Our Impossible Love Read online

  *

  I distinctly remember the first time I orgasmed. It’s still the smuttiest, sexiest thing I have ever done, and it took me fifteen days to plan the entire operation.

  I had read in one of the issues of Cosmopolitan about this little shop tucked in one corner of Palika Bazaar—a dark, dank, strange place—which sold sex toys, whips, handcuffs, porn CDs and the like.

  I would swiftly walk past the shop a dozen times every day for a couple of weeks—scrunching up my face like I didn’t belong there—sizing up and categorizing the different dildos kept in little glass cabinets by shape, girth, length and texture. I finally chose a big red one, complete with big red balls—it was veinous, curved to the right, about nine inches in length and as thick as my forearm. It was love at first sight and I was just denying it for the longest time trying to like some other average, safer ones. Just thinking about it made me feel kinky and wrong and wonderful.

  But then came the difficult part. There was no way in hell I could have casually walked into the shop in my school uniform and gone like, Hey, can you pack that dildo real quick, yeah? I will pay by cash, can you make it quick, I really have to go now. I strategized and I waited for me to be united with my lover.

  The next Sunday I reached Palika Bazaar before it opened and stood guard at the entrance, looking for someone with similar needs. Three hours and ten Diet Cokes later, four giggly girls, dressed top to bottom in overpriced brands, distinctly drunk, teetered through the entrance. They were up to something naughty; I could see that in the furtive glances they threw at the shops. I followed them around as they enquired about what they needed. Fifteen minutes and many awkward stares later, they were in the toy shop flicking through the goods. One of the girls dared to lay hands on my boy but backed off before I lunged and ripped her head clean off her shoulders. Little later, they left happy and scandalized with a pair of handcuffs and a whip and small vibrator.

  I waited for them to exit.

  I closed my eyes and calmed my nerves. My heart thumped. I felt hot, like both sweaty, nervous hot, and hot, like sexy hot. I walked into the shop as if I belonged there.

  ‘Hey, I was just here with my friends. And that girl? The one whose bachelorette we are celebrating? We want to gift her that dildo as well,’ I said, pointing to my lover on the shelf. ‘How much? Three thousand? We just bought so much right now. It’s not our first time, okay. Don’t fleece us. It’s not that you have any customers anyway.’

  I closed the deal at a thousand. The blow-up sex doll in the corner smiled at me. Clutching my man close to my chest, I rushed back home feeling super dirty. I closed the door and drew the curtains. I took a quick bath, shaved my legs and my nether regions, to put it politely, put on an oversized T-shirt, and jumped into bed under my blanket. My panties were drenched at this point in time. With trembling hands, I took the dildo out from the brown paper bag, and wrapped my fingers around all nine inches of red, glorious plastic.

  I can’t believe I have a dildo in my hands! I’m so kinky. It’s mine! It’s in my bedroom!

  I took off my T-shirt slowly, the way a boy would have, and started feeling myself all over. If I had to fuck myself, I had to be insanely good at it. I grabbed at my breasts and clutched them. My body felt like Christmas. I guided the dildo below. Oh. My. God. It reached a few inches below my navel and my body flooded with warmth. I started to sweat. I pulled the blanket off me and watched myself in the mirror as I made out with myself. I didn’t know when my fingers found themselves playing with my tongue, and when I grabbed my breasts and kissed them, and when I alternately guided my fingers and dildo inside of me. It was hot and weird and kinky and my red lover was incredible. I thought I would shatter the windows with my screams so I bit my tongue and let out a hoarse cry instead. My heart raced and found it hard to keep up with all the sensations my body was throwing at it.

  Ten minutes of panting, heaving, wetness, grabbing, clutching, licking later, my body convulsed like I had just been exorcized and I felt a whiteness take over. My toes curled, my body spasmed, and I was suddenly aware of every cell of my being. I floated away somewhere and I could feel colours and taste sounds and ride unicorns and feel the sun in my palms. I touched myself a little more and accumulated a little more of that incredible blankness before I collapsed and felt enlightened.

