Weaving Words

On a Moonlit Night

I was on a train, looking out of the windows as the countryside seemed to fly in the winter moonlight. There was a young couple with me in the compartment, but they were the only ones there. The man was kissing his wife passionately. Both looked as if they were enjoying the blissful days of their honeymoon to their best.

A man came to announce that dinner was ready. I looked at the couple, feeling like I was doing something illegal. I asked, "Aren't you coming to have food?"

The man waved his hand at me dismissively without looking up from his wife.

I decided not to take any offence and went to have my dinner. The smell of Paneer Tikka hit my nose and I shivered in delight. I had always been a little biased to this Indian delicacy.

The dining car was almost empty except for a man with turban. I decided to go join him since he looked lonely, even though a scar that went down the right side of his face made me want to leave him alone.

I went and sat with him. The fellow was a jovial one. He cracked many jokes and didn't look at me like I was his enemy, unlike most of the Sardars I had met.

After a while, he quietened down. I noticed that he was also looking at the full moon, but unlike me, he looked at it with a strange mixture of anger and longing.

"Care to hear a story? No, don't say anything. Just hear me out. It's been years since I have buried many memories deep inside myself. I need to relieve it now."

He laughed a deep, throaty laugh. But his laugh didn't carry any of his jolliness.

"I was twenty years old when I got married to my Poonam. She was one of her kind; fierce and  heartbreakingly beautiful. A true lioness, to her very heart." His voice held terrible pain.

"My days were spent in her thoughts as I tilled the farm in the sweltering heat and my nights were spent in her cool embrace. We were like two magnets, inseperable.

"It so happened that one day I had some important visitors who were infamous for being uncivil to women, even aged grandmothers! So I told Poonam to go to her parents' house for the week. She looked sad but didn't argue with me.

"My work with the visitors got completed in five days and so on the six morning at dawn, I was outside Poonam's house, anxious to see my radiant and beautiful pearl." I looked at the couple who had joined us now. The man kept the woman half shielded beside him possessively and looked at me as if I was an infamous rapist.

"My mother in law opened the door and looked surprised to find me there. I smiled and folded my hands respectfully. She let me inside and called out to my lovely wife, 'Poonam! Poonam! Make some more tea, your husband is here.'
Poonam emerged from the kitchen, blushing deeply. How beautiful she looked!"

"The sun set while I was having some little talk with my in-laws and I decided to spend the night there.

"I and Poonam were sleeping but due to having too much food, I couldn't sleep restfully. As I was thinking about some issues that I would have to resolve on the next day, I felt Poonam rise up from beside me. I was busy cataloguing my thoughts so I didn't speak anything or move. I felt Poonam's presence near my face and I still didn't move.

"After a few minutes I heard the soft click of the door closing and decided to go after Poonam. I always made it a point to take my kirpan with me wherever I went, in those days one could never know what could happen at any moment.
Poonam was half running and half walking from the house. I thought she was going to answer nature's call but she was going too far and looking back too often for it to not be suspicious." I could almost envision the young woman sitting a little far from me as Poonam.

"The full moon gave everything ominous shadows. I followed her cautiously, something about this wasn't giving me a good feeling. She stopped outside a cottage and went inside and came back hugging a stranger I didn't know.
I was aghast, there was my wife, my Poonam, the love of my life, hugging another man passionately right in front of me.

"They laid on the cot and after some time I heard the man say to Poonam, "Puniya, my throat feels raw, get me some water from inside."

My eyes threatened to come out of my sockets at the words my wife said so erotically, "Oh! Even after drinking the nectar of my lips, you are still thirsty!"

She went inside the cottage, laughing.

The blood in my veins felt like it was boiling. I took my kirpan out and crept stealthily near to the stranger and cut his neck in one swift stroke.

I ran back to Poonam's house as quickly as I could, hating myself for all that the night had done to me. I washed and rubbed away every spot of blood from the kirpan and went back to the cot and acted asleep.

Ten minutes later, Poonam came back and entered the room as silently as she had gone. I could feel her standing near my hand for excruciatingly long minutes. Then she went to sleep.

The next morning, neither me nor Poonam acted like anything had changed.

Years went by. We had three sons, all of them quite bright.

One night, as Poonam was making food, Ram, my eldest son began asking for some more of the pickle that Poonam made.

Hearing Ram, Kshitij and Ved- my younger sons also began asking her for pickle. I didn't blame them, her pickles were delicious.

She told me, 'You go to the cellar and bring the pickle, I am scared of the dark.'

Forgetting myself, I asked her, 'But you weren't afraid of the dark when you went that moonlit night to visit your lover.'

I realised my blunder only as her eyes lit up with fury and she reached out for my kirpan and slashed at my neck.

I moved out of way in the nick of time but she still managed to give me this scar. I was scared and my mind couldn't work anything out. We struggled to get control of the kirpan and at last I was able to take it but somehow I--," his voice caught. I dreaded what he was going to say next.

"Her decapitated head fell into my youngest son, Ved's plate with a thunk." A loud thunk from the far side of the room made me jump in fear but it had just been the man slamming his plate on the table in anger.

"And that's how I learnt how wrong the saying 'A woman forgives but never forgets' was.
A woman neither forgives nor does she forget."

I looked at the man and the woman sitting somewhere near the shadows. The man was asleep but a single tear made its way down the woman's eye. She looked at me and then quietly hid her face in the shadows by pulling the curtains down.

And I thought about the line, A woman neither forgives not forgets.

Dedicated to NoChillPills and STFUwhynOt