It was the morning after my wedding. The dark peachy coloured blinds on my windows were still drawn; the maid with pigtails had retreated after laying down the morning’s breakfast on the thickly lacquered table. Stepping down from the cot, silk thread from my morning dishabille was stuck in the headrest’s broad eagle wings; it threatened to steal away my modesty. Gathering the folds around my knees, I restored propriety before slipping my feet into the glint slippers. The flower vase in the patio shone its tinselled mouthful of white roses that caught sun voluminously.
In the garden that night, sitting alone, with the full moon perched in the pool water before me, I recalled the incident and the man who had turned me into a woman. The day before my wedding, a painter had been called. I met him in the courtyard; he was seated on a backless piano chair. Neatly perched on the easel was the drawing board, and from behind it, with tapered quills, greeted a man with sagebrush moustache. The arrangement had been made; I rested my back on the divan’s arch that had ivory latticework done on its dark pigmented wood. An air of resplendence breathed into the painting with the quilt mattress that was laid out on the divan. It was specially designed to allow, in its puffed up folds, a brocaded silver needlework around milky white pearls. I was wearing a saree, gold embroidered on the hemline; many years from now, the saree would be exhibited in the palace’s great halls, lit up behind glass windows for visitors.
Would I care to lower my arm and slip the sari’s end over the shoulder onto the divan’s arch? Yes, I would. Sunlight filtered through the ventilators; the painter and I were left alone under the chandelier whose beads were presently casting long shadows on the carved painting of a youth brandishing his fine sword. The painter walked towards me in a hurry, replaced the ornate candelabra on the table beside me, with a terracotta pipe bowl. He explained that I was befitting a boy. Surprised at the disclosure, I wondered if he meant that my meagre bosom didn’t qualify for a lady. Growing up as a child, I had been frequently reminded of my boyish cheeks; grandmother even wondered if I could beget a child at all, given my narrow hips. I liked to drive around the palace in the 40 horse power Ford jeep that father had imported from London when I was about fourteen; mother and aunt censured me ‘it is no place for a girl to be’. Indeed, I had made progress in archery and had rapped the twinkling end of the sword on many a man’s.
Halfway through the painting, the man behind the easel, agitatedly fiddled with his inkpot’s lid. He seemed distressed; he was a man of about thirty years old, cropped hair and broad forehead. Adjusting the globule shaped spectacles on the bridge of his nose, he approached me with great trepidation and nerves. He was not the only British man present in the guest quarters, chowmahalla palace over the years had seen men and women visiting from many a nations. The present painter had been with us for a very short time, he did not seem conversant with the palace’s etiquette, for he extended his hand gesticulating to fill the barren hand with a fecund handshake. I, being what I am, looked around me and after establishing concealment, acquiesced.
Through the floral patterned collar, his chin rose with eyes that derided my sex. He tapped my shoulders and indicated that I lower them, then he proceeded to upholster my sable leggings with the waft of saree’s gilded side. kneeling down, he undid the glint slippers. With his arresting gaze upon my naked feet as he held them in his pale palms, I imagined that under the vermillion chequered shirt, his heart must be palpitating with a desire to indulge in the soft caress a little longer than was needed.
Folding the cuffs of his chequered shirt above the elbows, he stood back by about six steps, and watched me in silence. Outside, the sound of hoofs beating down the track came to a halt and someone alighted from the carriage. It was the uncle; his double edged sword was crowned with a diamond; his bright overall concealed a straight metal jacket; and his big boots had strangled many a throats in the wars. After exchanging pleasantries, with an air of contentment (for I was twice the woman he saw only the day before), he trotted towards the great oak doors dragging the aristocratic charm about him.
The painter, with strict instructions to maintain the posture he was firming from the projection in his mind- to be seated with one arm resting on my knees and the other fastened to the divan’s crown; with my chin skywards and glance sidelong, now unfastened my chignon. With that, the last vestige of my boyish charm was exorcised; hair was long, wavy, strong and ebony. Pillowed touch of the back of his fingers on my nape, as he attempted to untwine the tresses one by one, propped feelings of intimacy on my person.
A manservant was called, the painter’s toolbox was to be brought urgently from the guest quarters. Producing a blade from the turquoise coated wooden tool box which was used for tending the pencils, he proceeded to manicure my fingers. To the retreating servant, I ordered for us to be left alone. He raised my wrist with its stretched fingers against the shafts of sunlight that trickled through the glass beads of the chandelier overhead. Small flakes of dust flew harmoniously, in and out of the sunlit tunnel. The painter was seated so closely that I imagined hearing every beat of his aching heart; for a moment, he eyed me intently as if to devour every little detail. The waxen parlour of my heart inflated with a budding bosom that implored for it to be let free from the clutches of the blouse. The woman was complete.
Presently, the night after wedding, with the knees folded against the chin, lent my eyes to the cherub in the middle of the fountain. Around it, stars and moon undulated in the pond. I grabbed a stone by the poolside; without paying much attention, I proceeded to pelt it but decided in the end, to refrain. ‘it was boyish’.
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