  Later I hid my lover deep behind the cupboard, wrapped in all my clothes I didn’t wear any longer. Every few days, he would come and visit me and I would indulge in a little space travel with him. I named him Hellboy after the comic book character.

  *

  The more I masturbated, the less I felt the need to lose my virginity. Why would I need a man when I could give myself so much pleasure? I didn’t need a fleshy, unreliable appendage when I had shampoo bottles, hair brushes and rolling pins, and of course, Hellboy. These things I’m sure were made by women, for I don’t know what they are if not symbols of women empowerment hiding in plain sight! Imagine a rolling pin used to make chappatis setting a woman free of her man.

  Brilliant, just brilliant.

  ‘So did you find anyone?’ Megha asked me in the washroom while fixing her hair, and pulling up her skirt and dropping her shirt over the belt. She looked quite cute if you ask me. She had the whole Punjabi sharp features, clear complexion thing going on for her. She still looked twelve though. Her father had a huge jewellery shop bang in the middle of Rajouri Garden, and a driver use to pick and drop her to school every day. Money was never a problem for her so she never really understood why I never put any make-up on. Or why I didn’t hang out after school that much. Or why I never changed my uniforms on time. But we still talked out of habit. I knew she was a little toxic, fuelling rumours about me from time to time, and to be fair I had had made fun of her exam results quite often, but we remained friends or whatever you call it. Sometimes you get into relationships you don’t want to be in but don’t know how to get out of them. Megha and I shared a similar bond. We had nothing in common, nothing whatsoever, but we had started talking when we were really young and comparatively stupid, and now it was inertia more than anything else that was the reason why we still talked. She was into clothes and Bollywood, and I was into books and academics. We were poles apart.

  Megha and I were seat partners back in the day when our bodies were changing. Suddenly, the two of us were thrust into the limelight because we looked more womanly than others—she was cute and I was busty—and we enjoyed it. We were like two mean girls who didn’t love each other but only maybe hated each other a little less. The little popularity we had got us heady and we knew we had to work together to selfishly hold on to it. So we stayed together to concoct gossip about other girls and boys to pull them down. It was all fun and games. But we had done nothing worse than what I had done to Namrata, my classmate for five years now, the girl I secretly admired and hated at the same time. Megha now knew too many of my secrets, so that was another reason why we had to continue to be friends.

  I could stop talking to her from the next day and not feel the loss and I could say the same for her. But for some reason we dragged on with our relationship since no one between the two of us was brave enough to walk out, say no, we are not meant to be, this is over, and never look back. We do waste a lot time in relationships that only ask and not give anything back.

  ‘I don’t think I need a man to know what sex feels like!’ I said, hoping to impress her by my revelation.

  ‘You have had sex, isn’t it? That’s why you’re deflecting,’ she said quite convinced. ‘Tell me about it!’

  ‘I haven’t but I shagged. And it’s the most beautiful thing ever!’

  ‘If you don’t want to tell, it’s fine, you don’t have to lie about it,’ said she and walked out angrily. It was quite strange of Megha to believe more easily that I had had sex with someone than trusting what I told her about being a compulsive masturbator.

  Between her walking off from the washroom and the sixth period, the news had travelled of my hav
ing regular sex with a boy from outside school.

  ‘He’s a college guy,’ one girl whispered.

  ‘I heard they are just fucking. No relationship,’ said another.

  It was clear soon enough that I needed to be a little ashamed of myself, and by the end of the day, I was called to the principal’s office.

  ‘Sit, Aisha,’ he said. ‘I have been hearing things about you in the school. You’re a brilliant student and I don’t want you to be mixing with the wrong people.’

  ‘They are rumours, sir. I’m still a virgin. There was a time I thought I should have sex with someone but the feeling has passed. I’m looking for something else now.’

