Thief

The first time it happened, she didn’t know what to do. Sleeping with him didn’t exactly give her as much guilt as she expected. He was a married man with two innocent children. And he claimed to be a man of god. And somehow, through the course of something less than a year of working as a maid in the Sen’s suburban apartment, she found that she had stripped naked Mr. Sen’s moral compass.

Monjolika had come to the Sen’s residence on the recommendation of Mrs. Ghulaam, a family friend. Her work was menial – wash vessels, sweep and swathe the floor with disinfectant, hang out the clothes, but the family paid her a considerable amount – enough to buy a new silk sari before durga puja and a vial of red tikka.

Monjolika  could not deny that the first time she wore that red tikka she had not enjoyed Mr. Sen’s eyes linger at the nape of her neck. She had taken great pains to ensure that her sari was tucked in at just the right level – to show off the perfect chocolate skin that she had carefully hidden for twenty four years. She had been with other men.Raghu from the tea stall and kumar from the bakery. But they never held her attention. She waved off those alliances like she did, the pallu of her sari, everytime Mr. Sen would walk into the kitchen. He was from from being conventionally attractive. He was rotund and balding. But this did not stop monjolika from dreaming up feverish nights of his hands over her supple body, travelling to the path of ecstacy with her.

Mr. and Mrs. Sen, from the outside maintained an image of a happy middle class family. She – was an English teacher in the same school where shommu and lilluu studied, and He- was an accountant at HDFC bank. Respectable, modern and forward – they emanated a middle class family’s dream. But scratch the surface of every story and there are cracks. Mr. and Mrs. Sen were sleeping on the same the same bed, but had taken their own locations. Twelve years of marriage had made them look at each other as permanent pillars of any building. Strong, but dull – present only to fulfill a purpose.

So one hot afternoon, when Mr. Sen had come home feigning a headache, monjolika was still finishing up with the vessels. She did not hesitate to walk into the bedroom with a glass of hot milk, and on the way to the bedroom, she tucked a jasmine flower she plucked from the vase into her hair and checked herself in the mirror.

Mr. Sen made her feel powerful – like a woman who was respectable and for entire afternoons, she lost herself in the fantasy of being married to an engineer or a doctor. In truth, Mr. Sen was a pitiable lover. His constant need for reassurance from her, probably stemmed from his insecurity. It had afterall been years since he had consummated any sort of physical intimacy. She understood this and reassured – meanwhile slipping into worlds a paltry maid could.

He usually took a nap. One hand over her chest, he would breathe heavily into her ears. His belly would rise with every breath. He reminded her of a stuffed baby bear. The hair on her chest was like a blanket of fur. The first two afternoons, she slipped into slumber with him – but more out of boredom than anything else. Even boredom cant induce sleep eventually. So she’d keep her eyes open. Her eyes often fell on a beautiful  lampshade by the bedside table. It was not unique .bought at a local bazaar, monjolika could not help but obsess about the beautiful object. As a child, her mother had a lampshade just like it. But one day, it was no longer there. her mother told her that she had given it to the goddess. Monjolika was not stupid.  She knew they were poor.

She just had to have that lampshade. She could not stop thinking about it. She imagined how it would look in her shanty, illuminating her film posters. She would cherish it. And by two weeks, the obsession had reached its zenith.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sen’s returns home in the afternoon had become a regular affair. By now, the neighbors had in fact began to notice the brusqueness in his walk.

So, that afternoon, Monjolika feigned everything that could be and made Mr. sen slumber believing that he was in the prime of his element. She cried out his name and scratched his back violently. After he had fallen back on his pillow, grunting and eventually into a slumber, She tore herself carefully from his furry grasp and silently tiptoed to the lampshade. Holdin it close to her breast, she draped her sari and walked to the kitchen and placed the lampshade in a plastic packet and kept it along with the garbage that had to be thrown out. She walked back into the bedroom tore off her clothes and got back into Mr. Sen’sfurry  grasp. In his satisfied slumber he had not noticed a thing. For the first time, Monjolika  actually slept with Mr. Sen and woke up with a start at 5:00 P.M  - half hour before Mrs. Sen’s arrival.

This was the first time she had stolen and she didn’t know what to do about it.

In her house, Monjolika admired the lamp. There was a strange feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. She wondered if she should just run away. Or not go back to work.

She eventually coaxed herself to go back. Oddly life was normal in the Sen’s residence. No one suspected a thing. In their moribund life, they barely noticedthe absence of a lampshade. In a few days, news came of Mr. Sen’s pay raise. A fancy new electric lampshade was installed in the bedroom,

Monjolika continued to go about her business. Mr. Sen’s raise saw him be in an exceptionally good mood and he had discretely kept a new sari beside her belongings. Monjolika silently accepted it.

The next afternoon, as usual, Mr. Sen draws Monjolika to the bedroom. He’s more confident now. They made love to a whirring fan and a faraway television blaring. As Mr. Sen snored deeply, Monjolika’s eyes fell on a beautiful table mat kept on the window pane.