SRIJANI PAL DREAMS AWAY MOST OF HER SUMMER BECAUSE TIME TO HER, IS AN ILLUSION. Ever since she could remember, she had spent most of her summers at her grandmother's bakery cum café in Kolkata. Her dida, Sushmita Pal, was the grandmother you always read about, a soft-spoken woman with a heart as big as the ocean and a hug that would temporarily erase all your afflictions. A young Srijani would look with wide-eyed amusement as her grandmother made mishti doi, rasgullas, sandesh, special fish cutlet and mughlai parathas for the café. As a kid she would offer the customers tissue papers, and now she waitressed. Time slowly nibbled at her dida and so the café was now only open in the evenings. The café was at the end of a cobblestone street in the town part of Kolkata, busy with foreigners, Bengali women, their toddlers scrambling behind them and hawkers, lined next to knick knack shops and mithaiwallahs. The café with it's peeling blue paint walls always played old Bollywood songs and had wooden furniture that had aged with time, tables covered with red and white tablecloth and freshly picked flowers from dida's garden.
Srijani was saturated with love she had for her hometown. She had moved out for college a couple of years ago but missing home always felt like spirit on a wound; a sharp sting at the heartstrings.
Droplets of sweat trickled away down Srijani's calves like the summer passing by, full of nothing but anticipation for something better to happen. She loved working with her grandmother, it made her content but life had felt like an unfinished puzzle for the past couple of years. Tor bhalobashar dorkar (you need love) dida had said but she brushed it off like a bug on the skin. On uneventful evenings when the traffic smoke hadn't begun to nauseate her and her arms weren't heavy with carrying all the plates around, Srijani thought about how some amount of bhalobasha, love, could subtly help with the void that lay unrelentingly inside of her. Loving is so easy! Everyone around her said but for her, loving was so terribly hard! Hard to come around and even if it comes around, having to hold onto it like an anchor holds the ship felt like a Herculean task. Maybe this isn't for me, she thought to herself, biting softly on her lower lip, trying to make herself feel okay with the entire lovelessness situation. So when love struck her in the most unfamiliar place, her heart grew the size of her entire being.
NYX DESAI WAS THE GIRL EVERYONE DREAMT ABOUT WHEN ASKED TO RECREATE AN IMAGE OF THE GIRL YOU WOULD WANT TO LOVE IN THE LABORATORY OF YOUR MIND. The mid summer afternoon, seventeenth of May, at five fifty seven pm, Nyx had asked her if their café was open because mainly wanted to use the loo and then perhaps get a chilled lemonade for "rejuvenation" she added with what Srijani swore was a smirk. The spit in her mouth seemed to have dried she saw the new girl and her cheeks grew red because of the way her heart palpitated. Nyx actually stayed for more than just a glass of lemonade, she stayed there the entire evening, saying she was waiting for her friend but not a single visitor had paid her a visit. Srijani would steal glances at her, for Nyx looked like a goddess dressed in a yellow floral dress and bright red lipstick that never seemed to come off her full lips. Nyx had chatted with her dida twice, smiling a smile that could give the moon a run for it's beauty. Her hair, oh her hair, were endless soft curls that were dyed pink near the end, gently adding to her beauty. "Jaani, help this lovely lady out before you pull down the shutters", her dida had told her. So when it was Srijani's time to help Nyx out, she tried very hard to get rid of the fish curry and sweat odour that permeated off her. Pretty girls scared her because she fell in love with every single one of them and they would disappear in the blink of an eye, all of them but Nyx. Nyx wanted to know more about the old part of Kolkata and revealed that she did not actually have a visitor, she was vacationing alone in the city and did not have a single clue about things.
All Srijani had to do was guide the stranger about places in her city but that seemed impossible with the brown skinned goddess sitting across her. Nyx told her about how she had dropped out of law school that summer, two semesters before her graduation because the course was eating away her bones and turning her into a corporate slave, she said, in-between drags of a Marlboro Menthol. Srijani hadn't managed to put across many words in their conversation, it was mostly Nyx's rants about how the late stage capitalism kills the working class and how much of a pain in the arse law school was but she had managed to put her entire dil, heart, on the red and white tablecloth for the girl with golden-sweet laughter. In the few words that had left her perpetually dry mouth, she had agreed to show Nyx the old part of the city. For free, she swore to Nyx. As if I have the balls to charge someone this beautiful, Srijani thought to herself. She remembers their first night they spent talking together, playing it like a tape on repeat until it stops working on replay. She fell headfirst into this infatuation, similar to falling off a balcony, rapidly and beyond her control.
Sushmita had seen a twinkle in naatni's eyes, one that hadn't made an appearance in the last four summers. She knew her granddaughter was heads over heels for the stranger with red lips with her grandmotherly intuition. She did not speak about it but when Srijani left the house next morning, smelling like fresh roses, she smiled a soft smile, knowing summer would bring affection to her child.
