Kanti

Giri wore a knowing smile. He wasn't buying that story. He was also burning with jealousy. "I see." He muttered without asking more.

It was guilt and annoyance in an odd mix that kept Kanti quiet. How can she keep the remembrances of those passionate moments from her face? No, she must not show it. She cannot.

An awkward amount of pity for Giri dawned on her. From her husband and David and from reading about men, she knew how Giri felt. There was a desire to know more but what business is it of hers? He's either lying or he's super frustrated.

"What are you thinking, Kanti?"

"I am wondering how you are managing alone."

"Why? Do I look like I can't manage?"

"No, no! Not that. Everyone needs a partner, you know."

"I could ask you the same!"

"True." She thought for a while. "Women are different. They can get involved in stuff. They can exchange those emotions for something else. Men can't."

"Oh, very interesting." He possibly couldn't hide that fact that he craved to be with a woman, feel her softness and make love to her with all the passion he could muster. He must. He should. He will.

He prided himself in the will power he had demonstrated in not going to a prostitute. That was not easy as they were all around him in the big city. He somehow nurtured a traditional virtue that prevented him from having paid sex. But he still adored Kanti. She was so beautiful even after all those years. She looked so young, while retaining a very pretty face with only a hint of lines of oncoming middle age. She had that awesome figure and a beautiful complexion that turned heads everywhere and all the time.

She was also single, damn it! Still she refuses his very honest advances. He would give her a good life and lots ands lots of love. Oh, how he craved for her.

Giri was crazy and excited and couldn't keep himself from ogling her shape. He kept imaging the heavenly flesh beneath. Her breasts with her stiffened nipples that were pushing tantalizingly against the wet fabric. Her ample and shapely butt that he once visually devoured in tight jeans on a holiday a decade earlier and then the lovely triangle where her thighs met; the centre of her womanhood that he kept fantasizing about the most. Would she be shaved or natural? Would he even get a chance to see her nude, let alone make love to her?

Quite unknown to him Kanti, like most women would, noticed his eyes on her. She caught him glancing at her boobs on more than on one occasion as she surfaced after swimming. She caught a glimpse of him checking out her thighs and even staring at her crotch and she had no doubt when he was behind her, he was surveying her derriere. She felt odd, self conscious, and shy and had to, on several occasions adjust her clothing, preventing it from creeping into crevices that might expose her more than she wanted to. But she also felt very sexy and good and thought those sensations were coming to her after quite a while.

When after the swim Kanti went into a cubicle and he quickly slipped into the one opposite. He dropped swiftly to the wet floor a bit away from the door and saw Kanti's bare feet. She stood moved around, perhaps toweling herself and then as her weight shifted from one foot the other he saw her swimsuit being pulled down with both hands. She picked them up and as Giri heard his poor heart pound in his chest, he wished those walls and doors would disappear for a few seconds so that his eyes might feast on what he desired most, just once in his long-frustrated life!

Oh, god, he thought what a bit of torture as she still stood there naked behind that door, drying herself more or may be even hooking on her bra. Then he saw her hands bringing down a pale pair of panties to her lovely ankles and gently she stepped into them as Giri devoured every micro movement with astute clinical precision. Next, she pulled her jeans on and within a minute the door opened and she stepped out. The erection he had developed had to be drained unfulfilled.

Giri quickly changed with a whole load of guilt and shame creeping up on him. He was a middle-aged man and he couldn't be doing this. He certainly wasn't proud of what he had become. He somehow managed to put up a normal expression on his face over lunch and then they parted.

He was back in the city again after six weeks. But not before days and nights of fanaticising and browsing porn sites on the web and satisfying himself with all the myriad avenues available therein. He also stayed in touch with Kanti regularly messaging and calling her and that provided another wonderful opportunity. He heard that she was travelling to another city, six hours away for a conference on women's empowerment. Giri, almost instinctively lied to her that he was officially invited for the same event. Discretely he extracted her travel plans through clever questions and managed to book himself on the overnight train to the venue on the same day.

It was on the train journey after a snack dinner that they had shared, that they got talking. Somehow Giri couldn't help pleading for her love and she began very pragmatically to tell him why she couldn't accept.