  The principal looked at me like I had admitted to heroin abuse. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t understand it either. I’m still looking for what I’m looking for,’ I said, smiling widely at him. ‘For now I’m quite satisfied with masturbation.’

  He was quite aghast to hear this despite having three kids himself—the babies couldn’t have been possible without him being sexually active as well, right?

  ‘Look, Aisha, I know you’re going through a lot,’ he said, barely able to meet my eye. ‘I understand that. But I will have to recommend you to our counsellor.’

  ‘Counsellor? Why? Because I masturbate?’

  ‘I will appreciate if you don’t use that word around here or in front of other kids in school. If you continue to do so, I will have no choice but to notify your parents about this.’

  ‘But students use far worse words! They cuss all the time!’

  ‘You’re not in a position to argue, Aisha. You will have to spend an hour every second day with the school counsellor or I go with this to your parents.’

  At this point I must mention that with my tales of getting my period and masturbation stories, I missed an important detail of my life, which people often blame for my slow descent into madness. A few years ago, my mother woke up to a crippling pain in her lower back. A battery of tests later, she was told she had a weak kidney and would have to rely on dialysis for the rest of her life. No one tells me how long she would be alive but I have a gnawing premonition that it wouldn’t be long.

  And so, I didn’t plan to give her any more pain than she was already in.

  ‘I will attend counselling.’

  8

  Danish Roy

  I’m beginning to think I’m quite the antithesis of the stereotypical boy or man. I’m not brave, or honourable, or intelligent, or rich, or charming; neither am I too strong, nor do I have an enviable reproductive organ. If the remains of our civilization are unearthed billions of years later and my fossilized history is used to represent homo sapiens, I should probably apologize to all you ‘men’ for painting our kind in a bad light.

  As a boy I harboured many wishes which I thought would make me into a man, but none of them had been granted. Just like any jobless man with limitless time on his hands, let me count the things I have been wanting to be ever since I have memories.

  I was nine years old.

  The seating arrangement of my class had been reshuffled and Manisha, a girl with golden yellow skin and a voice as sweet as candy, had been assigned the seat next to mine. It was my first brush with symptoms closely associated with a cardiac arrest. All I wanted was to be charming, and by that I mean have a tongue and enunciate words and have her smile at me. Instead, what I did reflexively was to yank out my belt during lunch breaks and fight with classmates, shouting out expletives I had just learnt. Evolution had missed me. I was marking my territory and it would have worked if she were a scratching, hairy ape looking for someone who threw hot turds at encroachers. Charm eluded me. As I grew bigger, hairier and smellier it became tougher for me to have a normal conversation with anyone from the opposite sex. It would usually start with sweaty palms and palpitations and end with me insulting the girl somehow.

  I had figured out quite early in life that being hated was always preferred to not being liked. All that hate I garnered in those few years balled up into an avalanche of bitterness that wouldn’t leave me until many years later.

  I was twelve.

  My hormones had started raging mini battles, mostly around the groin area and I had finally figured out why God bothered to make women—to give young boys something to think about while they shagged in bathroom stalls. Apart from wishing shorter skirts for all the girls in my class, I really wanted to be taller. I stood at 124 cm and a lot of my classmates, including girls, towered above me. I was convinced I would never grow any more and would have to spend the rest of my life as a dwarf in a little home staring at people’s chins. Because why on earth would God make someone so much shorter than others? It made no sense! And why me?

  I glugged milk and ate like a refugee on food aid and still I didn’t grow; I would hang from the football post till my eyes teared up and my arms threatened to rip right off, but I still remained short. I prayed, and threatened God with dire consequences, hoping he would look into more important matters than saving the world from complete ruin and such. He didn’t. Slowly, I just learned to accept my physical form.

  At fourteen I finally had a growth spurt which took me to 178 cm for which I was grateful—not that it helped me build a fulfilling friendship that lasted decades. So, yeah, I would not be attending any of my school reunions.

