A highway on the outskirts of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India: 1953.
The bus from the city drew to a halt at the crossroads, and having descended the steps, Krishan paused momentarily to put a small canvas rucksack on his back. Then, once the overcrowded vehicle pulled away, its tail lights slowly vanishing into the darkness, the young man crossed the highway and began the final leg of his journey home along the dusty, moonlit road.
Usually, Krishan completed the walk to the village without meeting another soul, so when he left the crossroads, he was surprised to see a woman walking ahead of him carrying an oil lantern. He couldn’t make out her features as she was wearing a dupattā over her head and shoulders, but since she shuffled as she walked and was dressed from head to foot in white, Krishan guessed she must be an elderly widow. He decided to catch up to see if he could be of assistance.
The woman seemed unaware of his presence as he closed the distance behind her; instead, she continued singing a song Krishan didn’t recognise in a high, sweet voice. He noticed she had tied her sari too long, and the hem dragged on the road behind her. Not wishing to startle the woman, Krishan kicked up some dust as if by accident, and hearing the noise, the woman stopped singing and stood a moment, awaiting his approach.
“Aunty, do not be afraid,” Krishan called out. “I mean you no harm.”
The woman did not turn around or acknowledge his greeting. Instead, when Krishan drew alongside her, she started slowly walking again.
“Aunty, may I be of help? I am walking to the village. Would you like me to carry your lantern a while?”
When she turned to look at him, the lantern revealed that the woman was around eighteen and exceedingly beautiful. She looked up at Krishan demurely, then modestly lowered her dark gaze before pulling her dupattā more tightly around her face, seemingly to disguise a large bruise on her cheekbone.
“Forgive me, sister. I guessed from your garments that you were a widow, but I see now that your husband still lives,” Krishan said ruefully. “You are welcome in our village.”
“You do not recognise me, Krishan? Has it really been so long?” the woman replied.
Krishan didn’t know what to say. He was sure he would have remembered such a beauty had they met even once, but her face and voice were unfamiliar. He wondered how best to continue the conversation without appearing rude.
“I’m sorry, sister; my memory is poor. Remind me, how is it that we are acquainted?”
The woman answered as they walked. “We have always been acquainted, Krishan, since the day of your birth. My happiest memories are of times spent with you and your elder brother, as are my most sorrowful. Tell me, is he well, Ashok?”
Krishan was confused by her answer but decided not to press the issue lest it make him appear even more foolish. “He is well,” he said, still trying to work out who the woman could be. “Ashok is a doctor in the city and will marry soon.”
“He will not.”
The woman’s response surprised Krishan. “Sister, he will! The date is set for October, after the monsoon season. He should have married long ago; he is in his thirty-second year!”
“He will not marry,” the woman calmly repeated.
Had Krishan known the woman better, he would have challenged such an audacious assertion. Instead, he walked alongside her in silence, pondering the meaning of her words.
The woman began singing again, a tune more mournful and bitter than before. Krishan didn’t recognise it but followed the words carefully. The song was an evocation of the Dākinīs - demonesses in the retinue of the goddess Kālī - to avenge innocent women slain by cruel and heartless men.
Although Krishan found the song disturbing, he couldn’t help but be entranced by the music that floated high on the evening air. Even as the woman wantonly summoned death and destruction from the heavens, he found himself surprisingly sympathetic to her murderous pleas. And as he watched her large breasts heave under her blouse with each deep intake of breath, he realised it was because he found the woman every bit as enchanting as her music.
“You sing with great feeling, sister,” he said when the lament reached its morbid conclusion. “Tell me, what person would write such a vengeful song?”
“Some songs are written,” the woman replied. “Others dwell in the heart of every woman. Only the wronged can give them a voice.”
Her discourse may have been unsettling, but the woman’s beauty and enigmatic words fascinated Krishan. Furthermore, her sorrowful, vulnerable demeanour appealed to his sense of chivalry, and Krishan felt a strong compulsion to assist the woman in whatever way he could.
“Do you have somewhere to stay when you reach the village, sister? The night is upon us, and my family will happily shelter you should you require safe lodgings for the night.”
“Your family has done enough,” the woman replied. “Besides, I, too, have family in the village.”
Krishan decided to stop asking the woman questions. Every answer she gave seemed only to leave him more confused. What had his family done to help her, and which of the village families did she belong to? He suspected that to ask would be futile, but he was satisfied as long as he knew the woman had somewhere safe to spend the night.
They reached the village, and Krishan prepared to bid the woman goodnight. He couldn’t help feeling that she had found his company more of an irritation than a reassurance, and enamoured as he was by her beauty and grace, he suspected the attraction was far from mutual. So Krishan was surprised when the woman suggested they walk together a little longer.
