1997 - A Long Time Ago Pt. 01: Foreplay

Meena then went around the room using her feather duster to brush along the window frames and the grillwork, used the cloth on exposed surfaces and then started cleaning the table top. I couldn't help but stare at her bosom as she bent forwards slightly, setting papers and loose stationery into their rightful places. Her blouse seemed to struggle while holding back the gorgeously perfect mounds of her breasts, edges biting into the flesh. Her cleavage was very deep and a slight sheen covered the smooth expanses of skin across her chest. I was still staring at the crevice between her boobs when I suddenly heard her speak.

"You like Indian girls, Indian woman, Mister Hjjer?" she said softly, "You like Meena?" I wondered if she had caught me staring at the wondrous curves of her body; did she have any idea how turned on I was?

My face flushed as I jerked my head up to look at her, fighting the embarrassment before constructing a response. I stumbled over the words as I murmured "Yes!. .Yes! No, sorry, I mean No. I mean Yes, I like Meena." I took a deep breath and continued a little more coherently, "Yes, I think you are very beautiful. Yes, I like Meena; very nice woman and very beautiful. But I do not know many Indian women."

Her face reddened but, very coyly, she whispered "Thank you!" After a moment's awkward silence, she said "You have foreigner girlfriend in your country?"

"No!" I exclaimed, rather surprised at the forcefulness with which I responded. I wasn't lying; I had in fact just broken up with Nicole, my girlfriend over the last year, just before leaving Paris a week ago, and I was actually unattached. So I repeated, "No, I don't have any girlfriend."

I had become aware how conservative Indian women were, and I had also learned that women from quasi-urban or rural India were particularly so and therefore was a little surprised at how forthright the maid was being. I thought that perhaps because of the fact that I was a complete stranger to her, and not likely to be in her life for too long, maybe she felt a little free with me. She was still standing in front of me with the desk between us as I looked into those large kohl-lined brown eyes. I tried very hard, and quite successfully this time, to look directly at her enquiring face rather than her breasts or her waist and tummy, from the centre of which her navel seemed to draw my attention.

Feeling encouraged by her plain-spoken uninhibited attitude, I asked her "What about you, Meena? Do you have a boyfriend? Or are you married?"

"No! No! No! I not married. I no have boyfriend." I was startled at the vehemence with which she responded, but then in a more subdued manner, she continued "No Sir, no boyfriend. All man want only one thing. Same thing always. Only sex. So I no like all the mans here. Some also from my village but I no like. I always say No! No marriage. No boyfriend."

Since our dialogue had become more conversational, I felt encouraged to pursue the direction this exchange was taking. Also, I felt that since I was a foreigner, she would be more inclined to forgive any transgressions I might inadvertently make. So, looking directly at her, I asked "So you don't like sex?"

Her response was immediate: "I only have done once and no I don't like. I also not like that man, he from Bombay and ...and ...and how to say, very bad. Like villain in movie. Bad man. Not nice. So I not like sex." Having said that, she looked down, apparently gazing at her feet, and stayed mute for a while. After almost a minute of complete silence, which I did not interrupt, she mumbled very softly, still looking down towards the floor "But I do sex with myself."

I looked at her head as she slowly raised it, a mortified and shameful expression on her face as our eyes met. Almost as though she needed words to shroud the discomfiture and abashment, she quickly said "You no do sex with yourself?" and almost immediately hung her head again.

I felt uncomfortable with the state she had got herself into and wanted desperately to draw her out of any remorsefulness and humiliation so I quickly responded with "Yes, I also do sex with myself," realising how grammatically incorrect that was. "It's OK, everybody does sex with themselves," I continued.

She raised her head very slowly and once again gazed into my eyes, saying "You very good man, mister Hjjer. Very good man. Very kind... kind is correct word? Also very beautiful man." And once again blushed a deep red that had a wonderful effect on her complexion, turning it into a deep tanned brown-rouge.