  But what I really wanted at fourteen was a huge cock. When I say huge I’m talking in terms of biblical proportions, something which would require special underwear, or linings in trousers to accommodate the sheer size of the thing. I wanted to walk out of changing rooms during my swimming class and be greeted by gasps from the girls of my class. I wanted my organ to be an object of fear and envy, like a weapon of vaginal destruction. I wanted to it big, veiny and monstrous, the length of an arm and the girth of a little baby, a bit godly. I would have bequeathed it to medical research teams after my death. Was wanting a museum-worthy dick too much to ask for? Seems like it was. No penis enlargement exercises worked for me and I was stuck with an average-sized dick. Did I mention my brother was embarrassingly huge? Yes, I did.

  Once I realized that no temples would be built to worship my schlong, naturally I wanted the next best thing. Big cars and money—otherwise known as penile extensions. I wanted to blind women folk with so much glitz they wouldn’t know what my dick size was. Having entered the eleventh standard my parents, too, expected me to be serious about my aspirations and chalk out my future plans. How was I otherwise going to support my family and be a man of the house? I tried harder than I had ever tried before. I stayed awake all night mugging up macro and microeconomics, redoing maths sums early into the morning, and yet, all my knowledge eluded me when it came to the actual exams. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t dig myself out of the trench of my low IQ and non-existent attention span. It became clear I wasn’t going to be rich or famous. Report cards don’t lie. A below average college and a shady future stared back at me like Orcs from Mordor. I was destined to live a life with all my shortcomings. But I wasn’t going to let go of my aspirations.

  Soon, I wanted to be a hero. Now, I wasn’t a brave fellow. I’m not the one who picks up a baseball bat or a .47 Magnum and charges howling and threatening towards an intruder in the middle of the night. I’m the one who locks the door and tries climbing out of the window and begs the intruder to do his business and leave quietly. Maybe even make him a cup of coffee and write him a cheque. I would never willingly risk my life, disfigurement, or mutilation of my body. I would never be a willing hero. Though I waited for the day I would accidentally run over a terrorist, or a save a plane from crashing, and be caught on camera doing so. It happened all the time in the movies and there was no reason why it couldn’t happen to me.

  However, none of the aforementioned things ever happened to me. I could vanish one day and it wouldn’t matter to the world. My parents would probably wail for a few days because, after all, I am their flesh and blood and parental instinct is hardwired
, not acquired. My brother would be crushed, but other than that no one would really miss me if I were to step in front of a train and die.

  9

  Aisha Paul

  My mother was diagnosed with the kidney disorder when I was all of eleven years old, waiting for my period and my bust, and all the guidance my mother could offer when I needed her. She was a bit like superglue. She made the rest of the family stick together and a little whiff of her maternal superpower got us high. I always thought some day she would whip off her saree and show us her Wonder Woman costume. She was my answer to the question, ‘What would you want to be when you grow up?’ I wanted a husband, a kitchen, two kids and a dog. My mother would laugh so hard listening to my answer from harrowed class teachers. ‘It’s just a phase,’ she would tell them, and then tell me, ‘I was married when I was eighteen and although I love your father and you and your brother, I still wish I had a few years to myself when I was young.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You have to be more than me, Aisha,’ she used to say, her eyes twinkling with innocent hope. ‘And you will have boyfriends and a career and you will make stupid decisions.’ Clearly introducing her to the joy of Bridget Jones movies wasn’t one of my brightest ideas.

  ‘I want you to be more than what I was and will ever be,’ she would say.

  ‘But all I want is to be you,’ I would snap and she would smile at my naivety.

  And then it all came crashing down.

  All these years, she had been slowly withering away inside. My mother was diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease. While it is not an uncommon disease, fatal only in a small percentage of people, it is an extremely expensive ailment. You would be surprised how easily people say, at least she will live, and not realize how things will never be the same again.

  ‘Will you die?’ I had asked my mother.

  ‘Of course not!’ my father had said and pulled me close to him. My mother laughed and brought us some pakodas she had been frying. Sarthak continued to play Fury on his computer like nothing had happened.