12-06-2015, 08:42 PM
Note - I am not the writer of this story but I have changed the ending.
Kuwait wasn’t what we’d expected. My husband had sold our apartment in Bombay to pay for our passports, visas and airfare. He had paid the most money of all to a recruiting agent, to get a good job as a computer programmer there. But when we arrived, we were told that there was no promise of such a job, only the chance to apply.
Of course Suresh was rejected. I doubt they even looked at his application, they knew from his name that he was just a middle caste **. Good jobs were only given to Westerners or ** men. But by the time all of this was clear, there was no way back; Suresh had quit his safe government job as school teacher. We had no choice but to take whatever jobs we could get.
We ended up as domestic servants for a very wealthy Kuwaiti family. We were lucky in a way; they were good employers, they gave Suresh and I our own room. My new mistress told me that she preferred married couples, since there would be less mischief.
But I was devastated to find myself reduced to such a role; I was from a good family, I had even gone to university [although I didn’t graduate]. A minor scandal when I was 19 had started the chain of events that had turned me into a person so low. A love affair I’d had with a boy. He was in school with me, he was studying to be an engineer. But then his mother arranged for him to marry the daughter of her cousin, and I was left pregnant and disgraced.
Even though we lived in Bombay, and the girls I grew up with were all modern, my family had come from the south, and were very traditional. I had an abortion, and my mother arranged my marriage soon after. Although Suresh was from a slightly lower caste than my family, he was from near our village in Karnataka, and he had a government job. He was willing to marry me [with an adequate dowry, of course] despite my circumstances. We met for the first time only a week before our marriage.
I found my new husband attractive enough, although he was 10 years older than myself; and he treated me quite well. I was relieved that he didn’t want sex straight away. We spent the night in one bed, and he touched me gently for a brief period before we slept. In fact, my husband seduced me nearly as my first lover had. He told me he wanted our relationship to be right; he knew of my shame, but he told me outright that he wouldn’t ever hold it against me. Mistakes are made, he said, lessons are learned.
For my part, I knew I had to please him in return. I surrendered to his advances as soon as was decent, although I had little sexual desire after what I’d gone through. Dutifully, I kissed my new husband, the stranger to whom I was bound for life. I allowed him to undress me, to caress my body. And then he did something that a friend had told me of once; he lowered his head between my legs.
I was shocked; shocked at how pleasant it was. I hadn’t thought I could possibly enjoy myself with a man again, I’d thought my life was over in that regard. But my new husband had learned somewhere how to please a woman, and he spared no effort. It wasn’t really the action of his tongue against me that pleased me so much, although that part was certainly very agreeable. No, it was more; that he treated me with such respect, so much more than I deserved. It was because the act was only to please me; he could have demanded anything of me, and as his wife I would have had to comply; but his first concern was my pleasure, not his own.
I held his thick curly black hair in my hands as his tongue teased me in the most wonderful way; and I knew he was good. I had been lucky, my new husband wanted to be good to me. As I realized this, I felt a hot flush of joy; perhaps my life would be worth living after all. Perhaps there could be love after marriage.
I had known orgasms before, but this one, the first with my husband, was different. It was a good orgasm, a right orgasm. Instead of frightening me, it reassured me. I looked into his clear brown eyes, and I was sure all would be well.
His penis was long, hard, and dark. It entered my young body at last, and he surged forward and back within me, held me tightly in his arms, kissed my face until he made me climax again. It’s hard to describe the joy I felt; my life was not over, my life was just beginning. Yes, in India we do it in reverse order as compared to the West. First marriage, then sex, with love following behind.
My new husband made love with me every night, he told me I was beautiful, he kissed me passionately before leaving for his work. For a couple of years, life was very good. But Suresh wanted more for us; more than our ***** apartment in a poor section of a crowded and polluted city. He wanted to earn enough money so that we could buy a house somewhere better, like Bangalore, or perhaps move back to the small town where he’d grown up and start a business of some kind. I begged him not to give up his good job, but he said we must leave Bombay, as it was just too unhealthy there.
