1. en-ashram-N/G
2. 30-09-2025
4. Tweet

Everyone said a heat wave was going on. This was a favorite line used by most people in India when they casually wanted to take a swipe at the weather. Winter was there for just a couple of weeks, so most people left it out of their casual weather-bashing vocabulary. “Eight months are warm here, and four are hot,” was the best comment Saul had heard. He never understood what all the hoopla about the weather was. But this late afternoon was giving him a fluttery sensation that had been nameless so far. Walking on this dusty pavement wasn’t an entirely pleasant experience for him. Then he saw a young woman pop her head out of the doorway of a rather old haveli – a traditional sort of manor.

A gust of warm wind intervened and Saul thought that something out of the ordinary was afoot.  The young women looked cautiously on either side of her before venturing out. Saul deliberately slowed his pace to discover what she may be up to. But she seemed to be too lost in her thoughts to notice him. She crossed the road and started walking timorously in the same direction that he was treading. 

With that amazing sixth-sense that women seem to possess, she looked back a couple of times, but continued undeterred. At one point where there was nobody on either side of the desolate road, in the full fury of summer where dry leaves fallen from Acacia and Neem trees were erratically flitting about, Saul quickened his pace and narrowed the gap between the two of them. 

“Are you following me, Mr. 007?” she asked him defiantly. 

He picked up some nerve to try to sound as if he meant business. 

“Just let me see what you have in this little box of yours, and I will let you go.” He sounded authoritarian. 

“Why? What is it to you? And who are you anyway?” 

She was defiant and in no mood to cave into his annoying request, and followed his downcast eyes. His sheepish gaze was focused on her open-toed Bata slippers that revealed a fair bit of the light-complexioned skin of her rather pretty feet. What made him nervous was the realization that he was getting a strange kind of fetishistic delight by glancing at those comely feet. He knew the word fetishism referred to and amusingly harmless liking for an attractive person’s personal article of belonging. But he didn’t know that he would ever experience this aberration.  

The slippers that housed those perfect digits suddenly faded out of his focus as he was startled by the noise of a motorbike that cut a deep turn, not too far for both of them, and sped away. To his even greater surprise, the girl shouted desperately after the rider in her high-pitched feminine voice that sounded more like a shriek. “Rosh! Please,” she seemed utterly disappointed that the rider had no intention of even looking over his shoulder, for her. 

Her dainty little teak-wood box she had been holding in her hand fell onto the dusty pathway and she was looking at him with a loathsome glance. 

Nonplussed at this sudden turn of events, Saul managed to ask, “Who is this Rosh?” as he couldn’t contain his curiosity. 

“Rashed, my boyfriend,” she said disdainfully, as she picked up her little box and opened it timorously with her moist hand and held it open for him. He couldn’t help take a brief glimpse of it. He could hear the rustle of a perfumed note paper, which read, “My first gift of love, Rashed,” 

Self-reproach was gnawing at his conscience, as he asked her, “Can you forgive me at all for what I seem to have done to you?”

“No,” was her simple answer as she crossed the road and started walking back to the Haveli Saul had seen her come out of.

Dr. Saleem Rahman
Ottawa

1. en-ashram-N/G
2. 30-09-2025
4. Tweet