“HOW I WANT THE LAST EVENING OF MY LIFE TO BE” By Sobhan Pramanik

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“HOW I WANT THE LAST EVENING OF MY LIFE TO BE”

A thematic representation

By Sobhan Pramanik

Before quitting everything. I want to recap every happiness. Or maybe the only happiness I had.

Even today this foyer is brilliantly lit up in the golden light of sundown. The tower clock, standing tall and far eclipses a greater portion of the horizon from my sight, the immortal pendulum of whose now, perhaps pities my stroll to departure.

As the oscillations of my rocking chair gradually diminishes, drowning with it the creaking of its timber, I graciously race back to time.The time when the sun down at this foyer of my house smelt of crushed coffee beans dissolving to hot milk that she poured from a porcelain tea pot.
Much unlike today's stench of medicines and organic solvents.

Casually sunk into the leather finish couch that now had ripped from the stiches and sipping coffee, we would recollect our falling in love. I used to narrate her my feelings when I first saw her. She was standing by the bronze railing of the terrace of her house in a white salwar, feeding crumps of bed to the innumerable pigeons gatherer around her. In return she reminded me of how admiring her at the same place I had crashed into a lamppost while riding my bicycle and laughed like crazy. I used to feel embarrassed at it. But now, perhaps in the last few hours of my life, I wish to hear that childlike laugh of hers.

She used to remind me of those Archies cards with romantic messages that we used to exchange on the last working day of school before it closes for a month long summer vacation. I used to write rhyming lines for her. But the edges of my card will always be crumbled because I had to hide it beneath stacks of clothes or suddenly push it into a filled drawer whenever my parents entered my room, before bringing it to her. On the other hand her card used to be neat on which she flaunted her ornamental handwriting.

She used to live in a palatial house with her grandparents and had her personal spaces, so she never faced issues regarding hiding a card. She even teased me by attempting to formulate a virtual lump in her throat and said, “Tum mere liye ek card ka v khayal nahi rakh sakhte…mera kaise rakhoge….”

I would then call her, “Drama queen” and we both would break into laughter. Holding her tiny fingers in my comparatively broad palm, we used to walk down a narrow broken path that unwinds through a beautiful garden bordered by cypress to my cycle kept behind our school canteen. I used to ride her back home, cycling down the asphalt laid road. All through the ride, she used to hum the rhyming lines from the card, which in the melody of her voice felt like music. As the sun dips into the horizon and my heart counting its last few beats, I wish for that one last cycle ride with her.

Fortunately or unfortunately she took care of me in a way she would have done to her parents had they been alive.  In those times our respective hearts appeared to be our gods and the gods blessed us with lots of love.

The proudest moment of my life was even after marriage when every time I peered down her neckline, I found a gold plated pendant there, shining radiantly. It was the pendant that I bought for her from my first salary.

Watching the sun go down from the foyer of our house after marriage was perhaps the most cherished moments. She used to say that sunset together every day was more precious to her than our plush honeymoon on the beaches of Mauritius.

The evenings of our tea session in April used to be the most fascinating ones. It is this month of the year when you experience evening rainfalls in Kolkata, rescuing people from the clutches of a sultry afternoon. Post that rain, in the west amid the back drop of a sun breaking from the clouds will be a string of a fading rainbow. I loved the way she used to nag me by asking me to take her to the end of that rainbow where she could find a pot of gold.

I just smiled at her innocence and she loved seeing me happy.

It is April once again but there is no rainbow. Even she isn't there. Neither the smell of coffee.

Oh! Wait. I am no longer sitting at the foyer of my house. My tenure there had ended. My heart had already pumped its last. Right now I am ascending an invisible stair case whose spiral railings is decorated by fresh tulips.

I can’t see where the staircase ends but after ascending to quiet a height, I spot what I was looking for. I look down to locate my house, in whose foyer now stands my caretaker rubbing her eyes. She is probably crying and in front of her lies a corpse shrouded till the chin by a white satin bed sheet. The face looks similar. Yes, it’s me; and the one ascending the stairs is my soul that has left the foyer to escape his monotony.

Now in my mind I could imagine where this staircase would end. Probably somewhere behind curtains of the blue sky onto the dewy lawns of a place called heaven. Suddenly the very thought of heaven shatters away the shackles of reluctance from my legs.