“I would like to visit the river once more,” she said. “Will you accompany me to the ghat?”
“Of course, sister,” Krishan replied. “But do you not wish to pay your respects to your family first?”
The woman ignored the question and determinedly led Krishan along the wooded path towards the river.
The ghat was a long terrace of shallow concrete steps leading to the river foreshore. During daylight hours, the steps were busy with villagers and pilgrims washing, fishing, and conducting religious rituals on Ganga’s banks. But, as night fell, the ghat became a place of tranquillity, peace, and seclusion. When the woman silently led Krishan out of the trees, not a soul could be seen, and the only evidence of human activity was a hastily constructed funeral pyre on the foreshore, dimly illuminated in the moonlight.
“It is for my neighbour,” Krishan explained. “He will be cremated in the morning.”
“Baba,” the woman said sadly. “He was a good, honest man, and soon he will be at peace.”
Krishan briefly wondered how the woman could know of the old man’s death since the news had only been announced earlier that day and could not have travelled far. But her use of the term ‘Baba’ indicated that she must be his granddaughter, and finally, Krishan began to piece the puzzle together. The woman’s white garments were mourning attire. Her other belongings would presumably follow by car or rickshaw, but tonight, she would stay with her family at her grandfather’s house in a sombre vigil over his lifeless body. No wonder she wanted to put off going for a while, Krishan thought.
“Come,” the woman said. “My journey has been long, and the road dusty. Please, stand over my clothes while I bathe?”
“Of course, sister,” Krishan replied. “Then I will return you safely to your lodgings.”
The woman led him to the ghat and descended the steps sideways, seemingly with difficulty and all the time holding Krishan’s hand for support. Once they reached the foreshore, she dropped his hand, walked towards the funeral pyre and slowly shuffled around it as Krishan watched from the steps.
“Unless the skull cracks, the soul cannot be released,” the woman said, touching the dung-filled woodpile. “The spirit remains earthbound, restlessly walking among the living and never finding peace.”
“I do not know of such things,” Krishan replied before adding, “I am sorry for your loss, sister.”
The woman nodded a respectful acknowledgement of Krishan’s condolences before elegantly pulling the dupattā from her head to her shoulders. “Now, please…” she said coyly.
Realising it was time to avert his eyes, Krishan turned his back, allowing the woman to undress. The urge to turn around and watch proved difficult to resist and Krishan admonished himself for wishing to intrude upon the privacy of a vulnerable, grief-stricken young woman. But when he heard the swish of the water as she waded into the sacred river, he succumbed to temptation and discreetly looked over his shoulder.
Although Krishan glimpsed the woman for little more than a second, the image was impossible to forget. With her arms extended sideways for balance, he could see only the hint of the woman’s large breasts, but her pinched waist, wide hips and firm bottom were brightly moonlit as she walked deeper into the stream. Between her slender thighs was the silhouette of a thick dark bush matted from the water, and a train of jet-black hair cascaded halfway down her back. Stripped of her sari, Krishan could now see the woman was in the early months of pregnancy.
He immediately felt his body react as the woman’s naked beauty became seared into his mind. Wearing only short trousers, he knew his erection would be unmissable once she finished bathing. But no matter how hard he tried, the sight of her nakedness wouldn’t leave him, and rather than softening, Krishan felt his shaft becoming firmer still.
The woman seemingly enjoyed the cooling river, and it was a few minutes before Krishan heard the dark waters move again as she waded through the shallows and back onto the foreshore. Regretting his earlier intrusion and embarrassed by his ongoing condition, he chose not to attempt a second look as the woman gently shook herself dry, put on her petticoat and blouse, and retied her sari in the dim lantern light.
“Was the river refreshing, sister?”
“Yes, Krishan,” the woman replied while she finished dressing. “The waters become me, as once I became them. Now, come. Sit with me a while on the ghat.”
“Are you sure, sister? Should you not return to your family now?”
“Yes, I am sure. And do not be embarrassed by your arousal. It is natural for a young man, is it not? I am glad that you find my nakedness alluring.”
Krishan couldn’t understand how the woman could be aware of his erection. All this time, he had been standing with his back to her. How had she noticed, particularly in the moonlight? And how could she have known he had watched her as she bathed?
Krishan took the rucksack from his back and carried it in his hands to disguise the bulge in his shorts. “I am sorry I looked,” he said as he sat cross-legged opposite her on the dusty concrete step. “It’s just that you are so beautiful, and I have not yet lain with a woman or seen a woman undress. I was curious, and I apologise for my unforgivable intrusion.”
