Close Too Close (20 page)

‘Come to bed. Lie on your back. You can put your hands on your belly,’ she commanded.

On the bed, she sat between Manpreet’s thighs, gazing at her vagina for a brief second. Mannat shimmied out of her salwar and underwear and mounted Manpreet in the scissors position. They were vagina to vagina. Their clits met, their wetness mingled, they fit together so perfectly that they should have been on a gay-rights poster just to show people exactly how natural gay sex is. She started riding Manpreet in a slow, steady rhythm. Mannat rubbed her swollen clit against Manpreet’s. As she did this, she became even more engorged; she started fucking Manpreet with her clit. Faster and faster, with more pressure; they were both moaning with pleasure and staring at each other with incredulity at the sheer hotness of the act. Just as they were both about to climax, Mannat slid off. She wasn’t going to let anyone get off that easily.

She moved up to Manpreet’s mouth, hovering there just long enough to give her a single taste. Then Mannat moved back down with her head between Manpreet’s thighs. This time she just went for it. She started licking Manpreet’s clit with a voracious appetite and plunged her fingers straight into her vagina. She was licking with fast flicks of her tongue and fucking with deep thrusts, wanting to be as far inside of her as possible. With her free hand, she started fingering her ass, placing her knees on her shoulders, so that she could get more leverage. She had Manpreet’s clit in her mouth, two fingers in her vagina and one in her ass. They were both in sheer corporeal bliss. Mannat glanced up and saw that Manpreet’s face was begging her to slow down. She incrementally geared down to long, hard, deep, slow thrusts and the lightest of flicks with her tongue. She took the finger out of the ass and started paying Manpreet’s clit the attention that it deserved, all the while fucking her unhurriedly. She sucked her clit and released then licked. Suck, release, lick, suck, release, lick, suck, release, lick. Manpreet could feel Mannat on the edge of a 7.8-on-the-Richter-scale orgasm. She started to rub Manpreet’s clit with her thumb with fast, deliberate motions.

‘OH FUCK!’ Manpreet came like an earthquake. ‘STOP! I can’t take anymore. Please stop.’ Manpreet tried to push her hands out.

Mannat gave her a mischievous look. Very, very slowly, she started to take her fingers out of Manpreet; every millimetre that she took out made Manpreet gasp with pleasure. When Mannat finally took her fingers out, they were dripping wet. She kissed her vagina once more and popped her fingers slick with Manpreet into her mouth. She slurped and savoured the juice on her fingers like it was the dregs of jal jeera after a round of gol guppe.

‘Well, that was fun,’ Mannat said lightly as she rolled out of bed.

‘Can you give me a couple minutes to recover?’ Manpreet asked meekly.

‘Sure, take your time. I’ll be on the couch reading Zadie. The bathroom is on your right, if you want to wash your face or something.’

Manpreet walked into the living room to find Mannat lounging on the couch. ‘I should get going,’ she declared.

‘Listen, you should sober up before you head out.’ Mannat handed her a piping hot bowl of rajma chawal, the white rice peeking out under the deep dark red beans garnished with green cilantro, the translucent purple onions on the side.

‘Do you have any dahi?’

‘Of course, let me get it for you.’

After Manpreet polished off the meal, she said, ‘I don’t know what was better, the orgasm or that bowl.’

Mannat opened the door, smiled and said, ‘If we run into each other again, be sure to say hello.’

RAJMA CHAWAL THE PUNJABI WAY

INGREDIENTS:

For the Rajma:

• One ½ cup kidney beans (rajma)
  
• One tablespoon salt (adjust to taste)
  
• Two large tomatoes (tamatar)
  
• One tablespoon ginger (adrak)
  
• One tablespoon garlic (lasoon)
  
• 1-4 green chillies (hari mirch)
  
• Three tablespoon oil
  
• One tablespoon cumin seeds (jeera)
  
• ½ teaspoon turmeric (haldi)
  
• ½ teaspoon red chilli powder (adjust to taste)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  

Garnish and on the side

• One medium sliced onion for eating on the side
  
• Sprinkle of roasted ground cumin (jeera powder)
  
• A handful of coriander (dhania) for garnish
  
• ½ lime, squeezed
  
• Curd on the side
  

Rice:

• Two cups basmati rice
  
• Two cups water
  
• Two bay leaves (tej patta)
  
• Two cloves (long)
  
• One black cardamom (kali elaichi)
  

METHOD:

1. Wash and soak the kidney beans in about six cups of water for at least six hours, though overnight is best (kidney beans will double in volume after soaking).
   
2. Cut the tomatoes in small pieces, slice the green chilli(es) lengthwise and take out the seeds (if you prefer mild). Next, in the mixie, blend the tomatoes, green chilli(es), garlic and ginger to make a paste.
   
