M A N I K

She swayed her hips to the music under the red light, letting the bass flow through her body. As her eyes locked with mine, I knew she twirled only and only for me. I knew she dreamed if I could touch her, the way her hips bucked the cool metal pole and revealed the dark, chiffon thong she was wearing. One after another button she freed of her white see-through shirt and rolled her hips, swinging upside down from the pole as she let go of that decent piece of cloth.

Sweet Marilyn was the crème de la crème when it came to strip clubs in Melbourne. It was a getaway place for all the elite and be-rolling-on-cash men. When I was a little boy visiting this city with my parents, one night I just sneaked out playing a trick on my governess just to find out where could my father go every night of our trip. Creeping in the trunk of his favourite 70s car, I found myself in the basement parking of this Sweet Marilyn.

Sweating and tumbling at the shocking and disgraceful glimpses at scarlet women and the dishonourable way they dressed, I prayed to God I never should have been there. I just wanted to find out which friend did my father come to meet every night but pushing the heavy door, I immediately covered my ears at the high basses and my eyes burnt at the iniquitous games the women were playing. My stomach flipped upside down and I wanted to throw up and even if I did, no one around would notice because they all were lost in their own sick paradises. That night I discovered, it was no friend that my father needed to help but it was a plain, simple lie. He had been lying to us through his teeth night after night. A million theories ran through my little head but none was convincing enough when I saw my respected father lock his lips and ran his hands on every inch of body of a stripper who cared for nothing but his money.

My spine straightened when a young lady with a cigarette at the corner of her sinful red lips, placed her hand on my timid shoulder and ran her long nail down my arm. I stood there as solid as a statue hoping she would stop touching me right then and noticing the fear and awkwardness in me, she let out a devilish laughter. Freed, I ran away at the speed of lightning, and sure threw up at the corner of the street. I hated the place with every ounce of my being and promised myself to never ever return. That was my first encounter with sex, hookers and Sweet Marilyn.

Twenty years later, I am sitting in the same club with the same lust in my eyes that I hated in my father's. Whenever I would come to Melbourne, I must definitely visit the place. In the beginning, just to remind myself how much I hated my father and then, I slowly and steadily fell in love with women.

Tonight was a must, not only because I needed to hate my father or love these women but because I had a specific someone to get off my mind and what better way could there be than an unplanned sex? Yes, that's what I thought. Having a different, a better lady, even though of questionable character, would make all those occupying thoughts about her that began to eat me alive, disappear.

This slow grinding rock music was what I needed to stop thinking about her. These almost-naked women were what I needed to block her in my mind. The one, rolling her body smooth as a butter on the pole was the one, out of place. Unlike others, she wasn't a bleach blonde or had huge fake tits and a single peek at her could make anyone's cock twitch but oddly, I still wasn't charmed enough.

With slow preying steps, carrying a tall glass of martini, she sat on my lap. I kept telling myself that this was what I needed.

"Hi, I'm Rose." She whispered softly in my ear followed by a softer moan.

For a fact, I knew these ladies never revealed their real names but who cares? Receiving the glass from her, I took a sip not breaking the eye-lock. "Hi, Rose."

Placing her lips on the skin of my ear, she whispered sweet nothings and even though I knew her mouth told a thousand lies to many men before, I smirked tucking a hair behind her ear. And, it was Murthy again in my mind and my fingers shivered.

Forcing my attention to the fantastic body of this gorgeous woman on my lap, I ran my hand on her naked spine. She drew in a sharp breath.

"You know how you touch, don't you?" I could see from the way she bit her lips that she genuinely meant it.

And, it was Murthy again.

Never had it been that I had touched one woman while thinking of another. Never had it been that a woman had been stuck in my mind that bad that I had to rub the body of another woman and yet feel haunted by her presence.

Rose ran her one hand on my thigh and the other on the curve of her juicy breasts and under normal circumstances, this would easily turn me on, but it was hard getting hard tonight. There was an aura about this girl promising me an animalistic sex but here I was thinking of someone I would never have.

