Her face was too dark, and her eyes, too earnest, but Urvashi was inviting and indulgent in bed, and he would simply close his eyes and imagine the sparkling starlet Rekha, her body arching under his. He could hear Rekha moaning as he whispered in Urvashi’s ear: “My kamal ka phool, my svarg, oh, my narag.”
On these stolen nights by the river Urvashi believed herself to be the celestial beauty she always was. She pardoned Sachin’s angry outbursts and false promises. Early in the mornings, she went to the mandir, where she ran into Sachin’s mother, Bhanumati, doing her prayers. Urvashi so longed to tell her that she loved her golden son, that he was to wed her as soon as the time was right for him to ask for her hand. Bhanumati never noticed Urvashi there. Urvashi blended in with the blue-black marble surrounding the temple’s lingam.
The panditji observed Urvashi’s quiet yearning and rebuked her with pity: “Apne aukaat mein raho, kalika.” He lingered on that last word. “You don’t know my Sachin, panditji.”
To be honest, she didn’t know her Sachin either. Sachin was too fair-skinned and too bored to not take advantage of what Urvashi offered him in the abandoned stable by the river. He couldn’t see her in the darkness of night, and in daylight, he didn’t have to reckon with her darkness. But she still fantasized about the day he would hold her hand in front of his parents and her parents and the whole village, wearing her love proudly, the way that Amitabh Bachchan returned to Jaya Bachchan after realizing the foolishness of his affair with Rekha. Silsila was Urvashi’s favorite film.
A homage to “Serenade” from Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters (53).
Siri Ranganath 