The heat was becoming unbearable. These were not the days of Scorching Loo which were torch-bearers for the sweet rain of Monsoon, but the days when the sky is overcast and whole atmosphere drenched in humidity which simply refuse to evaporate into sky and return back as torrent. This humidity stifling and overpowering had brought with itself a mania of irritation in the household. There were petty arguments that soon soared to be a fully fledged verbal war among the five girls who dwelt at the Mansion of Thakur Jagat Pratap of the Village Pansariya.
Just a few months ago Thakur Sahab had breathed his last and the mourning was to be continued for five more years by the order of Thakurain Hakha Devi who ruled over her roast and was more a thorn then being the apple of their eyes. She was sharp tongued and haughty. An old woman of sixty five, thin yet upright with her head full of cottony white hairs and a face with the wrinkles abound. She handled her five daughters with an iron hand. Three of them had already crossed their thirties and were quite renounced to be old maids fated for endless sewing, stitching and brooding in their remaining days. The tale of the younger two among the lot was not any better; sure enough they were young but poor, fair yet gloomy, Besides all of them knew this for fact that there was hardly any unmarried man in the village who was deemed fit to be considered for their holy matrimony by their mother, in context of blood, birth and social honour. And thus years after years despite of having some suitors, who had eyes only for them, none of the Thakur sisters was ultimately freed from the golden cage that they were trapped in.
And amid all this Heera the third daughter of the Matriarch caught the eyes of the bailiff Sarju lal who was quite low in birth and quite young in years, fastened on her from the chinks of windows that were more like pigeon holes. The first time he ogled her, she was quite taken back. For years she had no suitors. She was thin, her oval face was bony and complexion was dusky enough to be dismissed in favour of some other bright form. She looked more like a doomed spirit in her black Poshak* of mourning. This bailiff was a man endowed with more than ample handsomeness. He was quite tall for his eighteen years, and was more fair then the milk itself. Although he was a man of lesser birth yet his voice and his gestures had a certain polish that was rare in any other youth of the village.
Harkha Devi had a nice fleet of race horses that she bred and sold for furnishing the coffers emptied by her lecherous husband in his pursuits of pleasure. She hated men and her incessant talk on the uncouthness and the beastliness of all the men lower to their social stratum had motivated her daughters to think all such men mare animals unfit even for a passing glance. No man was allowed to enter the Mansion, not even the guests or the servants. Harkha devi received them in the Outer courtyard that was surrounded by a low wall and contained a guest room, a hall for the thrashing and storage of grains from the field and the stable along with a low hut made for the Bailiff. All the other man and woman servants lived in their own huts in the village.
Sarju often passed before the windows after that day and every time his eyes tried to bore a hole among the solid walls. There were her younger Sisters Padma and Bela young and fair who had the same pigeon hole windows but the bailiff never took that route to feed his animals. After a few nights when Heera awoke from a bad dream and raised herself in her thin sleeveless night dress for a sip of water, there was the shadow of a man on the floor from the window. That night she didn't dared to leave her bed but her eyes remained glued on the dark form that loomed there. His eyes were on her and scanned the outlines of her thin body where they carved into spheres. When she awoke in the morning the form was not there but her heart had turned into a big balloon ready to burst with the abundance of the unknown yet sweet pleasure that washed her being from head to toe.
In the day she hardly dared to raise her eyes to see him, for fear lest any of her sisters get a whiff of the affection in her eyes for a servant. She hardly ate anything in dinner and left all her sisters as soon as she can amid the game of dice. It took many hours before the dark form again installed before her window. She got up from the bed and sat before the huge mirror facing the window. She opened her black hairs and started combing them gently till they were almost a mass of silk. She then opened drawers from the nearby chest and put on her ears two huge rounds of silver set with small rosy pearls. In the end she lined her eyes with kohl and wrapped a red green odhni over her head like a newlywed.
Through all these manoeuvres the dark form on windows sighed softly and pressed his eyes on window holes as if he would have gladly melted to seep through those pores. When he saw Heera walking toward the window, Sarju Lal rushed back and stood a few pace behind.
They both remained rooted at their place mute, save their eyes which sought each other and drank their fill to be intoxicated. After a whole hour of gawking she placed her hand on the window, two of her fingers passed through the hole. He twined his fingers with hers. Both felt the spark that jarred their cold frame and twitched to break the brick ball and surge into each other's arms.
He spoke very low when he first spelled her name, '' Heera, my dearest. We have never spoken before. Even now I do not know whether it's all a zest on your part or it's in earnest. I know to get you is beyond my reach, yet I hope and dream since the first day I laid my eyes on you. I love you so much that it hurts me inside to see you so far and aloof from me. But far or near, promise me you will not desert me ever. I swear on my blood I will make you my bride.''
She replied in a trembling voice a single sentence and tightened her grip on his fingers, ''You have me forever my dearest.''
And thus they met for a while on alternate nights and cooed the sweet melody of love into each other's ears. But It wasn't safe and one day Suraj threw a paper inside the chinks that told his lover that for a few days they will not meet anymore. He didn't want her mother to get any clue about their affections and compelled her to keep faith in his love till he secured some other safe way for their meeting.
The days that preceded the letter were like a nightmare for Heera. Earlier she used to see her lovers during his chores, But now no matter how much she roamed around the bars of her huge cage it was to no avail. She felt herself caught in a windy tempest and about to be pressed to death by the sand. She cried along in her bed at night, stuffing the ends of her odhni in her mouth to silent the wails and moans of her bleeding heart.
In the middle of one night she felt a hand groping her from behind in bed.. She shrieked aloud in freight. It was fortunate that his lover already insightful for this mishap stifled the sound by pressing his hand over her lips. This was the night for the union of two lovers. For hours they kissed each other frantically. Their lips gorging each other and their tongues wagging to get deeper within each other's mouth. Then the youth undressed the woman and started licking her spheres where they were most fleshy. While all the other women of the household slept alone and twitched to feel the embrace of a man. Heera and his lover became intimate like Husband and Wife. It was the night of their passion, warm and wet, where the youth melted himself inside the woman's hole and filled her multiple times till the first streak of blue became ready to tinge the night sky and he returned into his room next to the stable through the underground tunnel that he had himself bore below the chamber of his woman. When the third daughter of household awoke that morning she was a complete woman, a bride and a wife not through any ritual made by men but by the laws of nature that are alike for all who dwell on this earth.
*Poshak - Traditional Rajasthani Dress which includes a Skirt like Ghaghra, a long tight blouse called Choli and a Odhni that is a shawl of linen or silk draped around the head and Choli.
