He placed his index finger on Jamila Miss’s lips. As she closed her eyes and opened them, she experienced an intoxicating happiness. Such intoxication can convince a human being to descend the stairs of forgetfulness and rebellion. His finger slid to her chin. She softly held Asrar’s toe captive between her thumb and index toe. The awakened intoxication of the spirit and the gushing blood in the body sent vibrations to her toes. Asrar cast a glance at the others in the boat. His uncle was smoking a cigarette. His mother was preparing a paan. Asrar’s fingers were now on Jamila’s throat, and he mischievously applied pressure to it. She found it difficult to breathe. He then moved his finger to the spot where her ribs separated into two parts, even as he tightened his grip around Miss’s toe. She closed her eyes and when she opened them, she saw Asrar up close, as if he was trying to capture the moist image of her body in his memory. She opened her eyes at the touch of Asrar’s finger, which had travelled from her chest to her navel. A chill ran down her veins and her spine felt as if she was responding to a sorrowful song. Her aroused state seemed to have mingled with the cold of the water. The black surface of sea was the interpreter of the sea’s sorrow.

The loneliness and unfulfilled desires of the being had come together, and they seemed to be whispering within Jamila. She realized that she had been deprived of thousands of moments of pleasure. She had no wisdom of this deprivation as such, but her soul was in conversation with it and had aroused an intoxication which had further awakened the memories of innumerable, unknown and old deprivations and desires within her. She felt that her husband had never absorbed her moistness in his memories. He had never experienced the warmth of the burning fire within her behind the wet of her soul. Why was the man who was her husband not someone else? Someone who could arouse intoxication in her soul. Someone who could drive warmth and passion in her veins. Someone who could capture her fluids on his tongue, heart and memories.

Something glistened on the surface of the sea. Asrar remained standing there. The boat had reached that place where the rawas and surmai fish were in abundance.

‘Get down! We have arrived,’ Mohammad Ali said, prodding him with his elbow.