It was not that he hadn't heard all those social and family reasons. He was simply looking for her to change. In the dimmed lights, as other passengers turned in and both of them sitting huddled close together somehow the senses were more acute.

He told her that he never was with another girl and did not want to even think of another. He had many temptations to go to a prostitute he knew but hadn't. He often visited pornographic websites and he had masturbated, he admitted while looking down.

"Why are you telling me all this? These are very personal matters and I really don't want to know." Kanti was embarrassed for him and looked away out into the dark night spotted with stray yellow lights from isolated village homes.

"I want you to know how much I love you, Kanti. I am simply crazy about you. Can you not see? Just feel a bit for me?"

"I feel for you, Giri. But it's not love. I am sorry you are so unhappy. If I have given you wrong signals or led you on, I am sorry. I think I never did."

"No, you never." Their shoulders and knees were touching and he stroked the back of her hand. "But you are so gorgeously beautiful, I can't help myself."

"Tell me something honestly, Giri." She looked into his eyes. "And don't be mad at me for asking. Is it... is it sex that you are missing or are you looking for love and a wife?"

Giri needed to think about this. It came quite unexpectedly. "Both, I guess!" He spluttered. "How can they be separated?" He added with pretended wisdom. "It is eating into me, I must admit. I spend hours thinking of what I am missing. I compare myself with others and see how happy they are with their families, children, laughter. It's kind of sad for me."

Not for the first time Kanti felt sorry for him. She held onto his fingers that were on her and looked at him intently. "I don't know what to say. I am confused and I can't see you like this. We were childhood friends. We grew up together." She then put her arms around him and in the dimness of the corner they were in, she pecked him on his cheek. "Now let's get some sleep. We have a busy day ahead."

With his head reeling with the last few minutes of their conversation, Giri went back to his berth. He couldn't sleep. Why did he not kiss her back? Why couldn't he hug her. He was paralyzed. He blamed himself a lot for lacking initiative and put that as a reason why he never made any headway with women.

In his disturbed siesta, he had a short dream in which Kanti unequivocally rejected his advances. He was glad he woke up out of those sad circumstances.

Glorious Happenstance

Giri hoped he could spend more time with Kanti during the three-day meet but that was not to be. On the first day after the sessions she met up with a long-lost school friend and had dinner and a good part of the night with her. On the second evening, she had dinner meeting with a group of activists that she had worked with. Giri was terribly frustrated going into the last day that whatever momentum he had built on the train journey was not bearing any fruit.

The third day's sessions rolled along aimlessly and as expected Giri had no contact with Kanti over the busy back to back presentations. He hoped that in the evening he could spend some time with her. He even imagined he could coax her to visit him in his room and then who knows?

His heart had a thud moment when Kanti announced she is going out with some other friends and may even stay overnight with them. What the hell is wrong with him? Why is he not worthy of anybody's company even for an evening of polite conversation?

He was disgusting!

No amount of introspection gave him an answer or a solution. He was convinced he was a failure in life if he couldn't attract a single person of the opposite sex to even spend an evening with him, let alone a lifetime!

In a huff and in one maddening moment he picked up the phone and called Kanti's room.

"What the hell? I am dying to be with you and talk to you and you are simply avoiding me with a million excuses. It's this person or that. Who are these fucking people? Are they so fucking important?"

"Cool down, Giri. Oh, my gosh! I have never heard you so angry. It's unreal. Don't be so mad. My friend, Mallika needs to go back to Mumbai as her father has had a heart attack and the evening program is cancelled."

"Oh!" Giri thought that over. "I hope he's OK." He did not mean it one bit. He thanked the old man that gave him a chance with his unexpected illness.

"I hope so too. You know what? Why don't you come over to my room and we'll have dinner in the room? Is that OK with you?"

OK? Of course, it was OK for Giri. "I'll be there." He stuttered.

Within minutes he was at her door and she let him in. She was still in her clothes that she wore for the day. Giri had changed into T shirt and shorts after a shower. She was quick to comment.

"Oh, you have changed. I have been busy talking to people." She gestured for him to be seated. "Take a look at the menu. I'll be back in a jiffy. I need to shower and change."

