The Decrepit, Three Women, and a Parrot

By RAM GARG

'story of the languidness of desire, which, getting an enabling moment, tends to portray sumptuousness it is not made up of the greens for. The sequent is unorthodoxically somber of tittilating spoor, which leads characters, a ramshackle husband, and his three women, the termagant wife, the sedulous lover, and the vexatious boss, to provocative overreach of desire, causing, in the process, surrealistic nebulousness, salacious of the import but literary of impute.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: RAM GARG
• Release date: Oct 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386161547

Book preview

1.

The obfuscatory display of desire was purposive, it seemed, artistic abstractness purporting to define physical and psychological cravings of the female as an all-embracing sensuous naturalness.  Or, contrarily, the inbuilt intonation intended to highlight agonizing discord in between the physical restlessness and the psychological skullduggery, attitudinal quoining of basic human instinct being not so well ascertainable, vacuously inane and yet vexatiously fervent of the significance.     

They were thirteen of them all, a dozen plus one, seemingly different of the years, of salacity, of scintillation, of the size and proportions, and of curvaceous alignment, in mid-sized ornate frames, decorously embellished, twelve of the series hanging on the front wall, dimly illuminated from some concealed light source, each portrait telling a story, a thematic narration concluding in counterplotting disenchantment, a kind of willful, or, perhaps, impelled obscurantism.

The actualized sensuous exposition, featuring such an assumptive missive, was anarchically distinct of the artistic pretence that seemed to foreground both, the suppositious inextricability of the feminine mood on the one hand and fragility of emotional cohesion on the other, but sexual insobriety, if it was really the dissimulating factor, did little to hide rawness of the urges beneath, or the subcutaneous tumult of inherent sensuous parlousness, it getting eccentrically ensconced in different bulges and outthrusts, rendering these parts of the feminine body mendaciously un-relaxing of neglect and yet spasmodically heavier of expectation, an anticlimactic contradiction that seemed to mystify the display all the more.

The interlinear misalignment of cupid topicality, however, varied from one to the other, purlieu or purloin, ectopic or ecumenical, deviant or dogmatic, combative or confessional, as if each one of the small collection perceived sensuousness to be a language distinct from all other kinds and varieties of sign vernaculars, or of native and non-native carnal manifestations, and, thus, anagrammatically different even amongst the given lot, exuding a distinct seductive hue.    

Ramdin walked down from one frame to the other, a symmetrical progression of subtlety; from innocence to maturity, of the state of undress; from an eighteen years old nude to the sumptuously draped woman in mid forties, and of captious acquisitiveness; from careless sensuous disorientation to considered carnal perceptibility.

The display seemed to portray condescending behavioral purposiveness, either to boldly portray apparent sexual incompleteness or to challenge and counterbalance the iconic gust thereof, either to rue the lack of sensuous fulfillment or to presumptuously stand by such negating carnal verbalism, the gloss of colors emboldening emotional mysticism, and tenacity of curvaceous patterns denoting primacy of personal stature. They were, otherwise, gracile of the physical make, each one of the anthology, real or imaginary, but seemingly determined of epicurean scrupulosity, whatever sexual arduousness they stood for, soliciting or unrepentant.

Ramdin had never been to an art exhibition before, staying willfully away from all kinds of exegetical display, pastime of the fantasist, he would believe, but had been presently led unscheduled to the door of an art gallery he knew not of, circumstantial jugglery again proving sarcastically mightier to calumniate and denounce illogicality of the judgmental aptness that he would often but compulsively go with the imbecile sway of. While, taken awed of the sudden onrush of black clouds in the sky, every other one of the office fraternity had preferred to call it a day, he, reading the signs all wrong, and believing that the sky would soon clear itself of accumulated untimed black mass, had stayed put back. An hour beyond the closing time and the weather still showing no sign of the clemency, he had finally stepped out in the drizzle, now in hurry to reach back home before he would get stuck up of atmospheric ferocity. Vehicular traffic on the road had long thinned out. With no carriage available he had started on foot, taking, in huff, a wrong left turn that led him on to a long deserted route.

Half way down the given destination and the drizzle suddenly turning to a deluge, he had looked around, on both side of the lane, for some shelter, finally catching, amidst uninhabited sprawling patches of the green, some hundred yards ahead, on the right side, a glow sign reading ‘The Gallery’.

