"Jeeja ji, you like hot milk sweetened with jaggery powder. Leave your door open. I'll bring it for you. And Rahim Bhaaji would you like some too?"
"No Sujata Sister, no milk for me," said Rahim.
"Teg, go show you Rahim Taya and Papaji their rooms."
The rooms were lit with kerosene lamps. Teg lingered a bit in Rahim's room asking about his Lahore college days. As he came down Sujata handed him his glass of hot milk mixed with jaggery powder and he took it outside to his reclaimed room. Dinner dishes undone, the milk in hand, she stood near the burning lamp, its chimney darkened by the many hours of burning cotton wick, she felt embarrassed about the rush she was feeling inside her to go to Jagat's room to give him milk. She placed the milk back on the table and washed the dishes. Finally she blew out the lamp's flame.
In Preeti's sari she had worn for shopping she walked up the stairs.
Sitting in bed, his turban off and resting on the mantle, Jagat had surveyed the room as Som's groom's sword that had separated Penis, head from his body hung on the wall in its still resplendent golden sheath.
"Jeeja ji, may I come in?" and without waiting for an answer she walked though open door closing behind her. In the dim light of the lamp she could see his balding head and the contours of the turban on his forehead, the skin usually hidden under the turban was less dark than the rest.
"I boiled it with lots of love. Feeding you gives me happiness," she said extending the glass of milk. He noticed Preeti's sari and the double intenders of "feed" and "love" weren't lost on him either. The first time he saw her to the mansion and offered to walk her and young Teg to their hovel in the dark, she had turned him down and walked away into the night; he felt pulled towards her as he did then. As the glass changed hands their gingers touched, he smiled and watched her, taking in her smile and words,
"How are Sameer and them? It was so untimely for Preeti sister to be taken from them; children need both parents and on top of the Amma' gone too. Ruhi Amma, Puro and their Seeto chachi are there I know. But still the children..."
Pondering the first meeting he said, "Sit down."
She hopped on the bed sitting cross legged opposite him at the far end.
"Wonderful, this jaggery mixed milk, Sameer and them are alright. I'd lost my father when I was a toddler. It'll be difficult but they'll make it."
"I didn't know you were young when you lost your dad; you were even younger than Teg when Uttam died;"
She wanted to hug him, defy the world that had condemned millions like her to abstinence and sati's self immolation on the dead, often useless, husband's pyre, she knew she want an ascetic looking for a heavenly place in the afterlife and she wanted to just be. He too had missed the touch of woman and smiled at her, desire sparkling in his eyes and his lips lusting for hers. She saw and blushed and he saw her lips tremble and touched her sari. Sari began to unwrap and for an instant he imagined Preeti taking it off but it's Sujata, he said to himself. the high cheek bones, the long neck atop a slender body, she was fragrant. Sujata smelt in Jagat the soil of the khooh and sensed the shine and cleanliness of new varnish of his Principal's table in his office she had seen; the skin against skin, body against body, breaths caressing the contours of the bodies united in the quest for pleasure it all happened. She remembered only the ecstasy, the intensity. He too remembered that but along with it the guilt of not being able to control his urge for a woman, Ratno firs and now Sujata. He comforted himself by remembering that despite some in the independence movement wanting to canonize him was a human being, an errant one at that.
In the morning the night did gnaw at him, even more so because he thought of something that hadn't even crossed his mine; At his discretion Sujata lived in the mansion, was paid salary and expenses for its upkeep; were he to ask her to vacate the place she would be back to her hut with Teg's small teacher's salary; he being a Jat and she a chuhri, the castes, aggravated the imbalance of power. Were he aware of Penis's fate he wouldn't have worried a whit because she was no less a crusader for liberation. Nevertheless he worried how the man who came quite close to unsheathing and using his sword on Jewna or the man with Sujata last night with Ratno many years ago reconciled with his persona of the public square but he consoled himself with his belief he had never pretended perfection.
Teg had left for college and Jagat and Rahim lingered in the sun near the Penis patch admiring how the mother and son kept the mansion immaculately clean and orderly; in the walled garden the external bustle seemed so far away. Sujata brought lassi and pranthas and they ate together in the garden and discussed turning the mansion into a hostel for needy students. Soon Rahim took the train to delhi and Jagat drove to Qaadian, the anonymity of the rail for one and of the road for the other, a respite from challenges, fears and failures, in motion an illusion of purpose.
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