The following Tuesday Nikki made sure to leave time for the quick odour-neutralizing routine she had practised to perfection as a teenager. Pre-cigarette, it involved pulling her hair back into a bun and taking off her jacket to avoid clinging smoke smells and then, after, a dose of extra-strong mints and a spray of extra-strong perfume.
Nikki was in the middle of her perfume bath when a face appeared and then flitted out of her view. ‘Sorry,’ the man belonging to the face said. She only caught a glimpse but she noticed that he was cute. A moment later, she stepped out of the corner and saw him leaning against the wall.
‘It’s all yours,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ he said, ducking in. ‘I just needed to make a phone call.’
‘Sure,’ Nikki said. ‘Me too.’
‘No, you were clearly smoking. It’s not very good for you,’ he said as he lit his own cigarette. ‘You really shouldn’t.’
‘Neither should you.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘Is it just me or do they taste even better in hiding?’
‘Much better,’ Nikki agreed. As a teenager, she used to smoke in the park behind her house, her adrenaline surging each time she saw Mum or Dad’s silhouette crossing the window. ‘Especially when your parents are within sight.’
‘Ever got caught?’
‘No. You?’
‘Oh yeah. It was bad.’ Nikki watched as he took a long drag of his cigarette and stared into the distance. His attempt at being mysterious came off as cheesy but surprisingly, she liked it.
‘I’m Nikki,’ she said.
‘Jason.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that an American name for a Punjabi boy?’
‘Who says I’m American?’
‘Canadian?’ Nikki asked. She definitely detected an accent.
‘American,’ Jason said. ‘And Punjabi. And Sikh, obviously.’ He gestured at the temple. ‘And yourself?’
‘British and Punjabi and Sikh,’ Nikki said. It had been a long time since she identified herself in all of those terms at once. She wondered if this was what the widows thought of her, and in which proportions.
‘So what’s your real name?’ she asked Jason.
‘Jason Singh Bhamra.’ Jason squinted at her. ‘You look surprised.’
‘I was sure it was an anglicized version of something else.’
‘My parents gave me a name that Americans could pronounce as well. They were forward-thinkers in that regard. Like yours, I’m assuming.’
‘Oh no,’ Nikki said. ‘I just don’t tell people my full name. It’s only on my birth certificate. Nobody uses it.’
‘Does it start with an N?’
‘You’re not going to guess it.’
‘Navinder.’
‘No.’ Nikki was already regretting lying about her name. It just seemed more interesting than the truth: “Nikki” meant little and she was a younger sibling so her parents had decided it was apt.
‘Najpal.’
‘Actually—’
‘Naginder, Navdeep, Narinder, Neelam, Naushil, Navjhot.’
‘None of the above,’ Nikki said. ‘I was kidding. My real name is Nikki.’
Jason smiled at her and took another drag of his cigarette. ‘That was a missed opportunity. I was going to say “if I guess it, will you give me your number?”’
Oh dear, Nikki thought. More cheesiness. ‘Well, I don’t think anyone can pull off trying to pick up girls in dodgy alleyways.’
Jason tipped his cigarette packet towards Nikki. ‘Another one?’
‘No thanks,’ she said.
‘Your phone number?’
Nikki shook her head. It was instinctive. She didn’t know this Jason Bhamra. She snuck another glance at him, noticing the slight cleft in his chin. He was cute.
‘It’s the principle of the thing,’ she explained, hoping he would ask again. ‘We’re at the temple.’
‘Damn,’ Jason said. ‘You have principles.’
‘I’ve got several. I’m thinking of adding “no smoking” to my list but it’s hard.’
‘It’s nearly impossible,’ Jason agreed. ‘A few years ago I tried quitting smoking, and then I settled for quitting drinking instead. I thought I’d get points for eliminating one vice.’
‘You don’t drink?’
‘I lasted a week.’
This made Nikki laugh. Then she saw her chance.
‘Have you ever been to O’Reilly’s pub in Shepherd’s Bush?’
‘Nope. I’ve been to the pub on the Southall Broadway though. Did you know you can pay in rupees there?’
‘That’s not very useful if your salary is in pounds.’
‘True. This O’Reilly’s pub then …’
‘No rupees required. I’m there most evenings. For work, not because I’m an alcoholic.’
