HELLO MAHABHARATA

63. Incognito

[in·cog·ni·to || ɪn'kɑgnɪːtəʊ /-'kɒg-]
anonymous, unknown, having one's identity hidden

SHE WISHED TO CONCEAL AND PROTECT THE MELTING COLOURS OF SUN IN THE ABENDROTE SKY ON HER CANVAS. Conceal and Protect.

Her paints seeped in the parchment, trying their best to assist in her not so cherished attempt of painting the sunset. For employment and for disguise. Gone were the days she lost time when her brush danced on the canvas. As much as she loved sunsets and paintings, she shivered because she just loathed the sound of those footfalls.

Art was one of her best loved activities; didn't realize it shall be her weapon too. She was the artist, an art educator for Uttara, who should be the sculpture of perfection in every fine art being a princess.

The old wing of the palace rooftop on the eastern side had a fluorescent pink bougainvillea garden and it was the kaliyug woman's solitude. Peacocks in the front lawn danced spreading their iridescent wings and she realised that she should sometimes bring her morpankh to the sunbeams too, it must have been knackered in that iron box. The contingent returning from Vasta kingdom marched in the courtyard. The birds teared through the dusky sky racing to their abodes on the ancient and vast birch trees in the forest situated on the far, outskirts of Matsaya kingdom.

She was Lavanaya. She was the painter. She was the one who groomed the princess in the art of painting. But she was also a woman and for the maiden time she hated herself for being one.

"As red as your lips is that sun in the sky and your painting too, lovely painter."

A sickeningly sweet tone, the slurring voice enough to desiccate into sweet poison breathed near her ear and she trembled under his demeanour. Fear. "I do wonder how these lips would taste on mine— lords, what an evening, is it not?" He smirked relishing her dread and his fingers fondled across her bare back, dry ale on his hands, they deliberately lingered on her love handles. He inhaled her and clasped her curls tied in many thin and intricate braids. "You are a commoner but I must say you have the scent of royalty." He sniffed her hair as some intoxicating herb and laughed repeating those terrorising words only to revel in her shrivelling anatomy under his wrathfully frosty touch, he hummed in her ear again, "How will your lips taste on mine?"

Kichak was drunk and whenever he was, he always found his way to her to satiate his desires, staggering on the carpeted stairs of the palace's rooftop soused in various wines. He had developed a fantasy for this painter appointed to teach the beauty of art to his niece. For the commander in chief of Matsaya this woman was just a walking body for him to caress and stroke and sometimes let his lips taste her bare shoulders, crafty fingers and neck. But he longed for her lips.

"They'd burn you." She hissed and scrambled her hand on the wet painting over the canvas, destroying it in pain and agony. What else can I do? She was nauseated at his breath of wine and his burgundy coated lips searing her nape. She let a tear fall down not because of his hegemony but helplessness. A wrong step and they all face misery. And then she would have shrieked if he hadn't covered her mouth with his smoke scented hand. He twisted her other arm behind her back salivating at the clutch of her paint stained fingernails scratching his arm. "You are only a mere servant to the kingdom. Don't dare use this tongue to answer me until I ask you to. I will do it." He bitterly gnashed his teeth and savoured under the palpating and breathless bosom of her, his eyes crossing her cleavage and undressing her from only the knives of sight.

Her blood ceased and froze because of the threat he gave her, always. What if he do it?

"I will throw you down my bed. Twist your arms around your back. And spend the night with you until you scream and cry. I can do it. You get that. Do as I say, bring me that woman, that hairdresser my sister has. What is her name? Ah, as if I care. I do care about her fierce body. You did a mistake to think me a fool. I know who you are. The woman to stay a maiden forever. Mind telling me where the Pandavas and Draupadi are, where are they hiding?"