So we found ourselves in Kuwait; I often thought as I cleaned the vast marble floors, of how I once thought I’d have a girl to help with my own domestic work. The first two months were uneventful, as we settled into our new roles. Our culture is very much about accepting whatever circumstances one finds oneself in; but I knew that Suresh was seething inside, he was burning with shame that he had been so stupid as to ruin our prospects. And with anger at the man in Bombay who had duped him.
The next fatal mistake was mine, though. I was cleaning the floor, and I saw 50 Kuwaiti Dinars under a chest of drawers. It was dusty, the note must have been there for weeks; I put it quickly in the end of my sari, sure that no one would miss it. The following day, I found out otherwise.
“Usha. Step in here, please. I want to talk to you.” The voice made me jump; it was Yusuf, the 18 year old son of our employers.
He was the only member of the household that I didn’t like. He had never spoken to me before that, but I often thought he was looking at me. He was speaking to me from the door to his rooms.
“Yes sir?” I said.
“Come in here. I want to show you something.”
He was tall and quite fat. He usually wore western clothes, unlike his father. He never went out during the day, and he had terribly pale skin, and a puffy, unhealthy look to him.
It was the custom of the house that when a servant was in the private rooms of anyone for any reason, the door remained open. Yusuf went inside ahead of me, and sat at his computer screen.
“What’s the meaning of this, Usha?” he asked, waving at the screen.
There was a video image of me finding the note and hiding it in my sari. My heart fell through the floor as I watched it repeating automatically.
“If I show this to my mother, you will be fired immediately.” He said, “And if I show it to my father, you’ll be arrested.”
He leaned back in his chair and smirked up at me triumphantly. I felt dizzy and I couldn’t find breath to speak.
“What do you think I should do, Usha?” he asked.
“Don’t...” I whispered, “Don’t show it to them, please, please don’t show it! I’ll give it back, I didn’t mean to take it.”
“Of course you did, don’t be stupid,” he said as his eyes travelled lazily from my face to my feet and back again. “Why do you always wear that stupid sari, anyway? You could be hiding anything in there. Go and close the door.”
Instead of closing it, I left through it quickly. I found my husband in the garage, polishing Yusuf’s big car. I told him what had happened.
“I had a bad feeling about that money from the first time you told me.” He said.
“What will we do?” I asked in terror.
My husband frowned in concentration, “We must go and talk to him, and see if we can work this out. Obviously, he left that money there intentionally, and trained the camera at the spot.”
“But it’s not clear what he wants!”
“I know, Usha; but he might be a bit more reasonable with your husband.”
I was thrilled with my husband’s bravery in the face of confrontation. Together, we went to Yusuf’s rooms. The door was open. The boy was inside at his computer. He looked angry as we entered, and Suresh closed the door behind us.
“Please sir,” Suresh said to him, putting the 50 Dinars on the desk, “Do not be too angry with my wife, she had intended to return the money to your mother, but she just forgot.”
Yusuf swept the precious note from the table with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“It’s too late now. Your wife is a thief.”
There was a silence so thick, it would have caught a running buffalo. We all knew what this was about; we all suspected what Yusuf wanted in return for keeping this matter to himself. Suresh would never suggest it though, he’d rather die. And Yusuf himself lacked the courage.
“Suresh, we know what he wants,” I said in Hindi [Suresh and I normally spoke together in English, since I didn’t know the language of my parents, but we both spoke Hindi as well].
“Yes, but we must think of some other way to appease him.” Suresh answered.
“There is no other way.” I said.
He looked at me in real shock, uncharacteristically lost for words.
“It isn’t as though I were a virgin when we married; you have also been with others. And I am taking my contraceptive pills very regularly, so there isn’t any danger of that sort.”
“But what if he were to hurt you? I don’t trust him at all.”
“You could be here in this room, and you would hear me if I shouted.”
My poor husband was in a lot of conflict, I could see that on his face. He had been so proud before, and now we were reduced to the ultimate humility and shame. I wondered if Suresh would be able to accept that this was who we were now, penniless servants in a foreign land, at the mercy of our betters.
“No one will ever know.” I told my husband; “No one here knows us, and when we do finally return home, no one will know what happened here.”
“Very well.” He said. “But you must speak something from time to time so that I know what’s happening in here, and that you are okay.”
