‘Love’s whole or else it’s nothing.’
The Poison Factory Conference by Divya Ghelani
A fervent tremor had spread across Sandeep’s lips; his eyes became bloodshot and distant-looking. Vinod wasn’t too sure how to respond to Sandeep’s drunken ramblings.
'Love's whole or else it's nothing,' said Shilpa. She lay the book face down on the bedside table, fixed him with her huge spaceship eyes and sighed, 'It's true, Bubaloo, isn't it?' She curled the hairs on his chest until he was annoyed, but not too much. Then she released herself from his embrace, hugging her knees so that her body was coiled in the foetal position. Slowly, slowly, she stretched out her legs and arms. With a sudden spring-like movement, she kicked the duvet several times until it was positioned just so, covering her legs but not her feet, which were too hot with the radiators on. 'Vinny,' she yawned, rubbing her feet against his. She sank her body back within the folds of the duvet until only a shock of messy black hair could be seen. 'You always forget to turn the radiators off.'
The couple had been 'introduced' by an aunt neither of them had met, an acquaintance of Shilpa's mother who had given Vinod's father a mobile number with the assurance that she was from a good family and that her parents were looking for a suitable boy. Their first date was an evening walk along the South Bank, during which Shilpa, a nurse at Hammersmith Hospital, had surprised Vinod by telling him she loved hip hop, that she liked David Lynch and Tarantino, that she had seen Reservoir Dogs last night with her friends and that she was the only one who hadn't yelped on seeing the ear severed. That evening, when the lights came on, twinkling along the river, he reached out for her hand and she accepted, standing on tip-toes to kiss him.
For Vinod, the study of Shilpa's morning behaviour was the best part of his day. Like a man, she fell asleep immediately after sex. This was an experience so new and fascinating to Vinod that it consumed him entirely. Each morning, he would sit upright to watch her. She looked so defiant in sleep; eyes sealed shut, body still, face against the world. During the spring months, when they first began what Vinod termed a 'serious relationship,' he had watched her eyelids grow heavy. It was in the first stages, when sex was hurried and bashful. He recalled their third night together. He had lain in bed imagining himself in his favourite Spaghetti Westerns wherein men smoked cigarettes next to beautiful women ... when suddenly he had heard what he thought was unusual birdsong. He listened keenly, expecting the sound to come from his open window. He was surprised to find the tweeting noise had issued from Shilpa's left nostril; a whistling affliction brought on by her chronic hay fever, one of the many somnolent quirks that would charm him over the ensuing months. Of course, she slept quietly during these pollen-free autumn nights, but there was always something new to look at, like today for example: creases in her pillow had stencilled themselves into her skin overnight, delicate Braille-like markings that had impressed themselves onto her cheek rendering her softer, more fragile than any other morning. Nice, thought Vinod to himself. Nice.
It was in this moment of serene contemplation that Tripod limped up outside the bedroom. He sat outside and meowed in his droning repetitive way which always prompted Vinod to shout, 'Get lost! Get lost cat!' and always made Shilpa leap to his defence.
'Please. What's he ever done to you?' asked Shilpa.
'He scratched me again yesterday,' said Vinod.
'He's just a grumpy little so and so. He doesn't mean it,' she said, her voice muffled by the duvet.
Vinod hated the cat. He was still smarting at the amputee's unexpected arrival into their flat last autumn. Tripod (a name bestowed upon the tabby by Vinod) had been licking his leg in the middle of the road outside the couple's flat when Shilpa's car reversed over him. Shilpa had shrieked, braked and rushed out of the car towards the unconscious tabby. Kneeling down, the asphalt cold against her knees, she had scooped up the bloodied cat and swaddled it in one of her mother's old saris, the pink-and-green one she used to line the car boot with. She drove weeping with him in her lap, all the way to the veterinarian on Ruislip Street. One of the cat's front legs was amputated and after several weeks searching for the owner, Shilpa had brought her victim home. It was in this manner that Tripod had arrived into the couple's flat, a three-legged tom cat with a bandaged stump and a sad meow. Vinod felt that Shilpa over-compensated for her mistake with an overdose of affection. Tripod responded in turn by following her wherever she went.
'Get in then, you little git,' said Vinod as he made his way towards the bathroom, frowning in disgust at Tripod's sly but eager limp towards Shilpa.