Jason’s grin was rewarding. ‘So you’re there this week?’
‘Most evenings,’ Nikki said. As she walked away, she felt his gaze on her back.
‘Nikki,’ he called. She turned around. ‘Is it short for Nicole?’
‘It really is just Nikki,’ she said. She held back her smile until she was out of his view. Their encounter left her skin tingling, as if she was walking through a light mist.
‘I’ve got a story by Manjeet,’ Sheena said as soon as Nikki entered the classroom. ‘The one she tells herself before going to bed.’
‘It’s very good,’ Preetam said. ‘Manjeet told me about it at the market the other day.’
Manjeet waved away the praise bashfully. Sheena handed Nikki three pages of dense scribbles. ‘The Viewing,’ Nikki read out. ‘The flat, dark mole on Sonya’s … uh … thing,’ she squinted.
‘Sunita,’ Manjeet corrected. ‘Sunita’s chin.’
‘Sorry. ’ Nikki pointed to the Gurmukhi letters as if her touch could untangle them. ‘The flat, dark mole on Sunita’s chin looked like shorts. As a cat, she was brittle …’ This wasn’t right. She looked up at the women helplessly.
‘Hai,’ Preetam said, stricken. ‘What are you doing to her story?’
‘I’m struggling to read it.’
‘Give her a break. We can’t expect her to be able to read Gurmukhi well. She’s not from India,’ said Sheena.
‘I can speak better than write,’ Nikki admitted.
‘Your Punjabi grammar is all wrong,’ Preetam sniffed. ‘The other day you were saying D for Dog and then you translated Dog to the feminine kutti instead of kutta. It was insulting. You kept repeating it too – kutti, kutti.’
‘It was like you were calling all of us bitches,’ Sheena said in English.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nikki said. ‘Sheena, can you read your own writing?’
Sheena looked at the pages and shrugged. ‘I had to be very quick.’
Manjeet raised her hand timidly. ‘I think I have it memorized from repeating it all those nights.’
‘Go ahead then,’ Nikki said.
Manjeet drew in a breath and straightened her shoulders.
The Viewing
The flat, dark mole on Sunita’s chin looked like a stain. As a child, she was brought to a local fortune-teller who predicted that the mole would be a burden. ‘A big mole is like an additional eye,’ the fortune-teller said. ‘She will have a wild imagination and she will be too critical of everything.’
The fortune-teller was correct. Sunita was often lost in daydreams and she was very quick to judge people. When Sunita came of age, her mother Dalpreet thought she might greaten her chances for marriage if she could choose between two eligible husbands. She arranged for the first family, the Dhaliwals, to see Sunita on Tuesday. The second family, the Randhawas, would see Sunita on Wednesday. However, at the last minute, the Dhaliwals’ train was delayed and they could only be there on Wednesday as well. Sunita’s mother panicked. She could not refuse them. It would also be impolite to reschedule with the other family.
Sunita was aware of the conflict because she had overheard her mother confiding in a trustworthy neigh
bour. ‘If my daughter were more desirable, perhaps I would have some bargaining power. But Sunita is no catch with that hideous mole. I have to keep these families unaware of each other somehow. I have no choice.’
Although her mother’s words stung, Sunita knew she had a point. The mole was very ugly. It made her the target of insults from cruel children at school and it distracted potential suitors from her fine features. Sunita spent all of her pocket money on expensive creams to make the mole fade but they didn’t work. Her only hope was to marry a man with enough money to pay for an operation to remove it altogether. For this reason, Sunita was eager to meet multiple suitors. But rather than resigning her fate to the hands of the families, she came up with an idea.
‘Mother,’ she said. ‘Let’s host both families at the same time, but keep them separate. The Randhawas can sit in our living room and the Dhaliwals can be in the kitchen. While you’re entertaining one family, I’ll be pouring tea for the other. Then we’ll switch places.’
It was a harebrained scheme, but it might work. They were landowners with a spacious home. The tables in their kitchen and living room were equal in their capacity to host guests. Dalpreet agreed because she could not come up with a better solution. She was becoming increasingly desperate to marry off her daughter. It was said that a woman without a husband was like a bow without an arrow. Dalpreet agreed with this saying but she also believed that a man without a wife was even more problematic. Look at their neighbour. He was greying and still single. Some people called him Professor because he spent all his time reading books but Sunita’s mother thought he was a madman. One afternoon, while Sunita was clipping the washing to the clothesline, Dalpreet caught him watching her from the window upstairs. Once Sunita became somebody’s wife, surely he would consider it indecent to stare like that?