As we looked at each other, a peaceful calm seemed to cloak us in a comfortable blanket of camaraderie; very slowly the discomfort and self-consciousness dissipated as we settled into a new found friendship. Meena smiled at me and then seemed to busy herself tidying up the table which she had already attended to some minutes ago. A few seconds later she almost ran, giggling to herself, towards the kitchen at the back of the apartment. I heard noises emanating from back there so I assumed she was carrying on with her chores.

I leaned back into my chair, pushing it backwards so it tilted on two legs with the backrest against the wall behind me. Contemplating our conversation over the last few minutes, I wondered about her single sexual experience with a man and felt a deep resentment towards that person, whoever he was. I also contemplated how I wasn't exactly very experienced myself when it came to sex with a woman.

I thought of my former girlfriend, Nicole. For the first few months since we'd started dating a year ago, our physical relationship didn't go much further than holding hands, necking on park benches, and finally kissing when I brought her home to my room in my parents' house. Then for the next few months, we just messed around every time she came home, ostensibly to study. I got to feel her breasts, mouth them while she rubbed my penis through the trousers, and generally fooled around like horny virgins but went no further.

It was only last month when we had both made love and I had physically penetrated her, taking her virginity while giving my own up to her. It had not been a particularly good experience because we were both novices at it, despite the fact that both of us were already almost 20 years old, she a few weeks older than me. But then, a week later when my departure was imminent, we had sex again. But there was a strange feeling that enshrouded us that evening at her house; almost like a dark cloud that hovered over us like a veil. We had been gentle, but there seemed to be some inexplicable stress that wouldn't go away. The sex was better than the previous occasion; there was the undressing and the foreplay, then some mutually satisfying oral sex followed by penis in vagina, and I knew she had reached a climax. I came vehemently inside her and we were worried for a while because she had started taking birth control pills but we weren't sure about their efficacy.

Although I didn't leave Paris for another five days, Nicole and I didn't have sex after that although we had met on most of those days. Neither of us seemed to want to bring up the subject, and I just didn't feel the urge to meet her as passionately as I had earlier. She too seemed comfortable with the barrier that had obviously cropped up and although we didn't talk about it, our farewell had been polite, distant, amicable and final. There was no talk about writing letters to each other, or even about missing each other; it was just "Good luck with India." And in any case, we both knew that in three months she would have moved to the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, about 500 Kms south-east of Paris and our meetings were going to be highly unlikely.

My thoughts were dragged back to the present when I heard the soft voice of the maid a few feet away from me. I opened my eyes with a start and the chair fell forward on to all four legs from the tilted position it was in against the wall. I hit my knees against the edge of the table, winced and brought my hands to rub them gently.

She had said "Ok I go," but now took two quick steps forward and was concerned I may have hurt myself on the knees. "Oh! You alright? Paining?" She reached a caring hand towards my limbs but drew back before touching my trousered legs and asked again, "Paining?"

I looked at her and grasped her retreating hand, holding her bangled wrist gently, and said almost desperately "Please don't go. Please stay here for a while." And then I just clammed up, surprised at my reaction and insistence. For about twenty seconds we stared at each other, neither seeming able to find the right words, when I felt a gentle twist of her wrist in my rather firm grip. Realising what I had done almost instinctively, I hurriedly released her hand and apologised profusely, "I'm very sorry. I din't mean to touch you. I mean hold you by the hand. It was a spontaneous thing. My apologies." I wasn't sure how much of all that she understood but she looked down at my eyes for another few moments.

Then bending forward, she raised her hand and placed it on my knee, asking with a concerned tone in her voice, "Paining? Still?" She rubbed over my trousers across one knee and then the other, saying "Is OK?"

This time I consciously took her hand in mine, reaching out for her other wrist as well and held both while I turned on the chair to face her and said, "I'm fine, no pain. But please don't go Meena." I Implored her with all the emotion I could muster but only repeated what I'd said earlier, "Please stay with me."

For a whole minute, we looked at each other. I was so afraid she would refuse; or worse, that she would take umbrage at my forwardness and be angry. But she didn't say a word, and I couldn't read anything in her apparently vacant expression as our eyes stayed riveted on one another's. I moved my hands up along her wrists by a centimetre, wanting to pull her arms towards me, urging her silently to acquiesce to my request, my desire. Then I felt her hands rise slowly before she finally placed them on my shoulders and said, "I come back. Now I go to different house for work. I finish there then I come here OK?"