It was another Sunday. The coffee was bubbling away on the stove. Vinod's digital radio was wafting sweet Smooth FM melodies through the kitchen as he made scrambled tofu on toast for his eggatarian wife-to-be. 'Love's whole or else it's nothing,' he repeated to himself. Shilpa's tofu tasted as bland as the writer's maxim. He reached for the Peri Peri in the top shelf of his cupboard, hit the bottle's bum hard with the back of his fist and shook the saucepan. He added turmeric, pepper, soy sauce, scallions and chives and heard the familiar whir of the extractor fan as smoke clouded up the kitchen. What did it mean? Did the writer of that over-sized novel really think that love was whole or nothing? Maybe it was a character in the book who had said it and not the opinion of the author himself? He resolved to check it out, but immediately the thought repelled him. 'These bloody writers get away with telling you any old crap,' he told himself, furiously scrambling Shilpa's tofu with his fork. As he did, elements of Shilpa floated into his mind: little toes that curled inwards, the peppercorn mole on her left breast, half-moon Punjabi nose, wisps of baby hair that grew on the top of her forehead despite the fact that she was thirty-two and greying. He loved all this. But he hated the way she'd burst out laughing in the middle of an argument for no reason. He hated it when she came home from work talking about how great Geoff was ... Geoff this, Geoff that. He hated her habit of implying that there was something wrong with the manner in which he dressed, and he still harboured resentment for her unsympathetic reaction to his acne outbreak last February.
That writer's sentence had made Vinod feel like a fraud. Because whatever that bloody thing was, it certainly wasn't whole. He felt more for Shilpa than anyone else he had ever been with, but what did it mean, this 'all or nothing' business? He considered the inelegant dance of her asymmetrical breasts earlier that morning and panicked. He couldn't love her wholly, he despaired. He closed his eyes and exhaled in an effort to calm himself. And as he did, he felt that familiar pang of guilt for having neglected Shilpa's right breast in favour of the left. (Sometimes he didn't like either of them out of frustration that one was so obviously superior to the other.) Maybe other people could love wholly ... maybe it was just him. He liked Shilpa ... in bits, in fits and bursts, in small compartments at different moments in his life. He didn't love her wholly, but sort of when he ... needed to or felt like it. Of course, he'd never tell her this, because what was the point in causing an argument? Love, Vinod surmised, was like the plastic trays of ice he kept in the freezer; he remembered them only when it was unbearably hot or when friends came over and asked.
His parents had hardly spoken to each other in the last five years of their marriage. Did that mean they didn't love each other? Vinod remembered a time in his childhood when his father had kissed his mother's cheek each morning before work. Or had he dreamt that up? When she died, Vinod's father had grown introverted. For three years, he had spent his evenings carving miniature Ganeshas from scraps of wood found in the local dump. Then he had remarried. Where was the loving wholly in that? No, no, no. The idea was flawed on many levels. And yet the man who wrote it, who dared to declare it with such arrogant self-belief and supposed wisdom was Shilpa's favourite author, a man somewhat older than Vinod, a highly acclaimed writer, poet, polyglot, all-round-genius of international renown. So what? thought Vinod. Maybe there was something wrong with the author himself. Maybe he had commitment issues? Vinod shook the tofu out onto Shilpa's favourite green plate and placed two slices of toast beside it. He took her breakfast into the bedroom and as he did the musty scent of sleep hit him.
The bedroom was silent but for the soothing sound of autumnal rain outside. Shilpa was snoozing, head face down on the pillow, hips twisted sideways, pyjama bottoms riding up her legs. He placed her food on the bedside table and nudged the lamp to one side. As he did, the novel fell on the carpet, a tasselled purple bookmark fluttering from it. It landed face down. Careful not to lose the page, Vinod retrieved it and found within it the offending sentence, the one Shilpa had underlined in pencil. 'Love's whole or else it's nothing,' he whispered, staring hard at her, trying to stir within him something of the emotion he had felt earlier that morning. Nothing. He felt nothing. 'Love's whole or else it's nothing,' he said again, his spirits sinking. Tripod stood up on the rumpled bed sheets and meowed in condemnation. Vinod wondered if he was going mad. He did what he always did in situations such as these; he reached for his mobile and called Sandeep.
'Look McBrahmin, I'm not sure about this.'
'Hey, man. Nerves, eh? Everyone gets married. It's no big deal. It's what you do when you're thirty-four. Enjoy it. Probably your last chance ... by which I mean you're ugly.'
'Get lost, Sandeep. I'm being serious here. It's not the marriage part. I can marry her, but does that mean I have to love her non-stop forever?'