3. Slice the onion into thin strips and immerse in cold water.
   
4. Heat the oil in pressure cooker. Test the heat by adding one cumin seed. If the seed rises to the top and crackles right away, the oil is ready. Add cumin seeds. As the cumin seeds crackle, add the tomato, chilli, garlic, ginger paste, turmeric, chilli powder, and black pepper.
   
5. Fry until the mixture is burgundy in colour and the oil separates from the mixture.
   
6. Add the kidney beans, salt, and three cups of water. Close the cooker. Cook on medium-high heat.
   
7. As the pressure cooker starts steaming, turn the heat down to medium and cook for about seven whistles.
   
8. Wash the basmati rice until the water runs clear. Crush the black cardamom. In a wide pot, put in the rice, water and all the spices. Simmer on medium heat until water is absorbed.
   
9. Turn off the heat and wait until steam has escaped on its own before opening the pressure cooker.
   
10. The kidney beans should be soft and tender. Adjust salt and pepper to your taste.
    
11. Garnish with coriander.
    
12. Remove sliced onions from water. Squeeze lime over them and mix with salt and roasted powdered cumin.
    
13. Serve the kidney beans on basmati rice with curd and onions on the side.
    
14. Enjoy!
    

Upstairs, Downstairs

Nikhil Yadav

I
keyed in the piece my editor wanted and hurried down the building to take an autorickshaw from the crowded ITO intersection. Stepping out onto the road, I saw the busy crowds, buses, autorickshaws and street-vendors blurred by the invisible heat released by the tarmac, slow cooking everyone on the ITO intersection into an indistinguishable human stew.

Daily work on the city beat in my newspaper had become one of those things where you twiddled your pencil the whole day and, when you hadn’t come up with anything by six o’clock, you keyed in the story that the editor wanted in thirty minutes flat. Somewhere in the inner columns (if you cared enough for that in the rushed mornings), reeling under the weight of celebrity photo-ops, Sudoku, movie listings and homeopathic advice, you might find a column on the mouldy bylanes and crumbling ruins of a Delhi hidden from someone like yourself. That piece is written by me. A fresh-off-the-boat migrant helping the English-reading dilliwallahs see their city from a foreign perspective. My personal mission of creating an alternative niche in a mainstream daily and telling people about the Delhi hidden from all of us, I was beginning to understand, was a double-edged sword. It gets you recognition, but like a noose steadily tightening around your neck, your range gets narrower by the day. The stories had already begun to thin and the beat, I felt, was getting repetitive.

There’s a reason why dailies, such as the one I work for, are able to pay not-too-bad salaries to me and my ilk, and that reason is advertising. The earlier I understood that, the better for me. I needed to repeat these things to myself on evenings like today when I left the office with little more than a mild sense of having betrayed myself.

Dusk was settling in over Delhi as the autorickshaw battled its way through evening traffic and lurched past Pragati Maidan, Tilak Marg, India Gate and the merry-go-around of Lutyens Delhi. The auto would stop at a red light and eyes would try to seek out that guilty look, that sideways glance, that forthright stare, all part of a signature handshake that strangers gave each other before the light turned green and everyone went their own way. All along the shadowlands of the city’s railway lines, parks and public toilets, a penumbral existence was beginning to wiggle its way out. Eyes lingering in curiosity, darting about seeking recognition for a common ache, and the quick second that passes between recognition and action. Where daily boredom can end in a flash with mouths gorging at crotches, with hands rubbing warmth into cocks gone flaccid by sitting too long behind desks. Where this evening, lady luck could bring for you the thousand indignities your brain has been feverishly fantasizing about all day long. Everything popping out joyously in this pasture of the fearful, empty, twilight spaces of the city. As we passed by the Pragati Maidan intersection I remembered the long empty lane behind the railway colony where, in a dark corner a footballer had dropped his loose shorts and, with my arms around his footballers’ legs, I had senselessly eaten what had been offered so generously. A quiet celebration of accidental sex right there in the unlit lanes of a railway colony, to the dismal sounds of pressure-cookers going off in kitchens and housewives settling in front of their television sets and the trains roaring past behind us, sending shivers all across our bodies. Well, there was no room for such hunting today, so we sped on.

I had never met Binoo Nanda, but I expected her to be one of the Khan Market women sporting kohl, Bhagalpur silk, heirloom pearls and a favourite cause. Binoo had of late converted her basement into a free performance venue and today, a fledgling experimental group was slated to perform two solos. There was a very correct sounding fund-raiser sideshow, which had also been mentioned in the invite, but I’d forgotten exactly what it was.

I reached predictably late and entered a house in one of those plush South Delhi colonies where the only people you ever actually see on the road are the servants and the night-watch guards. Stepping inside one of these mansions, I was greeted by silence, perhaps the first and most powerful ingredient of the luxury that the rich enjoy. My shoes creaked as I entered this realm, my clothes rustled and I could even hear the rude crackling of my joints. Clambering down to the basement, I was ushered into a waiting room. The first solo had already begun and I was told I would only be able to enter at the beginning of the second act.