The sense of relief suffused my entire body and I felt myself go physically limp, almost like my body was folding into itself. Quite involuntarily, my head leaned forward and rested on the flat of her stomach as I exhaled long and loud. I breathed in the sweet earthy smells from her body and the fabric of her dress. My arms fell down to the floor alongside her legs and my fingers briefly felt her ankles when she deftly stepped backwards. With her hands still on my shoulders, she pushed me back slightly and repeated "I come back OK?"

I straightened up in my chair and looked at her with such gratitude, my eyes were wet. "I will wait for you," I whispered back.

Till 5 o'clock that Saturday afternoon I waited with fear, trepidation, anticipation, hope, and an undercurrent of excitement. Sometime soon after the maid left, the air conditioner in the room started working; apparently the voltage had returned to normal because whenever it fell below a certain level the machine would automatically shut off, and for long hours at a stretch. I went out on to the terrace and shut the door behind me so the room would cool. There were dark clouds in the sky and I was sure that rain was imminent; the outside air temperature had dropped marginally from about 26 degrees to maybe 24 celsius but the air humidity was high. Realising that I had no food at home, I checked my pockets to make sure I had some cash and then ran down the three flights of stairs to the grocery store around the corner of the block.

By the time I got back, the rain had come lashing down. Although I was under cover on the ground floor and on the stairs up to the terrace, I was pelted by large raindrops in the 30 feet of open air between where the stairway surfaced on to the roof and the door to my room. Once inside, I shut the door, took off my shoes and towelled my hair dry before changing into a dry t-shirt. After making a quick sandwich and a cup of hot tea, consuming them in the kitchen itself, I went and sat at my desk. I pretended to myself that I wasn't waiting over-anxiously for Meena to return but in truth, I was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

Although the country had seen the internet arrive a couple of years earlier, it was still not too common in residential areas; I certainly didn't have a connection. Around the same time, mobile phones had begin to arrive but I didn't have one of those either. I had a laptop with me but I was already tired of the handful of games on it, and the rest was all research work. What I did have was a Sony Walkman - a small cassette player and recorder - with headphones but I didn't feel like listening to music. So I had almost nothing to distract me from the incessant thoughts about my newly-met maid, and the desperate hope that she would return that afternoon.

While I tried to keep the thoughts at bay, I couldn't help but contemplate the possibility that we may actually have a physical dalliance, a sexual relationship. My hormones were raging and although I had masturbated a few times in the last five days, my minimal experience of sex made me crave for more. I struggled through more than three hours after her departure but my wrist-watch finally ticked its way through time. At 5:00 pm, the rain was still coming down in torrents and I was sure the maid wouldn't come that day; I had heard horror stories of how the city shut down when the monsoon raged and the streets flooded. And I had no idea how far she had to go, or where she went, for her various part-time jobs everyday.

At 5:15 I should have given up all hope but I knew I would fret till she came, or didn't come in which case I would remain anxious and distressed all night. I got up off my chair and went to the lavatory, had a pee, and splashed cold water over my face in a feeble attempt to distract my mind. While I was wiping my hands on a towel, I heard the door creak open and a woman sneeze. I ran out into my room and saw Meena standing a little into the doorway.

She was completely drenched, rivulets of water dripping on to the floor from her saree and her pleated hair. I rushed towards her and gave her the towel that I was still holding. Then running a few steps to the armoire against the wall, I pulled out another towel and took it to her but realised immediately that she needed to get out of the wet clothes she was in. So I charged back to the wardrobe and took out a shirt and a pair of pyjamas; then holding her by the hand while she sneezed a couple of times agin, I drew her into the bathroom and said "Hurry up and take off your clothes, dry yourself and put these on. Quickly!"