'What the ...? Non-stop forever? Okay. Time for a conference. Meet you tonight?'
'Poison?' asked Vinod.
'Of course,' Sandeep replied.
The Poison Factory was a swanky low-lit bar with rectangular metal tables and suede cushions covering uncomfortable chairs. A cerulean candle glowed on each table beside steel boxes containing cocktail menus. A specially commissioned graffiti depiction of Tupac Shakur with wings had been painted in electric blue on the bar's domed ceiling. (Touches like this distinguished The Poison Factory from London's lesser drinking establishments.) Situated between the Italian ice-cream parlour and the old cinema off Upper Charleston Street in Kentish Town, The Poison Factory was one in a number of local businesses owned by Turkish Londoner, Asil Attila. As far as Sandeep was concerned, Asil's bar was the only place in Kentish Town that was 'serious enough about its music, man'.
Vinny had first met Sandeep, a GP with his own practice in Hounslow, by the women's toilets in the back of The Poison Factory. He was chatting up a brunette girl by telling her that he was a Brahmin. 'We're the highest of the Hindu castes,' Sandeep had said, gazing dreamily at her chest. 'Don't believe him!' Vinod had shouted over at her. After two pints of Guinness and several tequilas, the girl had disappeared and the two were joking like old friends. Soon they were ordering double quarter-pounders with cheese from the McDonalds over the road. That was seven years ago. Sandeep had since married a girl from his parents' home town in India but the pair still met to have their monthly 'conferences' as he termed them. Together, the management consultant and the doctor discussed women, politics and sport. Last time, Vinod had produced an electronic chess set from his rucksack; they played 20-minute matches whilst debating Iraq and cricket over side orders of chips and garlic mayonnaise. Today's subject was the very serious matter of women.
Sandeep threw his damp coat on the empty chair beside them, placed a palm on his stubbly chin and frowned at his friend.
'Are you a complete idiot?'
'Why lie? Why all the lies all the time in life? I love her now ... I think. But who knows about tomorrow. Why lie to each other?'
Sandeep examined his best friend's heart with an imaginary stethoscope to which Vinod smiled wearily and slumped further into his chair.
'Oh god,' said Sandeep. 'Where's Asil when you need him?'
'Where's Asil?' Sandeep shouted over to a blonde waitress. She was singing along to Mary J. Blige and doodling on a beer mat. Still half-submerged in her reverie, she looked about dreamily, took a final sip from her cappuccino and shouted, 'Asil! Asil! Some bloke wants to see you!' Asil's head emerged from the kitchen. On seeing his two favourite customers, he performed a mock-salute, wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and began making his way towards them.
'Ello, boys. W.I. meeting again, is it?' he asked.
Neither Sandeep nor Vinod understood where exactly Asil came from. Born in Turkey, Asil had spent his childhood in the East Midlands and his adolescence in London but since then he'd travelled the world taking bar jobs whenever and wherever he could. He no longer seemed to come from anywhere. The three men knew each other long before Vinny had been introduced to Shilpa. In those days, Asil had attempted to teach the two men a thing or two about women. He'd given them tips on appearing more 'ethnic' in front of certain drunken girls as a means of getting laid. 'England's a beautiful country, Vinny,' he'd tell them, having described a few hours with a girl in the back room of his bar. Asil's amorous encounters were an odd mixture of the clichéd (a liaison with one of his waitresses in the kitchen store room) and the sublime (a fling with a male librarian in one of Camden Town library's bookable carrels). He had been so graphic about his accounts that Vinny was shocked to learn from Sandeep, months later, that Asil had a wife. Over the years, both men had grown accustomed to Asil's amorality, an approach to life that neither of them dared approve of but which fascinated them to such an extent that the pair always returned to The Poison Factory to hear more.
'Hey, Asil,' said Sandeep.
'Hey, McBrahmin,' he replied with a mischievous smile.
'Asil, tell Vinny a thing or two about love.'
'Love? Sooner or later they all come to ask me the same thing,' Asil said, winking over at the blonde waitress who ignored him and continued to doodle on a serviette. He began:
'This is what you wanna do, yeah? First you tell her about her eyes ... '
Asil slapped Vinod hard on the back and laughed out loud.
'Stop joking around, Asil!' said Sandeep. 'Look at Vinny's face. Tell us about ... tell us about how much you loved your wife before you married her.'
Asil shrugged his shoulders.