The next morning, Srijani swore she heard birds chirping away love songs. She put on her best 'i-spent-forty-five-minutes-trying-to-put-this-outfit-together-but-it-still-looks-very-casual' and seven spritzes of an expensive perfume so that she could make up for her fish curry smell the night before. Nyx told her that she looked cute and an undissolvable lump appeared in her throat of out nowhere. Srijani and Nyx had spent the entire day walking, sharing cabs, marvelling at old Victorian buildings and stuffing themselves full with puchkas and peyaji. Nyx had made her consume five lemonades but every waking moment she spent next to Nyx, the air was never sufficient for her lungs. Exquisitely tender Nyx Desai had transformed her into a lust frenzied sapphic poet's brain. Her palms were scalding white when Nyx smoothly interlocked her fingers with Srijani's, whilst crossing a road that wasn't even filled with traffic. They spent two days exploring a city Srijani thought she knew on the back of her hand. A friendship blossomed like the first flower blossoming in spring, bursting with colors at the seams, joyous and enchanting. Words never stopped flowing between them, and once Srijani had started to pour out words, vulnerability didn't seem as scary as her stupid brain had made her think it would be.
Three nights before Nyx's departure, they were in Nyx's hotel room, sharing greasy pizzas and chilled red wine, Srijani was painfully aware of the way Nyx's breath fanned on her shoulder and neck making it impossible for her to concentrate on the absolute shit show of the horror film they were watching. Srijani anxiously wondered whether Nyx felt the same way about her. Nyx had told her stories about her sloppy, failed love adventures, consisting of cheating men and women who had sliced her heart in two. But when you have a below average self confidence issues, thinking you could steal a woman like Nyx's heart seemed beyond pragmatic. She was spiralling into these thoughts and did not as much as even bat her eyelids during the jumpscare, Nyx turned her head awfully close to hers, and told her that she was 'fucking incredible' because she wasn't scared. The moments had followed after is a memory she plays every night in her mind so as to leave it the way it is, pristine, without missing any details. She thinks if she doesn't replay it, it was get rusty and that would be fucking horrendous.
WHAT HAPPENED DURING THOSE MOMENTS WAS, that Nyx's face was too close to Srijani's and she mustered all the courage that she had to give birth to an eye contact with homoerotic undertones. Nyx told her that she looked like a dream under the soft yellow lights and that she wanted to kiss her. Srijani again found her brain and throat in the Sahara desert, parched and empty and all she could do was nod and lean in. The seventh circle of hell opened in the pits of her stomach when her lips touched Nyx's everlasting crimson stained ones. When Nyx cupped her face in her soft hands and pulled her closer, she had felt jabs of electricity coursing through all of her veins. immeltingimgonnavaporizeintothinair. But she did not, she moved as close as possible to the girl as much as space and matter allowed. There was not enough air for her lung tissues and the anticipation of it all suffocated her. I'll die if her fingers don't touch the inside of my body. Seven layers of clothing apart, three layers of clothing apart, five layers of skin apart. Fingers on skin, skin on skin, tongue on skin. Cherry sap oozed out of places where skin cracks, mouth full of dreams refusing to be crushed and her lover's tongue. Nyx's skin tasted like honeyed heat and sweet orange slices. The heart butterflies break free through the ribcage and souls entwined via legs become something larger than soul. She kisses a constellation with an insatiable yet tender hunger. Srijani found a young god in a three star hotel room (bare chested thick thighed divine tongue seven piercings supple skin godsent) smelling of grease and chemically scented body lotions. Heaven is inside of her lover and she feels holier than thou. Bhālabāsā, love, mohabbat, l'amour. Fears in her chest taking winged flights away and so all she could fill it with was Nyx Desai. The nights that followed after were a tangle of limbs, messy hair, skin buzzing with static electricity and endless fleeting moments of being punch-drunk on infatuation. Srijani and Nyx are more human than ever and yet the rush of falling through the starlit sky they feel not like humans but like a piece of universe. All encompassing, a never-ending void full of insignificance for everything but themselves. Hands full of warm dreams, passion on the lips and eagerly fluttering hearts of dreamers. Srijani prayed to the word I want because she did.
• • •
A cycle of seasons had passed and their love never grew cold. Nyx had moved to where Srijani worked, they had spent their days full of struggles and warmth like sunshine on your face on a quiet Sunday afternoon with slow jazz playing in the background. Nyx taught her how to let go to of the ails that anchor you to the ground and give into the arms of Earth when it these all-consuming moments surround you. She taught Nyx how putrid nightmares are often followed by gentle dreams. How there's infinite peace in knowing that nothing lasts forever, how she loved her without God's mercy. Sapphic summers followed the brown girls year after year, you saved her. She saved you. They save each other, a hundred times over, a thousand times over, timelessly. Dida would smile at the pair of lovers and think to herself about how a woman's love is never sin, feels sweet like tooth decay and freed oneself.
(hello i promised myself to write a wlw after writing Screw The Stars, and so here i am! after quite a few years! my writing still feels very rusty but writing this made me happy. i barely get onto this app, miss the good old days but it is what it is. hope y'all liked this and it didn't suck much. also both my characters are brown !! poc rep !! couldn't find a cover with 2 brown girls that's why one of them is white oops)
much love,
aaro