She followed me docilely and then looked at my face. For a moment I wondered why she wasn't changing out of her clothes when it struck me that I needed to get out of the loo. I hung the dry clothes on a peg behind the door and exited, pulling the frames shut. When I came out I realised that the second towel was lying on the bed so I picked it up, knocked on the bathroom door, opened it a few inches and stuck my hand inside with the towel. A few seconds later I felt her take it from my hand and whisper "Thank you!" I then got a long-handled mop from the broom closet and wiped the floor dry along the wet trail she had left from the doorway to the bathroom.

I went back to my bed and sat on the edge, a feeling of deep concern coming over me. Her saree had been completely soaked and plastered against her body; her hair had been dripping from the long plat but also the few tendrils that had escaped and hung on either side of her face. But in the short minute that I had seen her, I couldn't help notice the almost bare chest, the blouse that fitted her bosom almost like a non-wired plunge brassiere, the cinched curve of her waist and the swell of her hips, the darkly indented belly button and the very slight distention of her lower abdomen. I sat silently thinking of how awesome the Indian saree was, especially the way I had just seen it. Effectively, the top half of her body was naked except for the the blouse that covered only the rounded edges of her shoulders and her fantastic breasts, revealing the deep cleavage in between and the swathe of her entire abdomen. Of course, the thin gauze-like fabric of her 'pallu' - the loose trailing drape portion of the saree - covered her like a second skin.

Meena came out of the bathroom about ten minutes later; she looked very self-conscious as she took the few steps into my room and stood in front of me as I sat on the bed. She had worn the denim shirt with sleeves rolled up, and the pyjamas were also rolled up a few inches at the bottom to reveal a bit of ankle and her feet. Her hair was completely open, still damp as it hung in a crinkled curtain around her face and upper body, the curled ends reaching down to her hips. I couldn't help smiling at her coy bashfulness as she stood silent and still.

I reached out tentatively and took one of her hands in mine; drawing her towards me, I placed my other hand lightly on her hip and turned around, pulling her down to sit on the bed next me. Still worried about the possibility that she might catch a cold, I got up and switched off the air conditioner; an overhead ceiling fan still churned the air sufficiently. "Would you like some hot tea?" I asked as I turned back to face her.

She nodded in the affirmative but as soon as I started walking to the kitchen I heard the maid say "Main bana deti hoon!" and rose from her sitting position on the bed. When I looked quizzically at her, she said "I make tea."

"No. Please sit down and relax. I know how to boil water," I said with a smile. But she followed me into the kitchen anyway. There was a stove with four gas rings, but the supply of cooking gas came from a cylinder, similar to the LPG bottles I had seen in European motor homes. Meena busied herself heating water and milk, with tea leaves cooking in the mix while I perched myself on the granite counter that ran along two sides of the small kitchen. She poured the piping hot liquid into two small cups, added sugar to both, and handed one to me. The woman seemed comfortable in the kitchen, leaning against the counter top, so we spent the next ten minutes sipping our tea in the scullery.

I asked her if she was feeling cold but she said she was alright. I tried to find out how far she had to travel to get here from her last place of work but she mentioned an area I was not familiar with. I asked if she had to travel by train and she simply said "No". Now that she was back to my place, I wasn't quite sure what I should do. I wanted her to feel comfortable, and my concern for her health and well-being was still worrying. All my attempts at making conversation were met with cryptic responses and I wondered what was playing on her mind. I tried to ask her, "Meena, what is the matter? Are you unhappy? Are you sad?" I was conscious of her limited knowledge of the English language so I tried to use simple words and keep my questions short.

"Nahin. Sab theek hai." I understood that to mean that nothing was troubling her and that she was fine, but I didn't quite believe her. Something was surely on her mind and she either didn't want to talk about it or couldn't. After we'd finished our tea, she cleaned the cups and the pan, wiped them dry, and placed them on the shelves under the counter-top. There were a couple of minutes of distressing silence after that while she stood facing the kitchen sink and looking out through the small window above it. The rain was still lashing down and the sky was dark. I wondered where that comfortable feeling we had in the early afternoon had disappeared. Was she regretting coming over to my apartment? Did she do it only because she had promised to return? Was she just waiting for the rain to stop so she could leave?