The woman seemed more shocked at the revelation of Krishan’s virginity than she was by his admission of guilt. “You are eighteen and have never lain with a woman? Why is this, Krishan? Are you in love with a woman you cannot attain, or is the company of men a pleasure you prefer?”
“Oh, no, sister! I like only girls, but I am not in love. I think it is good to stay chaste for the woman I will eventually marry, do you not agree?”
It was quickly apparent that the woman did not.
“Krishan, you are a good man but a foolish one,” she said disdainfully. “Do you think a woman will respect a husband who knows less of the world than she? Even now, your liṅga strains for the touch of a woman, yet you will do no more than pleasure yourself until you marry? You must learn to pleasure others, Krishan. Otherwise, you will never satisfy a wife.”
The woman’s rebuke surprised Krishan, but, on reflection, he thought that perhaps she was right. Maybe chastity until marriage was as inadvisable as it was frustrating. It was the first thing the woman had said all evening that made sense.
But Krishan couldn’t have anticipated what the woman would say next.
“You may lie with me now,” she announced, gripping his forearms tightly and looking deep into his eyes. “Allow me to unburden you of your childish ways and return you to the village a man. And let me once more feel the weight of a man upon me, a pleasure I have too long been denied. Krishan, you have served me well tonight, but I request this one thing more.”
As aroused and captivated as he was, Krishan was shocked at the woman’s unseemly suggestion. She should have been attending to her family and grieving the loss of her grandfather, not enticing him into an indelicate tryst. Besides, the woman was married, and her swollen belly belied her claim to chastity. The right thing to do was to accompany her back to the village before the situation became even more indecorous.
Krishan reluctantly resolved to bring their brief association to an end. “Sister, your words and beauty lay temptation before me, but what you suggest would not be right! To take advantage of you in your grief would bring disgrace upon me and my family. I must take you to your lodgings straight away!”
But the woman reached out and gently laid her hands on Krishan’s head, whispering under her breath. Immediately, he felt his doubts, fears, and once-unshakeable sense of decorum vanish as the woman seemed to drain all such thoughts from his mind into her own, only to cast them adrift on the soft evening breeze. In their place, he was filled with a compulsion to seize the carnal satisfaction he had denied himself for so long and which was now within his grasp.
Krishan’s senses were briefly afforded a luxurious foretaste of the heady sensations he would experience as he climaxed inside the young beauty: the smell of her arousal, the purring of her sweet voice, and the tightness of her soft folds as he roughly filled her firm, trembling body. The ability to resist such exquisite gratification was beyond the gift of any man, and Krishan reluctantly found himself submitting to the basest of his masculine instincts.
“Forget what the world demands of you, Krishan,” the woman said softly. “Think only of your wishes, thoughts and dreams, for with self-knowledge comes wisdom, and with wisdom, happiness.” The woman removed her hands from his head and looked beseechingly into his eyes once more.
“Sister, if it allows you to find solace in your loss, I will lie with you,” Krishan replied.
A cloud drifted across the moon as Krishan stood to remove his clothing, and the ghat slowly descended into impenetrable darkness. The light from the lantern flickered and faded to little more than a weak glow, and the last thing Krishan saw with any clarity was a deep yearning in the woman’s eyes. Then, the lamp crackled and petered out completely.
Unperturbed by the pitch blackness, the woman knelt before Krishan’s naked, sinewy body on the foreshore. “Tonight, you will discover what it is to take pleasure from a woman,” she said, grasping his member and stroking it back to full tumescence. “Deprive yourself of nothing, for your complete fulfilment will bring me great happiness in return.”
As she slowly took his tip into her mouth, an enormous sense of calm and well-being overcame Krishan. The sensations were extraordinary as the woman retracted his dark prepuce and squeezed the first drops of his arousal onto her tongue. And when her lips opened wide, and she took his length deep into her throat, he felt his sack tighten, and he drew back his head in silent, unbelieving ecstasy.
And Krishan’s emotional rapture was every bit as overwhelming as his feelings of somatic bliss. At once, he was cleansed of the last vestiges of his adolescent naivety, and illusions of immense power and strength surged through his pulsing veins. He felt virile, redoubtable and indomitable, and the woman’s words only stimulated him more.
“Do you feel it, Krishan?” she said. “Do you feel what it is to become a man yet?”
Krishan felt it, and it was as empowering as it was overwhelming. Every cell and synapse buzzed as endorphins coursed through his body, leaving him frantic and insatiable in his longing for sexual satisfaction.