Your lips of pepper
The Saturday morning after she bought her first cable subscription, Maya grilled sausages and tomato sandwiches at 6 am.
She microwaved oats with whole milk, and fried two eggs sunny-side up for an early breakfast with her son before his athletics heats. She wrapped for him the sausages with sandwiches and a chocolate milkshake, and kissed him goodbye.
She had begun drinking mineral water when she woke up and sipped more while she worked out. She did crunches and planks and watched the new "sexercise" videos she had saved on her tablet, trying to learn them.
Maya had never bought cable before that year. There had always been a basic terrestrial service so her family would have access to a few news channels, if there ever was a curfew and they needed the news, perhaps.
But now, eight months after they had returned to their country, her friend wanted to transfer his cable subscription midway through his contract. He was going to buy a comprehensive package with regional worship channels for his parents.
Maya agreed to the transfer and now the four of them were faced with a bewildering number of choices. It was a whole other screen life they had missed - of food, travel and all-day dancing, singing, playing - and now she knew, worshiping.
That morning, she performed her Kegels to Channel V, and when it switched to a Salman Khan starrer with a simpering heroine, she switched to Star World.
Woman on Top, old loved movie, was on.
And at last she was in love with cable.
Love and food combusted when coupled with Penelope D'Cruz in Woman on Top. Maya remembered it from 13 years ago, during a phase when she cooked and fed large numbers of people with affection and hard work and excitement. It starred Mark Feuerstein, whose first longing look at Penelope was like Naren's first glance at the conference.
And like Naren, he was tenderly sweet, but very like a puppy whom you only wanted to pet, not bare yourself to.
Naren, for whom she did not update her changing phone numbers. Of the "Do you like hairy chests?" question that threw her off. Who only wanted "to hold" her, and dropped on his knee at her feet, the first time another man had touched her outside her marriage. Who did not deserve a betrayal which was all she would have for him if she had let him hold her.
After her floor exercises, she lightly massaged ayurvedic oil on her arms, face and neck and the grooves where her thighs met her groin, and the tops of her feet. With the oil in and Woman on Top on screen, she jogged, did jumping jacks and high kicks and anything else she felt like.
Meanwhile a friend texted from abroad. Maya would miss her that summer; she had already left India after a visit. But then there was the next phone call, from the newest woman in her life, Parul, her alter ego born twelve years after her.
Together they had spent treasured hours in a foreign country, discovering desires in common, sharing and loving each other, not ever having enough time because of work and family.
Now Parul talked of meeting at a boyfriend's farmhouse by a lagoon, where they could swim naked and explore each other and their lives apart.
Dangerously, but not disliking the thought, Maya asked Parul to take out her husband, Vinod, who was then visiting Parul's city on work.
Maya remembered Parul's whimsical observation that she would really not mind if her own husband had an affair with, for instance, Maya. And Maya smiled to herself, thinking that if she threw Parul and Vinod together and they made love, there was no one more worthy than Parul of Vinod whom she loved obsessively.
For now, Maya wanted Parul to ask Vinod if he could send Maya for a holiday alone to the farmhouse by the lagoon.
Later, showered and blissful, Maya peeled and sliced ripe mangoes that her aunt had sent from her orchard. And Woman on Top kept pace, while she ate mangoes in the nude, abs worked out and limbs epilated.
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