground. In the carry, he stood a brief distance away.
Meera noticed the digicam in a single nook. She puzzled if he lived with a flatmate. What if the flatmate was awake? What if he have been a journalist? The doorways of the carry opened, and Jeet walked out. “This manner,” he stated. Meera noticed beads of sweat on the nook of his forehead. Outside his door – darkish picket end; small window with a grille on the centre; a Ganesha on the doorframe – he fumbled with the keys. He was tense, Meera might inform. Of course he was. She was like his boss. Had been. She had been like his boss.
The sound of the lock slipping again was loud within the late-night stillness contained in the constructing. Jeet opened the door, stepped in and vaguely flapped his arm to usher her inside. Meera walked in and the still-active mind cells reminded her that in ladies, sexual want led to a surge of testosterone slightly than oestrogen. She felt her testosterone recede and panic rise, like a tsunami wave. Jeet pushed the door shut behind her and moved nearer. She took a step again. Behind her was the strong flatness of the door; in entrance of her, a couple of breathless inches away, was all of Jeet. He leaned ahead just a little, his palms flat on both facet of her head. She put her palms on his chest. Under her palm, his coronary heart juddered. He was heat. One of her palms moved to slide a finger by the hole between two of his buttons. His pores and skin was easy and the physique hair reminded her of the veins on a brand new leaf. He lowered his head and pressed a kiss on the pores and skin behind her ear, one other one on her neck after which one other, decrease, close to her collarbone.
He actually was tall. She might really feel how a lot he was bending. Meera rose on her tiptoes, making it just a little simpler for him to suit his face towards the curve of her neck. He opened his mouth. The heat of his tongue and the sting of his enamel made her catch her breath. She might nearly see over his shoulder into the room. The mattress on the ground had a mirror-work bedcover. There was a desk lamp subsequent to it. On the wall was a poster of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. A bookshelf that regarded surprisingly precarious was full of books and festooned with fairy lights. On prime of it have been little motion figures. One of them was positively a miniature Hulk. In the center of the room was a low desk, its floor coated with glasses, an almost-overflowing ashtray, and used plates. There was a chair with a towel draped on the armrest. The air within the room had the faint bitter burn of cigarettes smoked hours in the past.
Everything in regards to the room screamed youth. Meera discovered herself remembering her hostel room from twenty years in the past, at the same time as her palms untucked Jeet’s shirt and slipped beneath to really feel his pores and skin. His waist had a delicate dip, and his abdomen clenched when her fingers wandered from again to entrance. No washboard abs, however the agency but delicate tautness of somebody whose physique hasn’t slackened. Meera didn’t hear the candy nothings he mumbled towards her pores and skin. All she might consider was that she was virtually forty-one and Jeet was a boy. He lived far out within the suburbs, in a flat that didn’t also have a couch. His bookshelf had a Hulk on it. If she regarded on the books on that shelf, possibly she’d discover Paulo Coelho and Chetan Bhagat. Worse, Ayn Rand. She’d saved Atlas Shrugged in plain sight in her bookshelf for years when she was in her early twenties. She didn’t know higher. Maybe neither did Jeet – not nearly what was on his bookshelf, however what he was doing now. With an older girl in his arms and low cost rum on his tongue. Jeet’s hand cupped Meera’s breast over the sari and shirt. The tip of a finger – did he have large palms or have been blouses excessively low-cut? – touched the pores and skin on the shirt’s neckline.
Meera pulled her palms out from beneath Jeet’s shirt and pushed at him. “I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” she stated, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Jeet stopped and moved away instantly. He regarded confused. Meera searched his face for indicators of anger or discontent, however didn’t see any. His shirt was rumpled and a wedge of his chest was seen as a result of she’d unfastened the highest three buttons. She remembered doing that. That a part of him didn’t appear to be a boy and for a protracted, uncomfortable second, Meera’s mind struggled to purpose with the messages being despatched by her hormones.
“I’m undecided …”
“I ought to get a cab to go house,” Meera interrupted Jeet and reached into her bag for her cellphone. She opened the taxi app and held her cellphone out to him. “This is your handle, proper?” she requested.
Jeet stared at her for a second after which took the cellphone. He nodded earlier than handing it again to her. Meera watched the bobbing graphics that stated the app was contacting close by drivers.
Excerpted with permission from Lightning in a Shot Glass, Deepanjana Pal, HarperCollins India.