The scent of Rose's arousal was in the air and she wanted it bad as she started kissing my neck. Ordinarily, I wasn't this disciplined to not stretch her out until this point but there was something telling my brain that it was another betrayal. Trying to shush all the ungrateful thoughts, groping her tender neck, I pulled her mouth for a hungry kiss. And, it was Murthy again. Damn it. Her in that hotel pool, water droplets rolling down her satin skin. Her in that green dress under my control in that hot air balloon.
Her. Her. Her.

I didn't realise that I was kissing this girl mad while thinking of all the things I could do that doe-eyed, little lady until I heard Rose's loud moan in my mouth. Stressing upon and coaching my mind to continue this for a little longer to finally get her off my mind, but, the more I touched this girl, the unshakeable and clearer was her picture behind my closed eyes, as if she was etched like a tapestry in my head. My breath quickened as she started rubbing her crotch against mine on my lap and my lips moved to the skin underneath her ear, in the web of her hairs. You needed to go, Murthy. You were not supposed to stay in my mind for this long. Just go. Please.

The blood rushed to my cores. The nearer I pulled Rose, the closer was Murthy in my brain. Her innocence, her virtues, her dignity, her morals and her.

"Fuck..." I exhaled distancing my mouth from Rose's body. Lowering my face, I kept my eyes closed because it was a fight between my brain and hormones. In all honesty, I was totally turned on and probably would be having blue balls if I walked out of this place without Rose taking care of it but I couldn't just have sex with this girl when another just wouldn't leave my head. Sex, to me was this harmony between my body and head and one of them was clearly not giving in tonight.

Seeing me pant slowly, Rose ran her thumb on my jawline gesturing me to look at her. "Is that a girl?"

Shaking my head, I bit my lip looking around for answers. "It's just... my mind is not cooperating tonight. I'm sorry."

"That's okay." She smiled getting off my lap and sitting beside.

Rubbing the back of my neck, I stood up tipping her manager extremely well, probably because part of me was ashamed at the lack of my masculinity. She was nonetheless happy because cash was all she cared for. About to leave, I quickly turned around and placed a peck on her lips. "I'm sorry."

Rose smiled back confidently. "It's all right. If she doesn't give in, you'll be coming around, I know. They all do."

✾

N A N D I N I

"What do you mean they went to talk to you?" Frowning, I sat quietly on the swing in the back garden of this massive royal hotel.

"I told you it's nothing that serious which can't wait till your arrival." Randhir with his usual warmth spoke from the other part of the world.

"I don't know what they told you....but I am apologising in advance because I know they must have done or said something super weird. God, they are really losing their minds over my marriage, aren't they?" Slipping out of my slippers, my tiptoes touched the soft grass as I worked the swing to and fro, slowly.

"They just don't want you to have unprotected sex, sounds something like that to me." He said being the usual Randhir Shekhawat I knew so well.

A smile took over my tired face. "Oh, you mean they just want to legalise my sex life?"

"Isn't that being thoughtful?" He carried on.

"I don't know? Is it?" My smile deepened but soon I heard a tone of interruption and on the waiting line of the call was Aryaman with his Australian sim card. A text message soon followed the beep and it read Look above.

"Stop before you start having too much fun on the phone. I still have meetings lined up and you should know for a fact, you aren't exactly on my VIP list." Randhir replied and my eyes went up to the hotel building only to find Aryaman looking down at me from his balcony on the tenth floor.

Waving at Aryaman, I smiled. "Randhir, for a fact you should know too that in your life, I have a separate list of my own."

Aryaman gestured with a bottle of wine in his hand if he should come down and I gestured him with approval and a smile.

"You know too much, buttercup." Randhir probably smiled. "But, I really have to hang up because a poor man's gotta earn, all right?"

"I bet he does." I laughed and looking up, I noticed, the spot where Aryaman stood in the balcony was empty which meant he was on his way here. "I won't keep you from your job."

"Bye, sweetheart. Just stay safe and come back quick, all right?" He was the real sweetheart.