'She was so cute when I met her in Turkey. Now ... not so cute. It's the way it goes.What can I say? Twelve years is a long time to be with someone. Desire's is a funny thing ... I get curious. Doesn't mean I don't love my wife.'
'Maybe your wife gets curious too,' retorted Vinod.
'Ei Sandeep! Why bring this miserable idiot to my bar?'
Vinod stared into his beer. Asil continued, more playful than before:
'You know he's in love, cos otherwise he'd tell you. He'd tell you, wouldn't he? You old wolf. Awooo! What you worried about, Vinny? You worried someone else is cutting her grass? Ei, ei? Ahh. Don't worry mate. We're here for you. We're all here for you. Look ... so she's gone off with someone else. It's okay. You're alright. You'll be alright. He'll always have memories, won't he, Sandeep? He'll always have memories. Oh, look at his face. First love, is it? Enjoy it. After that it's all down hill. What's wrong, Vinny? Did mummy not hug you enough?'
Vinod glowered at Asil.
'Oh Vinny! You know your problem? You're too clever! Always thinking. What do you think about all the time, eh? Chances are fifty per cent of it is going to be crap.'
And with that Asil made his excuses and left the two men to their beer. Vinod felt the weight of Sandeep's reprobation on him. 'There was no need to be like that,' Sandeep's eyes were saying. 'We both know what he's like and we both hang out with him despite it.'
'It's not Asil,' said Vinod. 'I'm not sure about ... Shilpa. She keeps looking into the fridge and frowning if there's meat on the top shelf. She's even weird about eggs. How can you love that?' Vinod blurted out.
But deep within him he felt something worse, a sadness he could not quite place.
'What's wrong with you?' asked the doctor, popping a handful of spicy cashew nuts in his mouth. Sandeep continued:
'With Ketna ... I didn't know how it was going to work out. We've never had the whole passion thing, you know? She used to be so weird about saving plastic carrier bags and refusing to let me buy Sky. But she seemed the sort to really work at a relationship. And she's a good person. And she wants to be with me. Forever. Full stop. D'you how hard that is to find?'
The blonde waitress walked over the table beside them, gave them some beers - 'On the house from Asil!' - and began clearing away the plates. Eager for her not listen, Sandeep pulled his chair closer to his friend and placed a consolatory arm around him.
'It's not like how you imagined it, right? It never is. Not after the first time. It never is. First love syndrome - that's what you've got. Trust me, I'm a doctor,' he said, pulling out a box of Lucky Strikes and lighting a cigarette.
Smoke from the doctor's cigarette lingered around the men. Vinod felt too weary to contradict his friend, felt too much of a queasy sadness within him to tell that his first love was his thirteen-year-old neighbour Sally Ward when he was just four years old. He felt too anxious to tell him that his morning's performance wasn't nostalgia but something worse.
'I'm going to tell you a story I haven't told anyone before, Vinny. Because some things you don't tell people. You just don't. But you're my friend. And you're an idiot in need of help. So listen.'
Raindrops helixed in the wind outside, making a screen of condensation on the window. Vinod could hear the rat-a-tat-tat of the rain's long fingers along the rooftops of cars outside, the gurgle of its throat as it trickled into the gutter. Sandeep fixed his gaze on it, and his eyes misted up with an old sort of sadness.
'I was a medical student back in Nottingham then. The girl's name was Nina and she was a law student from Münster on an exchange course. The first time I noticed her was in the canteen. She was sat at a long table with her head leant back, laughing. She had these incredible grey-green eyes. Some Italian guy in the lunch queue beside me called her name. She turned and looked over to where I was standing. And that's when I saw her face. I mean, I really saw it, y'know? A segment of her lower lip was missing, and I remember thinking it looked sort of ... erotic, like someone had stolen off with it because it looked so good.
'She ignored me the first three times I saw her. It was only when she caught me by the town centre talking to a Muslim French girl that she stopped to talk. She had this tiny body with this big German accent. She told me which club she was going to that evening and gave me her number. It was on squared paper. I've still got it. I Sellotaped into the front cover of my anatomy textbook.'
Sandeep was already onto his third beer and gazing intently at the graffiti above him: Tupac's spray-painted winged figure against an azure blue sky. The rapper watched over the two men, and the mood he evoked in The Poison Factory lent a messianic quality to the story.