Giri's heart skipped a beat. Goodness me, he thought. He was going to sit there when this gorgeous piece was going to shower? He should sit there wanking off. He nodded mockingly and she looked at him curiously as she picked up her shower stuff and walked into the bathroom.

All kinds of erotic thoughts flashed past Giri's mind as he heard the water run in the bathroom. His eyes fell on a suitcase on the bed, unzipped and with clothes spilling out. He gingerly put his hand, then opened the case fully. Clothes were just dumped in. He fished out a pair of casual pants. In a moment of depraved fetish, he smelt the crotch. Nothing except faint feminine perfume. He looked frantically for something more intimate without disturbing stuff too much. He found what he was looking for. Her cream silk panties! He kissed, sniffed and hugged it trying to melt into it. He went at the crotch again. Was there a hint of her lingering exotic feminineness? He put everything back carefully. In the little over five minutes he imagined every inch of her naked body as he could possibly and realistically picture. He realized he had an erection and touched it almost reassuringly promising his member that he will get him what he wanted.

Inside, in the shower, Kanti gathered her thoughts. This guy was crazy about her and she was crazy to call him to her room for dinner. Was she asking for it? Of the many men after Yogi and David he was the only one she felt sorry for. And it's been centuries since she was with a man. She ran her hands over her breasts as the warm drops of water stiffened her light brown nipples. She ran her fingers down her pubes and her soaked bush and her index finger walked the vertical slit that had not been violated since David. The two men in her life had given her so much carnal pleasure and she had returned the same, she knew. Was she trying to get this horny guy's penis where only Yogi and David had been? Was it really she, Kanti, who was imagining her stroking her slit with Giri's organ that night?

Oh, my goodness! What a moral wreck she had become with all the fantasizing and imagery? What on earth happened to her pure beginnings? She shoved all those pre-emptive thoughts into her mental garbage bin and toweled and changed.

The door opened as Giri's heart galloped. Kanti came out in an orange top with large black buttons and black slacks. He had thought she would wear her night clothes. That was perhaps a bit too much to expect.

"What do you want to order?"

Oh shit! He had forgotten about that. He opened the meu and read out the first thing he saw. "Tandoori chicken and Garlic Naan. What about you?"

"Make that two."

"Anything to drink?"

"Ah! A Bloody Mary for me, please."

"OK." Giri called room service and ordered the food the drink and added a Scotch and soda for him.

"It feels nice to have shower. This place is so stuffy." Her pretty face glowed with her usual radiance as she sat on the bed next to the suitcase that Giri had just examined.

"Why are you so dressed up? Looks like you were planning to go out."

"What, you want me to change into my nightwear?" She laughed.

"Yeah, why not?"

"OK!" Kanti pretended to reach for her buttons to take her top off, and stopped. She giggled. She was really teasing.

"Oh, my god! Please go ahead!"

"Ha! Think that's so easy? You have to earn it."

"I'll do anything. Tell me anything."

"What do you want, Giri? You just want me to change into my nightie, right?"

"No. I want to see your body!"

Kanti flushed and blushed quite visibly. She was shaken and even a bit mad. Lurking deep inside was also a feeling of being appreciated and beautiful. "Gosh! You have the guts to say that!"

"Please, don't be angry. Just imagine. I am 40 and I have been lonely and I feel I will never have a woman ever. Not even been with a woman once! Can you not see how desperate I am. And it's so horrible and humbling to say this... to ask this." He looked down and buried his face in his hands.

Kanti remained silent. Again, she felt sorry for this guy for the millionth time. As if to slice into the heavy atmosphere of embarrassment and awkwardness, room service arrived with the drinks and food. They switched to talk about the conference and speakers for a while when they sipped their drinks and ate dinner. Giri ordered another Scotch while Kanti declined. She was quite happy with the tiny buzz that had her shed some of her restrictions. Unseen by Giri she released her large, black top button and a quick glance in the mirror confirmed that her cleavage was on view.

When Giri downed his second drink, he was sufficiently emboldened to stare at her breasts. Kanti needed to pull up her top in pseudo modesty but not before Giri feasted on her curviness and her boobs that poured our especially when she bent forward on numerous occasions, serving food or picking up something from the tray on the low table.