"I will, I promise." Standing up lazily, I started walking.

Across the deep, ebony feather of the night, the mysterious stars sparkled in an enormous war that was too big for a human mind like mine to understand. It was enchanting in a way but deeply captivating.

The clinking of glass told me that Aryaman was standing behind and I smiled at the familiarity. Stretching my hand out at the stars, I breathed. "Everyone has taken so much away from you. Yet, you appear to me like those stars because.. with every imperfect shape and size of your wounds, you have stitched your life together, perfectly."

"Then, why do I still long for the thing I am forbidden to have?" The words and more specifically, the voice rendered my finger to turn ice cold.

Tearing my eyes off the night sky, I turned around to realise all my flashbacks of this night were coming alive. The walk - the cycle - the cherry blossoms and him.

"I wasn't talking about you." I corrected myself quickly but Manik remained where he was staring at me without a blink.

"Sad, right?" He studied at me in a way that was deeper than anyone's understanding of stars' physics. "Because there was a time when you used to talk about me. Only me."

It was hard for some reason to keep meeting with his ocean-deep eyes, so I looked away. "What is it that you want at this hour? Because... you won't be talking to someone unless they can do something for you."

"That's right. I weigh profit and loss in everything." He paused taking me at length. "That's why I want something from you."

"I don't think I have anything more to give you." Was my voice starting to crack? "Haven't you taken all?"

There was a massive shift in him and I could sense that even though I stood ten hands away. Manik gulped and to hide whatever he felt, he took a quick sip of his foreign liquor.

Hesitant, I began. "Mr.Malhotra, I think you should—"

"Ten seconds." My eyes met his pleading ones. "Give me your ten seconds and I'll be gone before you know it."

Every part of me went on a pause. The impact of his words weren't alone enough because in the next moment I know, he erased the ten hands' distance between us and had me caged in his two strong arms. It would be suffice to say that the simple gesture knocked every wisp of air out of me and I was waiting motionless, trying to remember his path.

"Ten" He whispered and things went crazy in my head.

"Nine" I drew in a struggling breath.

"Eight" Each second was prominent in his arms and each second was us.

"Seven" I closed my eyes and hands balled up in fists.

"Six" If seconds could speak, they might write a novel about us.

"Five" Stop, for the love of God, Manik. Just stop it.

"Four" His heartbeat was drumming against my ear but unlike other times, it wasn't rhythmic. It was fast and it was chaotic.

"Three" My mind wondered if I should, just for this once, wrap my hands around him too or would I be in too much danger?

"Two" He unzipped my skin with his simplicity and the fact that he still had such impact on me was scaring me.

He took a slight pause as if letting go was something he had never been taught ever before. And, for a moment everything went silent between us. Probably our heartbeats too.

And then, that was it. I decided to let go of the shackles and use my arms to assure him of something he was in desperate search of but as I opened my eyes, there was Aryaman standing and the reality was a hard punch in the face. Reality reminded me of the hollows in my heart, holes in my wings and ashes in my sky.

It felt like there was a lump in Manik's throat which when he gulped, made a hoarse sound of feeling of rejection. His heartbeat slowed down to a pause when he pronounced, "One"

When we parted, there was no emotion visible in him, the typical Manik Malhotra but when he turned around and spotted Aryaman, for a brief moment, it felt like, all his rivers did not flow to the ocean but to disasters.

A R Y A M A N

There is an African proverb, Ashes fly back into the face of him who throws them. Three persons are standing exactly where they stood years back, just that this time, the faces and roles changed a little.

Manik walked towards me, calm yet threatened. Cold as a stone, he stood before me. Staring, just staring. And, there was Karma in the air.

A mockery made its presence when I opened my mouth. "You call yourself a monster, a devil, huh, but at the first sight of love, you cower and run away to hide, you filthy piece of shit."

"Ain't that a tragedy now!" I spoke further just to instigate him to confess whatever before Nandini but he walked away, without a word.