I run hard up the stairs. I can’t wait anymore nor can I make her wait. I run breathing from my mouth and this time I will surely be able to take her to the end of the rainbow. To find the pot of gold.

                                                    By-- Sobhan Pramanik

“Pleasure of Sex” versus “Pain of Hunger” By Sobhan Pramanik

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“Pleasure of Sex” versus “Pain of Hunger”

By Sobhan Pramanik

The flame reluctantly glowed over the last piece of timber they managed to put together to fight cold that night. Soft flakes of snow like a summer drizzle kept pouring from the dimly lit sky and the otherwise green foot hills of the Siwalik’s, now looks like an art paper untouched by its artist.

Held above the shutting flame, on a thin bamboo streak was their supper for the night; hind limbs of a lamb. From the tint of the flesh, one could say it was a long way to go to be roasted fully and the strong winds that constantly rose from the pine woods to threaten the fire was making sure that they sleep the night over two cans of beer, yet again.

The pain of empty stomach could be felt well in their demeanour.

He was visibly afraid. His heavy breaths blurred his vision with a dense cloud of smoke staggering its way out of his mouth. He looked at her from the corner of his eyes who sat contracted on a rectangular piece of rock. In her eyes was the colour of the timidly glowing fire and her drooping face, portrayed the cry of hunger.

Snow fell harder with every passing second and the blades of winds, turning sharper with every drift. He tried his best to keep the fire burning but didn't succeed. From the extinguished heap of charred timber started to rise serpentine curls of smoke and their dinner remained half roasted.

It was the second night on the trot that they were to retire to the tent dumping their system with sour beer. But none of them complained. Their togetherness fought bravely with the rebellious hunger within.

Lying close to each other under a thick cottony quilt, they kissed compassionately till they ran out of breath.

He then stretched out his hand and in one go unzipped her furry coat till her navel. Her slender body underneath had the wrap of a wheatish skin, whose elevations and depressions remain erotically hidden behind her dark petite lingerie. Everything in her resembled the prey of the carnally spirited animal in him.

She felt exposed and clanged tightly onto him. Her svelte physic in his embrace looked like a jigsaw piece at its desired place. Holding onto him tightly her fingers on his back moved in absolute frantic. He lowered his head on her bosom and her cologne in turn ignited a fire of lustful desire in him. The excitation gave birth to a hard kiss on her soft breast, as the cold air in the tent reverberated with a shrill moan of pleasure.

She grabbed him harder by his shoulders this time, her manicured nails digging into his skin beneath. They rolled to the other side of the mattress pressing the mountain grass beneath, as she gets on top of him. She bent down and sucked hard on his cold struck lips. Their vigour was in proportion to the snowfall outside. Both intensifying with the passing moment. Tasting her tongue inside his mouth, he slid his chapped fingers beneath the straps of her brassiere and flicked. It seductively descended down her shoulders, setting free her breasts which he lecherously licked onto. He could feel her supple nipples stiffen in the wetness of his saliva.
His hurried breathing and her sensuous submission had pleasure written all over it.

With the cells of their body starving since the past two days, their crave to explore each other was unimaginable. When people would have succumbed, they arose. When people would have cursed the time, they utilized it. When people would have turned slaves to their hunger buds, they chose to master the slaves of lust in them. They did everything odd yet they managed to live. Because sometimes being odd makes you evenly happy and being in love is one such odd thing.
   

Treading over the highest orbits of their respective orgasms, they come face to face for the final time to embrace their sweaty bodies. After which began his pelvic thrusts between her invitingly spread legs that proceeded in harmony with her pleasurable agony.

The air in the tent kept switching alternatively between sounds of her satisfied moans and his labored grunts.

Witnessing their love making session in form of silhouettes on the skin of the tent, were the chain of snow laden mountains projecting up the sky.

They fall asleep hungry yet satisfied in the darkness of the tent, the slanting roof of which had turned opaque to the dim light of the sky due to the dumping of snowflakes over it.

Their love, their togetherness, their innate desires and their compatibility had finally won them a living in the most torrid circumstances.

                         By - -- Sobhan Pramanik