The City Son by Samrat Upadhyay Page A

he’s alone, engrossed in his scenarios, that he fears Didi will catch him in the act. It puzzles him, for surely Didi can’t read minds? And all of these are indeed happening inside his mind, aren’t they? He never writes down any of his feelings—he’s too frightened about what will come out or what others will discover if they find it—so there’s no question of her chancing upon written descriptions of these fantasies. He never mentionsother girls in front of Didi, not even the office girls who work in Mahesh Enterprises, for Didi is always very alert to the girls’ names that might escape his mouth. In the past when he’s merely mentioned a name or two, girls he barely even knows but who somehow feature in the conversation, a small tightness appears in Didi’s smile. Then she might repeat the name of the girl again, something like “Priya Basnet. Hmmm. Where have I heard that name before. Have you mentioned that name before?” When he says no, she says, “I’ve heard someone mention her name before. It’s not you? Are you sure you don’t know her well?” She’s not satisfied until he’s vigorously denying more than peripheral knowledge of the girl.
    “My life is ruined,” Tarun says to Didi one afternoon.
    “What is wrong with your life?”
    “I’m a twenty-three-year-old boy sleeping with his mother.”
    These words have been lodged in his throat for some time now, but he had no idea that they’d shoot out of his mouth so impulsively, especially when he’s with Didi. The hurt on her face is immediate, and guilt grabs him, claws into his chest.
    “Do you think I seduced you?” she asks. “Do you think I’m a seductress? Like all these other girls? Like that so-called mother of yours?”
    “No, Didi, you’re not a seductress. That’s not what I said.”
    “You think I seduced you into this?”
    “I don’t.”
    “Then you wish you were with one of these seductresses rather than me?”
    “No, no, Didi, that’s not what I mean. I’m just …” But the dread is building up inside him again, quickly, and it’s moving up to his throat. He might have to harm himself again, like he did when he banged his head against the wall years ago, to prove his love for her. But, strangely, her face has softened, and crumpled. Is she crying? Yes, she is crying. How could he do this to her? How could he upset the only woman in his life who has loved him, the only one who probably ever will?
    “You think what we’re doing is wrong?” she asks, sobbing.
    He’s never seen her like this: she looks like a little girl who’s just been made to cry by her brothers who called her fat and ugly. “Tarun, do you think, from your heart, that what we’re doing is wrong?”
    He’s confused. What he said earlier had been building up inside him for weeks, and it had to do with a growing sense that he’s been in a trap for so long that he can’t see a way out. Yet now when she questions him like this, he’s not sure that what he has with Didi is so wrong and suffocating after all. “No, I don’t,” he says.
    “But that’s what you’re saying, aren’t you?”
    “I didn’t mean it like that.” He plants kisses on her forehead, her face.
    She doesn’t stop crying. “If you don’t love me, who will be there to love me?”
    “You know how much I love you.”
    “Then why are you wounding me with such words?”
    “I promise I won’t say them again. I never want to upset you, you know that.”
    Slowly her crying subsides. He wipes away her tears. She gazes at his face. “I don’t care what the rest of the world says. I need you. You are my labar , and that’s that.”
    “And you are my labar ,” he says.
    Every other month Tarun gives Didi some cash, a couple thousand rupees, in an envelope. He usually hands it over in the kitchen, sliding up to her from behind and putting his arm over her shoulder with the envelope clasped between his fingers. With a smile, she says, “And what has my son