And, for the first time, I felt that Manik Malhotra was in deep, deep shit.

11:03 a.m

"I'm sorry that we didn't get to talk at all last night." Nandini said, walking beside me in the Melbourne Central, the friendliest destination for shopping.

"It seems we didn't." I said.

Looking ahead at the street, I pondered over things but the sight of a stupid cycle speeding our way had my back straighten up. The amateur rider, if not controlled, would most definitely hit Nandini and in order to save her, I had to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her close to me. With a couple of toppling steps behind, in the motion, my back was against a wall and Nandini's hands on my chest. Her eyes met mine and for a moment, it stayed with me until she realised the reason behind my action and it was then that both of our little awkwardness vanished.

"Thank you, Aryaman. Don't you get tired of always saving people?" My eyes met hers. Again.

"I will never get tired of saving you, Nandini." There was a flicker in her eyes following which she quickly looked away at the street.

"Why is that?" I could clearly see how nervous she was asking me the question - fidgety fingers, shallow breath, anxious nerves.

A smile played at the side of my lips. "Because I want you to treat me with a nice book and a hot cup of coffee."

"Huh?" Clueless, she focused at the direction my eyes gestured her and it was a beautiful yet old bookstore. Judging the look on her face, it seemed she wasn't going to deny me the pleasure of a good read.

✾

Inside the bookstore was that magical perfume of old books that was mighty familiar to me, a son of a bookworm. Mother said that words weren't the only things weaved in such places; dreams of wood and escape to an alternate universe were what these places offered. Bad for me that I was never into books unlike my brother but I loved the feelings that these books gave me which was... a little close to my late mother.

The French owner greeted us in his broken English and showed us to the aisles filled with different genres. The aisles were narrow and that was probably why, the minds were close. Nandini chose to walk to the Spirituality section and I was standing, clueless, in the whatever section behind.

"What is spirituality to you, Aryaman?" Her voice wasn't hard to be heard from the aisle behind.

I pulled a book on some stupid mystery and turned a few pages, thinking. "It's hard to pin down, Nandini." I closed the book, thinking again. "In a way, my amateurish way, it is....setting yourself free."

"Yet connecting to the miracles within you." Her answer made me pause and look at her through the gap of the books.

She twisted her neck sideways only to find me looking. "I shouldn't indulge myself in fairytale-ish thoughts anymore, right?"

"Wrong." I answered. "You must always dream, Nandini. I demand you to. No matter what life puts you through, you must always have the ability to keep dreaming because the only day you officially stop dreaming, should be the date one puts in your death certificate. Not before that."

She turned around, managing to gulp slowly and I walked a few more aisles behind but her faint voice still reached me. "Can I ask you something, Aryaman?"

"What? Can't hear. Say louder." I raised my voice.

"I said, can I ask you something?" Why was it that she already sounded emotional?

"You don't need my permission." Giving her a green signal, I pulled down the translated copy of some novel about the Nazis but her question never came to me.

N A N D I N I

"I said, can I ask you something?" I said in a semi-loud pitch even though my emotions threatened to burst through.

"You don't need my permission." Was his as-usual supportive response.

With a nervous bite on my lips, there was this question on my mouth, the one that I had to ask for my own sanity. The question that I hoped was not badly timed.

"Why is that you are so patient with me? Why do you always want to save me?" There it was. The question, direct and unmixed.

"What?" Was his reply which made me worry if I had overstepped some limits.

Moistening my raspberry lips, I manage to speak out again. "Why do you always have to be by my side? Why? What is there for you?"

"Because you are cry in my silence." My mouth fell open at the chilling sound of the voice I knew could tear me apart. Apprehensive, I turned around only to find the black-hearted man stand in a black shirt, matching trousers with equally dark trench coat. He was holding a thick, intellectual book called Heart of Darkness in hand and looked at me like I stole his something.

"Y-y-you?" I took a step back without even realising the action.

"Because you are food in my hunger." Manik took a step closer, not looking anywhere else other than my two nervous, dying eyes. "Because you are water in my thirst. Because you are freedom in my limits. Because you are the sweetness in my bitter life."

