The Mystery Called Chholona :

A couple of days after his marriage, Ratan, an employee of BoB, Bhutan left with his divinely innocent wife. In those days he would travel to Bhutan by The Royal Government of Bhutan bus. The luxurious bus would set off from Esplanade at 7 p.m. and was supposed to reach Phuentsholing, the border town, by 10 in the morning. After the relatives coming to see the couple off, had hugged them and said their final "goodbyes" at the bus station in Esplanade, Ratan turned to his wife in the semi-darkness inside the bus and thought to himself that he was lucky to have her in his life.

Ratan, talked nonstop on the way. He was possibly too excited to be married finally at 39 to take note of how preoccupied his wife was.

He remembered the bus stopping near the Petrol Station and him getting off the bus to see if he could get some coffee or tea for his newly-wed wife. There was no tea-stall in sight. As he kept talking to his wife from below the window, his wife just said one sentence. She had lost her expensive watch, a gift from a friend. Ratan got back into the bus and looked everywhere for the watch but it simply seemed to have vanished!

In the morning as the bus raced along the highway towards the border town, something or someone rather, caught Ratan’s attention. She was sitting cross-legged on the seat in front. The bus by then had got inside the terminus. The woman sitting in front, couldn’t have been more than 45. She was a stunning looking woman with large eyes (she had turned her head towards them at the back once) and curly, wavy hair arranged in a bun. What surprised Ratan was the painful look in her eyes. It was like something had died in her along the way. Her husband, completely bald, was out on the car parking area. The man was walking with his back as straight as he held his head high.

Now, Ratan was a very superstitious man in general. He believed in God. Ratan believed that God always sent you signals before something untoward or bad was to happen. The sight of the woman with the dead look in her eyes and the bald man with the straight-back outside the bus, struck him as odd. Why wasn’t the woman looking out the window at her husband and how could the husband leave such a stunning looking wife behind without bothering to look back from time to time at her sitting lonely in the bus?

The sight of the odd couple was to come back and haunt him frequently later. It was like an ominous signal to him? He dreaded to think of his wife with that sad, painful look in her eyes, as if for her Life was as good as dead, her head bent like all she wanted was to implore Mother Earth like the great Sita had done in the Hindu Epic, to open and take her in. 

They reached Thimphu, the capital by the afternoon. After a thorough search, Ratan found a hotel that would be the right one for his wife. In his 7 years of stay in the country, during his journeys, he would always prefer to stay in one of those cheap hotels. This time, he was paying more than triple the amount he normally paid. How could he not when his beautiful wife was leaving all her near and dear ones behind to spend the rest of her life with him?

During room-serviced dinner, he kept on chatting like a child. He had been waiting dreadfully for the moment when he would get to bed with his lovely wife.

His wife was under the blanket by the time he came out of the attached bathroom. She didn't look jittery like he was! On the night of “Madhuchandrima”( the mating night), she didn't look all that frazzled while he had spent nearly an hour before the departure, talking with his brother-in-law about how to do ‘the thing’, to the utter discomfort of his brother-in-law!

Not that he didn't know what a naked woman looked like. In his youth, he would furtively look at those porn-mags with the pictures of gorgeous, naked women from behind the curious heads of his friends in the club room. He even had a dalliance once in a dusky corner with a much younger girl in a wedding house where she took his hand playfully to her breast at first before shedding her clothes! But he was a virgin and never took a woman to bed before his wedding.

In trousers, he looked thinner than usual. His beloved wife had her eyes kept on him all the while. Shakily, he got out of the trousers and slipped under the double-sized blanket beside her. She had already taken off her clothes. Ratan felt ill at ease. Wasn't he supposed to unclothe his beautiful bride? And why didn't she look shy? 

He glanced at her naked body. He was blabbering and bragging all the while about how much he knew about sex from his local friends. She didn’t respond but kept quiet.

What transpired between them that ill-fated night, was anything but heavenly. He was confused all through and kept apologising to his beautiful wife at the end of a rather dull, unfulfilling act.

 

As the early daylight entered the room through the chinks in the window-curtain, his world came crashing down when his wife, finally uttered the most shocking statement, yawning. 

“I'm sorry if what I'm gonna tell you hurts you." She looked up to him as he was getting back into his trousers. His eyes glossy, legs trembly.

With eyes fluttering, Chholona whispered soullessly :

"I never said I was a virgin. Did I?"

The End

Rathin Bhattacharjee 

Rathindra Nath Bhattacharjee, more popularly known as RNB to his students and colleagues, is a retired English Teacher from Bhutan Civil Service and former Principal of St. Xavier's Public School, Joypur. Published extensively in magazines both national and international, his novels have recently been published by ZobraBooks and are available on Amazon.in. A recipient of the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Teaching from His Majesty, the 5th hereditary Monarch of Bhutan, Rathin Bhattacharjee is a writer, blogger, podcaster, editor, translator and an avid reader.