Megha blushed and nodded. “Sorry, Priya, Pinky has given you the answer in a bold forthright manner. Now, spare me from your dirty talk on this subject.”
Since Megha was not ready for a fight, I did the best possible thing in that situation: I clamped her face between my palms and pressed my lips hard on her mouth for the kiss she had denied me in the movie theater. Her friends twittered and clapped even as Megha struggled to free herself from my grasp. “Some great poet said: ‘If there’s no help, let’s kiss and part.’” I flashed a victor’s smile and walked away.
A couple of months later, Neha told me Megha had started dating an athletic boy from St. Stephens, one of the prestigious colleges, and often talked about her ongoing affair.
“Has she done it?” I asked Neha, because in those days losing one’s virginity was the in thing on the campus.
“Not yet,” said Neha, the faithful reporter. “She says she is in no hurry to rush into a physical relationship.”
“Good for her,” I said. “Because truth could be very unsettling, you know.”
“So you think she’s one of your kind?”
“I will not say anything right now. Just tell her to watch out before she takes the big leap forward.”
“Megha says she’s in love,” Neha said. “So I would rather wait and watch.”
“How is life, honey?” I asked Megha when I ran into her in the college library on a muggy May afternoon. We were in the same aisle and there was no way she could dodge me.
Megha screwed her eyes as if she had seen a dirty beetle trying to crawl up her legs. “You want to know if I have fucked a male, right?” she hissed, her eyes blazing fury.
“Wrong,” I said. “I am just curious to know if you have found Mr. Right.”
“And how does that concern you? You want to lick my pussy, don’t you? You bloody lesbo.”
I was quite shocked by Megha’s candidness which, I assumed, was her shield against my barbs. Not to lose the war of words, I said: “I also want to kiss your mouth again, and say a few not-so-nice things about you and your sexual preferences.”
“Trying to seduce me, huh? Sorry, I am not interested. Look, baby, I am an out-and-out hetero, so stop chasing me. If I ever need a barber to get my pubic area shaved I will certainly give you a call. Now, leave me alone.”
“Better call your boyfriend for that dirty job,” I shot back, and left her.
The suspense over Megha’s painstakingly preserved virginity finally came to an end one morning when Neha confided to me: “She has done it with Amit, her boyfriend! She says it was an out of the world experience.” I had a hunch that Megha had asked her roommate to inform me about her plunge into hetero sex to give me a slap on the face.
“Good. Just tell her to practice safe sex,” I said.
Neha chuckled. “Don’t worry. She carries a packet of flavored KamaSutra condoms in her bag these days.”
“Congrats!” I said to Megha when I met her the next day in the corridor.
“So Neha has spilled the beans, huh?” Megha said, beaming. “Spread the word far and wide, if you must.”
“What for?” I countered, vexed. “Campus romances are often over with college semesters, so let’s talk after six months and we shall see who stands where.”
Megha frowned. “If you choose the right partner, romance does not die out in six months or even six years.” And with a disdainful smile, she strode away to her psychology class. I felt small and defeated. Maybe I was wrong about Megha. Taut nipples and dribbling pussy couldn’t always be the hallmark of lesbianism. Maybe, in the darkened auditorium, her inexperienced body was merely reacting to my clever manipulations. If she had really found love in a male, so be it. Rather than waiting indefinitely for Megha to summon me for some dirty work, I moved away from her path and soon found a contemplative, bespectacled senior girl in the physics department who responded to my advances with suppressed enthusiasm. After the other girls had left the physics lab, we stood behind a rack of optical lenses and smooched and explored each other’s bodies and talked about Stephen Hawking.
I had filed Megha as a minor fiasco when Neha, our trusted gazetteer, again brought her into my focus. “Something wrong with her sex life, I guess,” Neha confided to me one evening when I ran into her.
“But she looks so proud… and satiated,” I said.
“Proud, yes. Satiated, doubtful. She looks rather upset when she returns from that seedy hotel at Kashmiri Gate where Amit takes her every Saturday for sex.”
“Look, Neha, no one can satisfy a partner on each encounter,” I said. “I read somewhere that premature ejaculation afflicts every male sometimes.”
“But she says he stays firm for more than five minutes,” Neha reported faithfully.
“Then she’s frigid.” And I couldn’t help remembering the copious tears of joy her pussy had shed in my palm in the movie theater.
“You may be right, Priya,” Neha said. “At least on two occasions I have noticed that after she returned, she sneaked into the toilet to masturbate.”
“Tell her to see a shrink or a sexologist to improve her sex life,” I advised Neha glibly.
The last time I saw Megha before she vanished from the campus was in the college lawns, munching peanuts desolately. I didn’t want to talk to her, but she called out: “Hey, Priya, going to hump that morose zombie in the physics lab?”
“Right you are, babe,” I said cheerily. “At least we don’t come back to our rooms with dry vaginas and rush to the toilet to do some hard work with our fingers.”
“Sneaky bitch!” she growled. “I will throw Neha out of my room one day.”
“But that’s not going to help you to achieve what you are missing,” I teased.
“Fuck you, you bitch!” Megha hissed.
“Fuck you, my love,” I cooed.
And that was how we parted.
Two months later Megha dropped out of college to marry, not her athletic lover Amit, but a potbellied restaurateur who owned a chain of Indian eateries in the USA. “Money is very important for Megha’s folks, I reckon,” Neha told me. “And Megha went for it.”
“So, how is life, Priya?” said Megha, as we sat at a corner table of Flora. The restaurant was crowded on Saturday evening and we had to wait to get our table.
“I am fine,” I said. “You are on a vacation, I suppose?”
“No, I will be here for a while.”
“Ah.” I looked at her and she looked at me, perhaps both wondering how life had treated us in the last six years. Megha looked subdued and her dress was sober, if not shabby—frayed jeans and a beige top that didn’t flatter her curves. Her shoulder-length hair looked unkempt. I guessed that she was going through a bad patch. I also noted that she had no wedding ring. A divorcée? I wondered and the evil spirit that resided in me chuckled with glee. Denying one’s natural inclinations could lead to disastrous compromises. “How about a soft drink?” I asked.
“I would prefer a hard one—if you don’t mind,” Megha said, stealing a glance at the bar at the other end of the restaurant.
“A gin and tonic?”
“Scotch with soda and ice will be fine.”
So I beckoned a waiter and ordered single malt, large, for Megha and a Pepsi for myself.
“You don’t drink, I assume,” Megha said, watching me with some curiosity.
“I drink a cocktail or two when I attend business parties.” I wondered how long Megha would continue this small talk. Or was she here just to check out how I, her one-time bête noire, had fared in my life? Megha kept up the small talk till our drinks were served and she had taken a couple of sips of scotch.