Shredding me with those eyes, carelessly speaking of such words, he moved closer and closer as if that was his only settled destination. Never did I get to realise of my position until my back hit the shelf of books. Now that I was captured in boundaries set by him, I saw him. Close. Closer. Again. If day and night existed at the same time, it would be us at this moment.

Manik took another step closer as if there was no end to this emotional tyranny and there he was standing as close as he was last night, without permission, without a care.

"Because you are everything in my nothingness. Because you are hope in my lifelong distrust." As Manik lifted his hand, my breath hitched as his smell hung rich and heavy in the air between us and it was fear in me again; fear of being trapped in his emotional cage. His thumb invaded my personal space and it was now brushing my cheekbone while his other hand wrapped around my neck like a leash made out of love.

"Because you are the reflection in my mirror; the image in my mind. Because you are the foothold in my falls." His face drew closer and my spine curled.

"D-don't..." My words were too scared.

I don't know if it was the lack of my faith in him that he sensed or the fact that I was all clumsy despite being so close to him that he decided to pull his face away and study me real close. Darkness leaked from this man's cracks even from the way he read people, read me and it felt like a rare bird's song in the dark of a December evening.

"Oh, boy!" He said to himself and the inquisition in my eyes met his poised ones. "I am in danger, am I not? Because it looks like you are even the resurrection in my death."

This moment, this very moment, was a part of a very unknown enigma and without even touching, I realised that Manik had shown me his deepest corner. The core of his heart. And, unlike what others said, it wasn't all black inside. His heart was made of copper stars and a wide, wide constellation where I probably must have recorded my name with ink. Unknown to me, I traveled in a comet to the centre of his heart and the stars started to align.

It was for the second time today that he touched my face again but for the first time, he did not burn me with passion. He shook my whole being by simply running his fingers from my forehead to chin. Eyes closed, I wondered if he was going to rewrite my existence but the words that came out of him were something I never truly expected.

"I am sorry." He whispered and my heartbeats slowed down.

Opening my eyes, I couldn't manage to get my words out but he tenderly closed them again and I realised he wasn't finished. My chest tightened as he ran his fingers on my face again and I worried if I'd let all my reasons start to collapse but deep down I knew I couldn't afford to.

"I am sorry.....Murthy. Sorry for what I did to your Dad. Sorry for the sword I dug in your back. I am sorry because it's little less biting my pride to accept my...brutal actuon than accept the fact that you are starting to fade your colours in my life. I can be sorry for anything you ask me to but not live with the fact that you are slipping away because without you, even my silence makes noise and it fills me with vestiges of nothingness." I breathed in slowly once he pulled his fingers off me. "And, if you accept my apology, please meet me at seven in the evening outside the Melbourne City Opera." As I was about to open my eyes, he tenderly shut them again. "You always have a choice to not turn up but just know, that's where I'll be waiting."

In a moment, after registering everything as I opened my eyes, he was gone...just like that. Like he was never here. Like he was again a figment of my imagination. Like a promised land that vanished much too soon.

"Hey? What's wrong?" Aryaman nudged me slightly and looked around to see if anything was unusual. "Did someone do something?"

Was he even here or not?

My eyes watered looking at the empty doorway. "It was nothing. It's always nothing."

"I see that you have not picked up any book like me. So, let's just head out, huh?" Seeing me somewhat disoriented, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

Was he real or not?

Tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, I nodded my head in approval. Thick thoughts kept swimming in my head and judging the misplaced words and actions in me, Aryaman decided to keep holding me by my shoulders as a support. Turning my face to him, I gave him a polite smile which he returned almost immediately.

Was he even there or not?

For one last time as I turned my head back while walking forward, my chest tightened as I saw the Heart of Darkness on the window display of the shop I left behind.

P.S : Have a very very Happy New Year. I know y'all have been strong the past year and I hope and pray that everyone gets the happiness and light in life that you deserve. Love, Always.