The day arrived. Dalpreet woke Sunita with firm instructions to conceal her mole with an expensive powder that matched her sandy skin tone. ‘What difference does it make?’ Sunita briefly wondered. ‘He’ll have to see me as I am eventually.’ But she made the mole disappear nonetheless.
From her bedroom window, Sunita saw the Dhaliwals enter her house. She caught a glimpse of their son. He had broad shoulders and a thin beard but then she heard him speak. His voice was so high-pitched, it could be mistaken for his mother’s. As Sunita prepared the tea, she heard the Randhawas entering the front door. She walked out into the living room with a tray of sweets and sneaked a glance at the boy. His eyes were a kind, greyish-brown but his scrawny shoulders jutted painfully through his shirt. He wasn’t the manly suitor she had hoped for. Sunita headed back to the kitchen, leaving the Randhawas with polite apologies.
‘What do you think?’ her mother asked her as they passed each other in the corridor. ‘Which one is your choice?’
Sunita felt sorry for her mother. A simple viewing would not reveal what she wanted to know most about these men. She was so busy running between both families that she hadn’t had time to think of what it would be like to press her naked flesh against theirs. In Sunita’s fantasies, the viewings were entirely different. The men would stand before her, their chests bare and the bulging muscles between their legs exposed. She would give them opportunities to impress her – to put their warm mouths against hers; to titillate her with firm, expert fingers. This was what she imagined doing every night with the neighbour – the Professor. She knew he watched her and this made her want him even more.
‘They’re both fine,’ Sunita said to her mother.
‘Fine?’ Dalpreet asked. ‘What does that mean? Which one do you like better?’
Sunita didn’t know how to answer. Her mother interpreted her silence as shyness and let her go. Sunita returned to the Dhaliwals in the kitchen. She sat across from her suitor and looked demurely at the floor. If the family were kind, they would surreptitiously provide opportunities for the couple to study each other more closely. They would deliberately look away or become involved in an animated discussion that allowed the boy and girl to hold each other’s gazes. Sunita waited for this moment but it didn’t come. Mrs Dhaliwal was not much of a talker and she sat so close to her son, with her thigh so tightly pressed against his that Sunita wondered if she still fed him and washed his bottom too.
Sunita had a few moments before she had to return to the Randhawas. She stared at the tiles and delved into a fantasy about this Dhaliwal boy. ‘Kiss me,’ she said, drawing him into the lush farmland that bordered her family home. She lay down between tall stalks of grass and could smell the fragrant earth, the soil recently churned. He lay on top of her and slipped his tongue gently into her mouth. His hands roamed from her waist to her breasts, which he cupped and squeezed gently. With a pop, her blouse opened and he was taking her nipples into his mouth. Sweat rolled down the crease between her breasts and he licked it. She sighed and bucked at the movement of his hard, bulging muscle against the velvety cushion between her open legs—
‘HEEHEEHEE!’
Sunita’s daydream was broken by the Dhaliwal boy’s hideous laugh. Somebody had told a joke. Everybody was laughing but this man was the noisiest. His grin revealed a set of big teeth. Sunita could not imagine tender kisses from a mouth like that. ‘I won’t marry that donkey,’ she informed her mother in the corridor.
Her mother looked relieved. ‘Good. The Randhawas have a better dowry offer anyway,’ she said, ushering Sunita into the living room.
Sunita sat before the Randhawas with renewed interest in their son now that she had eliminated the Dhaliwal boy. The Randhawa boy’s boniness was still bothersome but his grey eyes were like the still pools of rain that collected on pavements and glittered with specks of sunlight. She imagined holding her firstborn child and gazing into those eyes. Of course, there was the act that created the baby first. Once again, she fell into her imagination. This time the scene was set in their marital suite. She was wrapped in a bejewelled red gown and he was undressing her slowly. With each glimpse of skin that he revealed, he stopped to marvel at her. Finally, she was naked and standing before him while he knelt at her feet, having removed her shoes. He swept her into the air and laid her down gently on the bed. His fingers made teasing circles on her inner thighs as he kissed her passionately.