'We spent just three months together, me and Nina. And then she went back to Germany. I thought I'd never see her again. Back then, I said to myself that those three months were my life, y'know? Like that was it. That was my lot, tucked right there in my third year at med school. But we stayed in touch. I remember thinking "God! You're gonna be a doctor in Hounslow. Snap out of it, man!" And then I heard myself telling her that I was going to tell my parents. They're good people, my mum and dad. I told her we'd get married in a Catholic church, whatever her family wanted ... Catholic, Jewish, devil-worshipping. Whatever she wanted. We kept in touch with each other all the way through medical school. I didn't look at anyone else. We emailed and called and wrote letters to each other. I sent her stuff, like once I sent her a diary and another time I sent her, umm ... one of those paper thingies ... like one of those snap thingies with love hate and names. I got my niece to make it for me. Can you believe that? I mean, this is me we're talking about.
'I loved her. I felt like everything in Nottingham was just hanging around, everything was about hanging around until I met her again. In the summer, I went to Münster to stay with her family. They were nice people. They weren't too happy that I was Indian but I figured these were things people got over, right? But, d'you know the thing I really remember? It was this plastic crocodile in her room with numbers written on it. She said it was lucky. She said she kissed it each time she got a good grade and then she wrote the new grade down on another one of the crocodile scales. I mean, can you believe that? The girl had a lucky crocodile. And do you know the best part? The best part was ... she hadn't told anyone but me.'
Vinod tried to not to cave. 'Lucky crocodile?' he asked, trying to suppress his amusement. 'Lucky crocodile?'
Sandeep didn't seem to hear his friend's ridicule. Riding the waves of emotion his story had managed to stir within himself, he took a long slug of beer and continued with his story:
'And it was like my life was an airport transit lounge until I reached Nina. The other medics would joke about it. They'd be like "ne nah ne nah!" every time I mentioned her. But when I was with her it was like I had landed. And she felt the same way too, because all that time, she'd been waiting for me. Sometimes I got scared. I kept thinking, "Oh, she's not so good. She's not so great. We don't even see each other. Call this a relationship?" But whenever I was DJ-ing at someone's party I'd always put on her song whether they danced or not ... and I'd be like, "We kissed to that song." I'd remember Nina in her car near her house in Germany, her legs splayed up against the back seat windows and I'd think she was waiting for me. And then one day, we'd been waiting for each other for two years. No, that's wrong. It wasn't "one day", it was more ... like gradual heaviness ... like a stone on my heart. And I think we both realised that maybe we'd just keep on waiting and meeting and waiting and meeting because that was the kind of love it was. And I'm not saying she wasn't the marrying sort, because she was, of course she was. It was just ... the waiting was part of loving her. The waiting, the travelling back and forth ... I know it sounds wrong, but that was all part of love too. And then ... and then she let me go. One day she just decided that ... and she stopped calling. A year and a half after she stopped calling, I met Ketna and we got married, got proper jobs, had children, became real people. But that doesn't mean I don't think about Nina. Because I do. But you've got to move on in life, hey? You can't just sit there waiting for life to happen to you. You have to ... kick it into being.'
A fervent tremor had spread across Sandeep's lips; his eyes became bloodshot and distant-looking. Vinod wasn't too sure how to respond to Sandeep's drunken ramblings. Embarrassed by his friend's public display of emotion, he checked his mobile phone. A call from Shilpa. He missed her, he realised. He slipped Sandeep a ten-pound note for his taxi home - and left. Making his way towards the glass doors of The Poison Factory and outside into the rain, Sandeep's voice drifted after him.
'... and all I could think about was how many scales were on that plastic crocodile, man. I think there were six but I can't remember ...'
It was pitch dark by the time Vinod returned home. The bins were out on everyone's driveways ready for collection at noon on Monday. Tripod had seated himself on the green one beside Shilpa's car. He was staring out into the distance, licking his stump and meowing sadly at the moon. For once in his life, Vinny felt sorry for Tripod. 'Poor git,' he said to himself, clumsily turning his key in the latch. Vinod considered stroking him but Tripod looked too solemn to interrupt.
On entering the flat, Vinod threw his rain-spattered jacket onto the sofa and made his way towards the kitchen. Shilpa was seated at the table, a rectangular slab of moonlight falling across it. She was sat with her back to him so that Vinod could only make out her silhouette. He switched the light on. She was wearing her reading glasses, frowning in concentration as she glued sequins onto a card.
'Hey,' she said, without looking at him. 'It's Tripod's birthday tomorrow. Well ... I mean it's been one whole year since he came to stay.'