The art center, a solitary concrete double storey structure, was as deserted. Visitors, if there were any, must have left, long back. Have already rung the closing bell the lone uniformed caretaking attendant, seeing the new untimely arrival, had informed, meaning unsaid that entry into the premises was forestalled for the day. The minder, waiting a moment not, had got lost in the rain, seemingly in as much hurry to reach back to the safety of his home somewhere nearby.         

Debarred thus of entry, Ramdin had stood, for a long while, in the outer veranda, hoping for the rain god to retreat before someone from the inside would ask him to leave the compound, again rendering him vulnerable against the onslaught of ferocious splash of falling waters. But the clouds did not relent, and nor was the door to the art exhibit closed on him. Hesitatingly, he had inched inside, a step at a time, to ward-off the increasing splurge of the wind fury, soon finding himself at the internal opening to the display area, sententiously laid out and cryptically illuminated, somberness of semi-dark interior holding out in contrast to the ornamental glow of displayed feminine portraits, sexually optative but canonically dexterous.  

The last of the collection he stood before currently was sequentially different from all others, the symmetrically exhibited lot. Though thematically alike of the premise, the middle aged woman on canvas, standing aloof on a pedestal, along an opposite corner, was a little more real like of the countenance, a little more congruent of sensuous dissatisfaction, and a little more scintillating both in ostentation and plausibility. Oddly heavier of the physical make as against fragility of feminism splattered across the opposite wall, every distinct part of the female body seemed to alluringly throb, as much of anxiety as of insolence. The casually draped piece of finely woven transparent muslin overlay betraying little of the void of neglect, or of the spasm of hope.          

Ramdin rued perplexity of behavioral ruction, some kind of sexual disorder, he believed, nurturing a wish stupendous of reveling in decimation, in nothingness, and in denial. Facial contours and contortions, as he indignantly surmised, did speak of carnal impertinence, and so did speak, but of longings of the flesh, the voluptuous turgidity of the bust, and the quasar of supplicating glisten far down, a tiny trace of it, lingeringly stuck a little below natural outer opening of the petaloid.

Hello beautiful.

It was a dishonest superfluity, a case of subjective misalignment of the cognitive sense, perhaps, unintentionally cantankerous of the tenor though, or, contrarily, a mischievously put contemptuous outburst, supposedly a titteringly put exception to the blatantly displayed narcissism, or to the bedizened salacious contrast the woman in her mid forties was idyllically accoutered in, for to the antithetically subtended mind there was nothing beautiful-like about the visuality, more so in the backdrop of volitional gracility of the other twelve on the opposite wall, or the not so intense an aphrodisiac speciousness that they, individually and collectively, seemed to artistically represent. Noticeably heavier of different bodily measures, the woman on the canvas must have, in real, weighed 200 pounds, if not more, a precognition in itself that did not seem to go well with the acclamation of his call, unintended or otherwise.  

The surreptitious no-audience theatricality, however, was innoxious of the precept, but only till he heard from behind, not a moment later, someone from within the gallery or another stray mistimed visitor chidingly affirming its presence, Cynicism affronts no art. 

Startled of having been caught of the unruly quibble of his mind Ramdin turned around to confront the grouse. The woman of the colored portrayal he stood before presently had suddenly come alive, in flesh and blood, of similar feminine prominence, but sans artistic quintessence of the display. Draped in a loosely fit verdure evening gown, she looked more like some commonly middle-aged house maker, one of millions of the like, high on carbohydrates and thus a little corpulent of proportional symmetry. He stuttered for response, knowing not what to say, looking, twice over, at the woman in colors and the woman in real, in turn, finally managing to plead guilty. Meant no offence to the ladyship, really he muttered, solemnly respectful of address, but almost inaudible of the tone.

But you offend the lady currently, meaning her ugly.

Oh, another of disorderly orchestrations of the mind, saying wrong words at the wrong time, an embittering vacuity he had often fallen a victim to, inviting rancorous accordance, of a person, or of the system. Suddenly confounded of such a caustic grumble Ramdin wished to get instantly away from the penetrating hostile feminine glare, fearing of the arrant effluence thereof. But he was forgiven for the thoughtless asperity, as instantly, a smile that holistically flashed across wide spectrum of the female face was evidential of a doled out reprieve. Perhaps, your lordship would like to see the not so captivating a female figure replaced with one of the other adorable twelve supposed the woman, smiling, an ostensive smirk, a mixture of exquisite frivolity and melodic scowl.