Then the loss of inhibitions provoked by arousal and alcohol took hold of him and he blurted: "Why don't you change into a sexy nightie or something?"

"Oh, my god! You are losing control over yourself." But she had a reassuring smile. She was a bit tipsy too and she was liking the attention her body was getting. Her cheeks were flushed and a soothing warmth surrounded her torso. "Serious?"

"Of course. Come on."

"Take it easy, OK. No pushing." She got up to rummage through her case and brought out a garment that Giri thought was flimsy enough. She turned to go into the bathroom.

"Wait. Change here."

She stopped, tuned back and stopped with her hands on her hips. What the heck, she thought. Let him have a look. After all she was not cheating on anybody. Both the men in her life were gone in different ways. She was seriously single. And Giri was a nice guy and suffering. Did she want to have sex with him? May be not.

She walked back slowly as Giri's heart boomed. "OK." She made a facial expression that implied she had taken a major life decision. "I know how you are feeling now. I will change here, but stay there, OK?" The she flipped the main lights off. Only a lamp by the mirror and the bathroom lights filtered through.

"Deal."

She stood about ten feet away from him, dropped the nightie on the bed and very slowly started unbuttoning her top. Her eyes were on his face and he was mesmerized to frozen stillness and deep breathing as he watched her beautiful breasts encased in perfectly fitting bra cups emerge so tantalizingly. He squinted and stared to coax his pupils to accommodate the dimness. The top was open but still on her shoulders. She parted the front to give him a good view and then suddenly and irrationally she quickly grabbed her nightie and expertly slipped it over her head.

"No!" he protested. "Take the bra off. Take the pants off."

"Are you crazy? No one has seen me like that." She realized though that she had very little conviction that she was truthful on any count.

"Oh, you are so cruel. At least take your pants off." His hand had dropped unknowingly onto his crotch. Kanti noticed. She knew he was having an erection.

"OK." She cleverly undid the button and pulled her pants down without revealing anything other than her legs from knee downwards. Then she sat down. "Now what?" She regretted she asked.

"Oh, you want to do something else?" He retorted. "I am in." He giggled naughtily.

Kanti ignored the last comment but personally felt very sexy.

"You looked extremely nice in the swimming pool the other day. You are so incredibly beautiful and desirable."

"I know you were looking a lot."

"Oh, you noticed?"

"Women notice stuff like that. They have a sixth sense. Did you not know?"

"OK tell me where I was looking." Giri was teasing and tormenting her.

"Where men usually look."

"Where was I looking?"

"Do I have to tell you where you were looking? You know of course." She brought forth an embarrassed little giggle. "My chest a lot of times."

"Oh, did I? You do have shapely boobs, Kanti. Do you mind showing them to me?"

"Gosh!" Giri wasn't sure if the anger was feigned. "Have you gone crazy or are you drunk?"

"I am crazy for you for sure. I am not so drunk. Just nurturing a happy buzz. Come on, baby. Show me!"

Kanti was jolted by the baby title. He was getting a little loose tonged. She didn't think he was turning dangerous as he was still fairly decent and maintained a safe distance. She had to admit that after so long she was sort of enjoying a man's advances.

She however said: "No!"

"Aw, what a spoil sport."

"I think it's time for us to say goodnight." She didn't believe she meant that and Giri caught on.

"If I go now, you'll regret it." He leered at her. "Listen, Kanti. You are such a beautiful woman and you are still young. Do you not think that you are wasting away your life without being in a relationship?"

"I don't miss a man, Giri. Understand that a woman's brain works differently." She looked away as she said: "And I know how a man's works. I can see your point of view too."

"OK you know everything. Please help me here. I mean no harm, right? I just want to see a woman's body and if you don't fulfill my desire who will?"

There was no answer from Kanti. She thought about what he said and amidst the confusion in her brain of being passionately wanted, her single status, her own moral borders that she had set for herself, she felt she was going to do something that might surprise her.

She just looked at him briefly and she immediately read his mind. He was seeing her defenses drop. "What do you want to see? And what will you do afterwards. It will be frustrating for you."