Vinod smiled. He walked over, kissed her neck and began searching through the cupboard for two mugs and a bottle opener. As he did, a strange smell arose from the laundry basket near the washing machine. He walked around the room, sniffing the air.
'It stinks in here. What happened?' he asked.
'Tripod sprayed on another one of my skirts. He's sulking somewhere. I think he's still nervous from the accident. I thought the card would cheer him up,' said Shilpa.
'It's gross. He's gross,' said Vinod, holding his nose.
'Leave him alone! But I know ... the whole flat reeks of it,' Shilpa replied, shaking her head.
'Fancy sitting outside for a bit?' he asked.
They dressed warmly for the occasion. Shilpa wore two jumpers, a denim jacket, a hat and one of her Arsenal scarves. Vinny pulled out his long winter coat, Shilpa's favourite, the black one with green and white stripy lining.
'It makes you look like a mint humbug,' she said.
'Yeah? You look rough too,' he said, kissing her.
Vinod shared the garden with two other residents, one of whom was an elderly English lady called Mrs Kinglsey-Smith. A gardener, she had taught them both the names of each one of the flowers she had planted. The only one Vinny recalled was 'Hellebore' because, on hearing it, Shilpa had whispered 'helluva bore' and the pair had exchanged mischievous glances as they were given the grand tour. The flowers looked weirdly alive at night, all fragile, sad and solemn. They sat on a wooden green bench, drinking vegetarian wine (Shilpa had checked the label before purchasing it) from coffee mugs, shivering together.
'C'mon then. Name me the stars,' she said.
Vinod shifted a little in his seat. He looked up at the sky.
'I dunno' he said. 'I can't think of the names of any. Let's make them up!'
'Okay. You first.' Shilpa smiled.
'Over there looks like Tripod. Ek, do, teen.'
'You do love him.' She beamed.
'I wouldn't go that far. That lot over there ... they look like a jalebi!'
'No they don't. Hey, that one's so bright. It's got red in it!'
'It's an aeroplane, you fool.'
'Get lost!'
'I love you, Shilpa.'
'Give me your wine then. Hey, look at the moon!' said Shilpa, pointing towards the sky.
'Ahh. The moon. You're so romantic,' said Vinod, rolling his eyes.
'No. Not like that. Look! It's got a cloud on its head. It looks like a Mr Whippy ice cream.'
'You're right. That's weird. Mr Whippy. Ha! The moon looks like an idiot. Tripod keeps looking up at it,' said Vinod . 'He's sulking on one of the bins outside.'
'I think he's being bullied by the other cats on the street. It's my fault,' Shilpa replied, scraping her trainer against an empty plant pot.
'No way. Tripod's limp makes him look gangsta. Like Tupac.'
Shilpa laughed.
Maybe he's missing something, he thought.
Vinod's early wedding present to Shilpa was a fluffy-faced Persian named iPod, a cat so unlike Tripod that Shilpa first mistook her for a cushion. Contrary to all expectations, iPod was less concerned with matters of the heart and more interested in killing. (In her first week, she pounced on a blackbird, butchered a mouse and scratched poor Tripod on the nose so often he took to limping around the house in an effort to get away from her.) And on the evening of their marriage, in that expensive London hotel, Vinod traced the henna pattern on his wife's manicured hands and feet, exploring tendrils and lotus flowers until he found his own name, hidden at the foot of a mango tree. He had expected the sensation of finding his name on her body to stir some excitement within him, like unwrapping the surprise in a present. But a more pleasurable feeling had greeted him, a sort of warmth - not that heady drunken feeling he had experienced on first meeting her - but something quieter. And long after Vinod's hennaed name had faded from her feet, when all the bad wedding presents had been auctioned on the internet and families had finally stopped visiting, he recalled that writer's sentence. 'Love's whole or else it's nothing,' he said to himself, watching Shilpa as she slept. He felt for his wife in the way people feel things without words: it hovered between warmth, lust and desire for her; gratitude for having found her, for loving her, for having been accepted into her life and the unnamed panic that hid within it; a kind of queasiness he felt in the black night, an instinct he would never voice or act upon but which surfaced despite himself: the fear that this was it, this was his lot.
Monday, 13 August, 2007
In Short stories
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- Troy and Me by Drew Gummerson
- History Lesson by Tony Peake
- Mufti Day by Katy Darby
- Frank by Mercedes Helnwein
- Notes On A Grave by Lauren Frankel
- The Poison Factory Conference by Divya Ghelani
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