The affability of the stance did put behavioral hideousness at ease. The man, borrowing strength from such an unperceptive beguilement of the moment to regroup his mental faculties, dared freshly grudge, I, rather, resent factional oddity of representation of each one of them said he, pointing towards displayed feminine figures, first the lot of twelve on the front wall before turning back to last of the images, in the side corner, adding, so Freudian of the regimen, but ostensibly  sacramental of travail, making personal disengagement an influencing medium to heightening of the pitch of sexual convolution of the will, covertly a self-willed sadistic peculiarity, both to begrudge and require such an euphoric subjection.

The woman laughed, unrestrained of plangency and terse of the valor, vibrational acuity of the guffaw resounding in the big hall, for long. Ramdin could obliquely envision the jiggle of twin fleshy mounds, as unrestrained under the wear, modestly covered but, perhaps, not so disciplined, as if mustering heaves of their own, to join in the slanderous howl. He detested the woman for such overbearing stewardship, and the obscene cupidity it seemed to be indicative of. He, however, heard her respond, again a grouch, Is not the reckoned ecclesiastic rule of feminine appropriateness a sign of restrictive, and, thus, preferential arrogance of the man, a sadistic vent in itself, intending to deny a woman the verity of her desire, whatever tractable or tractional standard it wishes to relate itself to.            

Ha, the libertine, calibrating happiness on a wrong scale, devoid even of basic auspice of moral delineation!

Austerity is for the rabbinical to live by empyrean measurement of every moment of his or her life, or the enfeebled, conscientiously and convivially, getting forced disciplined to such behavioral subjectivity.

The man did get ruffled of the leeriness, for the skepticism, if it was really so, sounded not just to be general but directed as much at him. Was he an incidental slave to such behavioral acculturation, austere of desire and thus complainingly benign of carnal intent? Was he really happy of the trite?  Life is never simple, he had read, to fit into singularity of a quote how well meaning and well defined it is. So was not the timbre of his sexual espousal over last many decades, unsatisfactorily satisfactory to begin with, had, during the tortuous long run, turned preposterously sullen, finally withdrawing itself from all affiliating blusters, the need, the desire, the longing, and the pleasure.

Was the woman, somehow, aware of anchoritic moroseness of his sexual existence, or arcanely guessed him to be fixed up with such restrictive beatitude?  Disoriented, he again wished to run away from imperious roistering of a snapping quidity to which he seemed to have no easy answer. But roistering of the weather held him back. It was now deluge like conditions out on the road, water-logging impeding all passages, forward or backward. The thunder of the sky sounded to be one with the chidingly put capricious excerption of what the woman had diffused, a while before.  She, however, jibed again, in continuation of her playfulness, Autarchy of some portentous interdiction, perhaps, or of an assumptive solecism, to stay put disinclined to the needs of flesh surmised she, adding, or your lordship would like to join the lady, over a drink, in calibrating afresh, on the right scale, the exactness that both beguiles and begrudges artistic defining of sexual behavior of the human.

A deriding raillery or a motivational petulance, Ramdin was not very sure. But, of some impulsive imbuement, he decided to play along. On what artistic terms, he questioned, trying to sound as skittish, and added, a melodic afterthought, to facilitate paraphrasing rogational correctness of distinct features of the syllabi, of-course?

So unlike the innocent babbling that had heedlessly caught the woman’s interest, or the inoffensive grumble later, for, whatever apostatical reason it could have brawled in, the dubiety presently heard more like a cleverly put counter-offensive, speaking as much of phantasmal classicality as of numerical and versicle inhibitions, a kind of a well thought of ploy to scholastically unhorse or besmirch the adversary.  But the woman, amused of such variable clueing, needed not a moment to carp back, as reverential but preceptive of the lead. Everyone is exiguously holier in a sanctuary, devoted and yet abled not, ever in pursuit of the blessedness, for all abreactive kinds and forms of art, including the art of sex, of whatever schism and excellence it boasts of, is far short of the ultimate truth, the self-realizing extremity of the man, or of a woman, for that matter responded she, smirking.

Oh, a delusional. 

Or, perhaps, an appetent.

Residential part, eighteen steps above, on the sides of the studio that she called ‘the atelier’, was a richly furbished but poorly kept multi-bedroom penthouse that exemplified both exactness of life and exasperation of the living, at the same time. Disorderly acquiescence was more a rule with orderly accumulation of home comforts. Much like the sexual conation in colors, material possessions too were in a state of disarray, for nothing seemed to be in place. Furniture in the living room lied scattered around, and the linen in two bedrooms he passed through was a wrinkled lot, evidencing