The fantasy ended there. It was already too far-fetched. This bony, awkward boy would never have the strength to lift Sunita onto the bed. His fingers would be stiff as sticks and he would jab them into her – she knew this from the feverish, impatient way he dipped his biscuit into his tea. He wouldn’t know the last thing about fondling a woman either. He would pinch and twist as if tuning a radio.
‘Neither of those men are suitable,’ Sunita told her mother after both families left. ‘I won’t marry them.’
It was just as well. Both families declined Sunita. The Dhaliwals believed she was vain. ‘She spent more time looking at her painted toenails than at the in-laws who would take her in. An ungrateful girl,’ huffed Mrs Dhaliwal. The Randhawas had overheard Dalpreet’s comments about the dowry and they were offended. They mistook the lusty look in Sunita’s eyes for greed, not knowing that she was actually attempting to conjure up a fantasy about their son.
Dalpreet cried and fretted. ‘What will I do now?’ she wept, dabbing the corners of her eyes with her dupatta. ‘I have been cursed with a choosy daughter. She’ll never get married.’
Helpless to comfort her mother, Sunita climbed onto the roof of her house and stared up into the sky. Somewhere out there was a husband for her. Not a boy. A man. She rested flat on her back. This was a bold thing to do. Anybody looking out of their window could see this single girl lying in the dark, daring the world to join her. A breeze sighed through the fields, lifting and dropping the hem of Sunita’s cotton tunic like a winking eye. She spread out her arms and stretched them till the tips of her fingers were touching the furthest points. It still wasn’t far enough. On these rooftop visits, Sunita wished to lengthen her limbs so she could spread across the entire world.
A pr
esence made the hairs on Sunita’s neck stand. She sat up and looked around and noticed a bedroom light on in the house next door. A shadow crossed the window. Sunita’s heart leapt. She had noticed the Professor when he moved in to the house – rumour had it that he had been married once before but he was now living as a bachelor in his sister’s home – but she was never able to maintain her gaze on his face long enough without making her mother suspicious. She sensed from his long, confident strides that he was an experienced man.
Waiting for the Professor to pass the window again, Sunita freed her hair from the chaste braid her mother had made her wear. She combed her fingers through her hair, unweaving it so it fell loosely on her shoulders. She wished she had some kohl for her eyes. She bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to give them colour.
The Professor arrived at the window again and this time he lingered. ‘How did you get up there?’ he asked. His deep voice stirred something in Sunita.
‘It wasn’t too difficult,’ she said.
‘It looks dangerous,’ he replied. ‘You’re not scared?’
She shook her head. Her hair moved back and forth. She could sense that he was watching her. Encouraged by his interest, she smiled. ‘Nothing scares me.’ Her heart hammered inside her chest.
He returned her smile and climbed out of his window. In a few swift movements, he was on the roof with her. Although his physique was muscular, his steps were quiet. A breeze passed through the village, making Sunita shiver. Without a word, he drew her to his warm and solid body. His smell was intoxicating.
Sunita leaned back onto the roof and closed her eyes. The Professor rolled towards her and slipped his hands under her tunic. His fingers deftly stroked her hard nipples. His was an assured touch. Sunita arched her back and lifted her arms to let him peel off her blouse. His hands didn’t return to her breasts; instead, he lowered his head to them and took his time caressing each one with his tongue. The intense prickles of pleasure from this contact made Sunita gasp. All she could feel was his warm, wet mouth on her skin – the rest of her body had melted away. When he began to tug at the strings of her salwaar, she flung her legs apart. He looked up in surprise. He had probably never met such a forward young woman before. Just as Sunita was begin to regret being so eager, the Professor pressed his mouth to the throbbing, private place between her legs. His skilled tongue ran over her warm, wet folds and settled on the pulsing knot that gave her the most pleasure. Something began to build in her – a mounting tension that made her breaths shorter. The weight in her chest made her nervous. She wanted to sit up but at the same time, she wanted this escalation to continue. Never had Sunita experienced two opposing forces within her own body. Her thighs shivered despite the heat in her belly. Her toes curled although her shoulders were slack. She felt as if she was being dipped into a river that was so cold that it burned.
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows Page 8
