The Night to Remember!

Her giggle filled the dark and desolate corner of the unkempt park that was like an upbeat prostitute-in demand during prime time and then brutally ignored when without. Darkness and mirth generally do not go hand in hand unless it is to walk down the path of sinful bliss. Her subdued effort to hide it could not conceal this obvious pleasure. It was a lucky thing that the nearest guard’s post was a good hundred meters away-this meant they could get away with anything...yes, anything!

Romona and Ambrish were naturally and slowly slid into the experimental mode-more like drugged into it. After months of ‘being’ in love, they were getting to manifest it into bodily exploration. They both lived “virtually” as neighbours in the posh locality of the apartments sprawling opposite the huge campus of that private technical college but could never find a common ground to meet without prying eyes and gossiping acquaintances. They had run out of excuses also to bump into each other, with an age gap of three years-Romona being fifteen and Ambrish all of eighteen. After painstaking scheming, they finally managed their first clandestine date and then decided to declare their official ‘status’ to friends the next day. There was an inexplicable excitement seething within their small frames. After all there is just once in a lifetime that you lose your virginity and the prospect that hitherto scared youngsters seems to be viewed with a stance of adventure in the current times.

It was Ambrish’s birthday to legal adulthood and when asked by his steady girlfriend, what he wanted as a gift, no prizes for guessing, he voiced his dream of seeing her gift wrapped so he could slowly unfurl and taste the eagerly awaited gratification. They had talked over the phone for hours about what they wanted to do to each other and now in that dusk dipped evening of solitude and almost no light except the faint sheen of some street lamp at a far off distance of the closed college block, their dreams were finally seeing the daylight.

Romona had almost sighed with some bugs hovering over her head and butterflies in her well toned stomach, sitting crumpled on a big rock behind the thickest of hedges. Doing some random text forwards on her phone, she waited like Prince Charming would have, to find Cinderella gone without her shoe-she waited for darkness to fall. She had sauntered in as an evening walker, though a tad overdressed for it.

“Fuck! All that time spent on dressing up was such a waste.” She could barely tell even the colour of her see-through top, let alone the colour of her cheeks, which blushed even further as she had finally heard Ambrish’s whisper, for he was to walk in about half an hour after her. ‘Clever’ she had thought of him with an unspoken pride, to be so meticulous and for all the detailed planning to keep it hush-hush. It was THE big night as she jumped up to hug him. The first physical touch sent a charge down their systems as hungry bodies clung to each other, yearning for a fusion.

“Fuck!” he grimaced.

“This is the first thing that you have to say on meeting me Rishu-reallyyy?”

“Baby, it’s not that. I forgot the damn condom.”

“Crap...although I knew something like that might conspire. "Happy birthday, baby!” And Romona presented herself to him with condoms dangling at the ends of her forefingers teasingly. ‘Clever’ she had thought of herself too, when as if to defy it, her mobile phone began to ring in the most obnoxious of Lady Gaga’s numbers, breaking the silence sheepishly like a jarring note stuck in peaceful flowing music.

“Switch the damn thing off Romo...you’ll get us noticed,” is what Ambrish could manage to mutter in the quietest of blasting tones.

“It’s Natashi. Oh god, I told her I’ll call after we finish. She’s as excited about this as you are,” she almost laughed, switching off her phone. “Baby, stop frowning. Just because I can’t see that frown too well does not mean that I can’t feel it,” and she ran her fingers tenderly all over his face and melted him faster than ice in daylight. His hands clenched her tight by the back and pressed her to himself feeling her well endowed chest breathing heavily against him. It was so difficult to contain himself now for the moment he had fantasized about for hours at an end sometimes, was materializing and for a while he did not know what to do first.

He began to grope and closed her mouth with his own, his heart beat skyrocketing. So this was what all the porn promised, he mused with eyes closed. So this was how the fairytales feel, she reflected. He unbuttoned her shirt with a frantic zeal unmatched by all that he had felt for all the expensive gadgets that his father’s money had got.

“Kaun hain wahan?” said a stern tone, in a heavy local accent, accompanied with a thud sound of a laathi beaten on the cemented floor and a flashlight blinding their vision momentarily. And the lovers fumbled-Ambrish trying to get in control of himself and Romona of her clothes and almost bare torso. They couldn’t see the guard but knew it was one by the sound and situation that they were in.

“To yahan tum chora chori mauj karne aaye, haan?” and gurgled a mean laughter that instantly sent a chill down Romona’s spine. Trying to be the man there Ambrish got up to explain but could barely walk a few steps ahead, with the light focussed on his eyes, when the well targeted laathi came crashing down his head, making him squeal and slip into unconsciousness. Romona gasped in horror as she saw Ambrish fall to darkness and felt the gleam on her face now. The torch then moved down on her body, as though the guard was relishing every inch and the slow movement of the light became excruciatingly painful for the victim.

For victim she was now transpiring to become, as she realized and her body shuddered at the prospect of what could happen now. She tried to speak but words came out dreadfully broken and sweat covered her even in the cool windy evening perhaps just as much as fright enveloped her. She could shout for help but at that time there were no walkers and this was the most secluded, closed block of the college-they had made sure of that before setting up the date but apparently not sure enough. The other nagging dilemma was that even if someone did come for help, how she would explain to people what she was doing there in the first place. Teenage is a tough phase when you have to make decisions based on morals and righteousness-the path is always slippery and the walker always tentative and unapprised.

The guard walked towards her, fully aware of the predicament of the pretty young thing before him, perhaps even better than she was. She did not know that he had watched them since the time they were together, as he was walking back after the end of his shift from the path behind the undergrowth. He knew he wasn’t much visible to the girl and that her phone was switched off and if there was light enough, perhaps she would see on his face the most devilish grin that had ever so blatantly smeared a human countenance.

The next few minutes saw Romona encounter the worst nightmare of her life as he ripped her off the modesty that is transfixed to a woman’s soul. She had come there knowing she was going to surrender her all, but never in her most horrendous of horrors would she have imagined it happening like this. Her mouth was closed as the bulky and sweaty man overpowered her and brutally satisfied the unwarranted lust that had taken over his body. She was wriggling in pain both physical and mental and tears were the only way that the agony seemed to be finding an outlet, as her entire being crumpled. She tried to move a hand to reach to Ambrish or fight back but she was too tiny before the monster like every biggest of good thing just by itself becomes miniscule before the unfeeling relentlessness of the evil.

Half an hour later Romona walked out in a dishevelled state to Natashi’s house where she was supposed to be for the night spend. Her clothes were untorn but her body and soul were in irreparable shreds. She did not know how Ambrish was and couldn’t care less. Suddenly love was no longer magical. Suddenly life was transformed within a matter of a few minutes. Although swinging between regret and anger, she knew there was no other end to this except utter helplessness, for she couldn’t even identify her assaulter with conformity. What was to be the night to remember, became the night she could never forget!

P.S. Though the drama is fabricated, the story is based on the fact that a couple of teenagers were caught making out in a secluded park recently. It has led to way lot of gossiping and speculation but perhaps what no one learnt from this was that even the smallest of risks can sometimes lead to the most hazardous of damages. Having to deal with students myself, I am aware of how lightly they take such matters and how quickly they jump into relationships that cloud reasoning. This is an attempt to make them think over before doing anything “blindly” in love.