“Bye, bye, a trilling voice made a circle and disappeared into curls of voices, it lost its recognition in lousy hour.”

“He, not he, I can call him he, she or what, a sleepless body with two revealing parts, one masculine, the other feminine but no line of demarcation “, deceptive looks darted into my confused world of speculations and truths. I winked and walked away treacherously.

“We sat around a lousy table face to face amid the lazy, addicted laughters. Hunger was high in the mouths of the typical class of men sitting around us. Half chewed loafs sped down into the deserted stomach. But the hunger in their eyes was awful. The harshness of this hunger made their laughters more wicked. We drew more than closer to escape from this wickedness.

Breathes came into contact vaguely. Momentum was lethargic and it could not pick up. The response was cold, close to deadness.

“No”, I am not an attraction you want to revel in, who I am, a person divorced from maleness, a split personality burning within flames of feminine dreams or a masculine jugglery---it is a question, let it remain as a question with me”, his voice faltered and he moved away stamping his feet with rhythm full of weaknesses and wiles.

“We will meet tomorrow but in the open- eyed light”, he blinked dropping a message.

“Day light, or in the redness of descending sun or nakedness of night”, sensation crawled into wilderness of my eyes.

Let us sit on the bench in the park; surrounded by thickness of shadow of trees, I looked at him with flickering eyes.

Shadows are dark, darkness frightens me, it is my avowed foe, his eyebrows drew crouched with fear.

Darkness ties us into bonds of intimacy, well knit friendship; I held his hand with firmness of my beast instinct.

He jerked off his hand, freeing him from blind force of my brazen faced degeneration. He tried to move away leaving me in spasm of perplexity.

He gave an emphatic nod of No to fall to my persuasions to cross the border line of modesty to immodesty, to brittleness of sensuality. Sensuality is fragility; it is destined to split into bits of distortions. We all are distorted sensualities.

“You don’t want to come along with me across this border line”, a malicious smile ran on my face.

‘ No, never”, he paused. I had once crossed it. This crossing striped me of my chaste innocence. I am unchaste- chastity is gone, he stared as if seized with raging storm of repentance and delinquency.

“Come close to me, I want to take you to my paradise of past days. It was a small village, virgin looking village I lived in. Deep in the mid of village stood a grand mosque, sublime symbol of unity. A clarion call coming from abode of Lord of heavens and earth echoed and reverberated in all the four corners of village. It was all sweetness. It poured into our ears charms of truth, bold and mighty truth and made them invulnerable to all alien voices of falsehood, onslaughts of decomposed moments. We fell in prostrate to seek boundless blessings of All Powerful, All Knowing Almighty Allah”, a feeling of complacency entranced him.

But my own home was butchery. Both bodies and souls were slaughtered. It was a slaughterhouse to its core. But only feminine voices were subdued, bruised relentlessly and then they were buried with screeching slices of flesh. My father run this slaughter house being potent member of feudal class”, Salma took heavy breath, crackling fingers.

“I grew amid his naked lusts, lust for power, lust for playing with chastity to satiate the hunger of his monster of debauchery. But this monster also swallowed me. A gypsy captured wholeness of my masculine physique and tore it into abominable halves of male and female. He took me to this world of jilted glamour. I am now eroded from within and one day I will collapse and blend with the dust, nameless- voiceless dust”, he sobbed bitterly.

Devil squatting on my veins woke up with all its squalidness. I rose with hysterical abruptness and tried to clamp my debauched arms around him to violate his damsel looking maleness. But he wriggled out from my blind bruteness and ran with fury of undeterred power on muddy path opening to right direction. Right direction is all righteousness.

The surrounding was echoing with call of Azan, coming from sky high minarets of a mosque. Mosque was besieged by denseness of wild trees but this wildness was no more a barrier for him.

Sacredness had returned to its origin, devil had retreated but not surrendered.

Who is my next victim, new victim to my snares, I left the bench for another theatrical stage, to lay another ambush. Devil is deceit, deceit is disguised. Some where it is me somewhere my instinct, a diabolic debility of our moralities.