Chapter 23 / 51 · 4 min

Aparajita's Naked Body

These days, looking at Aparajita’s naked body makes me feel unclean, as though I am lying there with my eyes shut, sunk deep in a heap of comfortable sin.

And yet our relationship could have been as ordinary as any other.

We could have sat across from each other at North End, or side by side in a rickshaw, talking. We could have held hands in the middle of a conversation. We could have stolen kisses in the dark of a CNG. But none of that ever happened between us.

Aparajita was out of my league. I never imagined, even in my dreams, that anything would ever happen between us. But I didn’t want it to happen like this either.

So one day, when time started moving again in that closed room, when we were sweaty and exhausted, I ignored Aparajita’s naked body and looked into her eyes.

“Will you marry me?”

Aparajita stared at my face for a few seconds. Then she got off me and started putting on her clothes. In a soft yet cold voice she said, “I knew it. I knew something like this might happen. Men always mess it up.”

I sat up too. “But how much longer like this?”

Aparajita looked at me questioningly. “Why? Are you bored? Don’t you like me anymore?”

“I like you. I like you, which is why I love you. I love you, which is why I want to marry you.”

Aparajita said, “But that wasn’t the deal. The two of us talked it through and made this decision with cool heads. I told you from the start, don’t keep any expectations of me. I could leave any day.”

“I remember all of it. Still… there’s always a but somewhere.”

Aparajita smiled. “Well then, now there’s no more but.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the end. I’m not coming back, Sabbir. You won’t have me anymore.”

By then Aparajita was done getting dressed. She left without giving me a chance to say anything more. My own body began to feel like a vile worm out of hell. I needed to shower, to freshen up. All I had to do was stand. But I didn’t feel like standing.

I didn’t have Aparajita again that year. Not the next year either. Not for the two years after that. After she blocked me on Facebook, I didn’t look for her on the phone. Maybe I didn’t look because I hadn’t really loved her. Or maybe because there was nothing left of the girl’s body for me to look for.

But the year after that, at that same North End, I suddenly ran into Aparajita again. I was surprised to see she wasn’t embarrassed. The girl hadn’t changed at all in those years.

I said, “Mind if I sit?”

A wry smile sat at the corner of Aparajita’s lips. She was probably remembering a lot of things. I said, “It’s been so long… where were you?”

“I stayed away from social media for a while. Things aren’t going well with Subroto. I tried hard, but I don’t think I can hold this marriage together anymore.”

I should have been sympathetic. Instead I looked at Aparajita’s chest. “You’ve gotten really hot!”

Aparajita said, “Don’t try to flirt. I won’t give you the time of day.”

“You think girls are so scarce for me that I’d go after married women?”

“Really? You’ve been checking out a married woman for the last ten minutes.”

I laughed. After that, Aparajita talked a lot that day. She talked the next day too, and the day after that. In the end she said the same thing again, don’t keep any expectations. I gave her my word that I wouldn’t.

But these days, looking at Aparajita’s naked body makes me feel unclean, as though I am lying there with my eyes shut, sunk deep in a heap of comfortable sin.

And yet our relationship could have been as ordinary as any other.

We could have sat on some park bench, carrying on an unnecessary but delicious conversation about some meaningless topic. Or we could have kept up the failed attempt to maintain a safe distance in a rickshaw. Or, holding hands, we could have traded a few cloying yet lovely lines of romance.

Cosmic Being 1: You’re sure this bug doesn’t exist in the other parts of Earth? The flow of time is fine everywhere else?

Cosmic Being 2: Yes, I checked the simulation logs. This infinity loop wasn’t created anywhere else. I’d already fixed this bug and deployed it earlier, but I think something went wrong in the data migration. Just kill Subroto, Sabbir, and Aparajita and the problem’s solved.

Cosmic Being 1: Fine, kill them. But this is the last time. If your mistake forces us to manually remove people from Earth like this again, I’ll have to raise questions about your capability.

Cosmic Being 2: Understood. I’m very sorry.