I looked at Yusuf, and then slowly walked into his bedroom. I stood inside the doorway and looked at him again, my heart burning with shame in my chest. He looked at Suresh, who looked away in shame. Yusuf stood, and came in with me. He threw the door closed behind him, separating us from my sorry husband.
I was literally shivering; I was trying to be brave, but I was petrified, I wasn’t really sure of what was to follow. As I’ve already said, I wasn’t of unspoiled virtue before that. He was large, but just a boy. He was frustrated and desperate to know the pleasure of a woman, but he was stuck is his strict world, at least until he would be sent off to school in America. He looked as nervous as I was.
“Usha, I...” he wanted to say something, but didn’t know what.
“It’s all right, Yusuf.” I said, “I understand.”
I took a step towards him, and he took one towards me. He put his big arms around me, and I felt so small against his bulk as he held me against himself. I looked up at him, his big child-like face, so desperate for some sign of approval. I felt sorry for him suddenly, that he would have to stoop so low. He also had his pride. He was a person who appeared to have everything; yet he was missing something vital that even his mother’s servants had - love and sex.
I had no intention of giving him love, and I had no time for even companionship. But I had agreed to sex, so there was no point in making him suffer. I steeled myself, searching for the strength to do what I had to do. I put my arms around his neck, and I kissed him on his mouth. Perhaps I should mention that in my home country as well as in Kuwait, a woman kissing a man who was not her husband was an extremely outrageous act. Not to mention a servant kissing her employer’s son.
I felt a moment of panic; he was very big and strong compared to me, and he was holding my body in a crushing embrace. His lips were all over my mouth, his wispy moustache tickled my lips and my nose. But the panic eased after a minute, and I realized that I was ok. It would be over soon, I told myself, and Suresh and I could start working on putting it all behind us.
I tugged at my bulky lover’s white cotton shirt, and pulled it over his head. He began to unwind my sari. I released my hair from the bun it was normally rolled into, so that it fell around my shoulders, proud and black. We south Indian women do not normally let our hair be seen except by our close families. We take huge pride in our hair, the longer and thicker, the better. My hair was to my narrow hips, and when open it fanned out in a great jungle of gleaming black.
The young man looked at me with such admiration, such total desire, that I almost felt pride; yes, I was poor, my circumstances were the epitome of wretchedness. But I was also a beautiful woman. I pulled open the knot on the drawstring of his light trousers, and eased the waistband open before dropping it over his big chubby behind. His penis was hard already, but constrained by his underwear. The head protruded through the left leg hole, strapped by it alongside his pale thigh. Gently, I eased his underwear down, freeing it.
I was young, just 23 years old, but I had plenty of experience while, I was sure, he had none. In this ultra-repressed society, where men and women didn’t even speak to each other, my culture seemed permissive. Yusuf’s manhood bounced upward, bobbing playfully straight out in front of him, pulsing with youth and excitement. I looked at it silently for a moment; there it was, the male organ. It was big and pale, yet fundamentally no different from those that I had known before.
To be continued
Kuwait wasn’t what we’d expected. My husband had sold our apartment in Bombay to pay for our passports, visas and airfare. He had paid the most money of all to a recruiting agent, to get a good job as a computer programmer there. But when we arrived, we were told that there was no promise of such a job, only the chance to apply.
Of course Suresh was rejected. I doubt they even looked at his application, they knew from his name that he was just a middle caste **. Good jobs were only given to Westerners or ** men. But by the time all of this was clear, there was no way back; Suresh had quit his safe government job as school teacher. We had no choice but to take whatever jobs we could get.
We ended up as domestic servants for a very wealthy Kuwaiti family. We were lucky in a way; they were good employers, they gave Suresh and I our own room. My new mistress told me that she preferred married couples, since there would be less mischief.
But I was devastated to find myself reduced to such a role; I was from a good family, I had even gone to university [although I didn’t graduate]. A minor scandal when I was 19 had started the chain of events that had turned me into a person so low. A love affair I’d had with a boy. He was in school with me, he was studying to be an engineer. But then his mother arranged for him to marry the daughter of her cousin, and I was left pregnant and disgraced.
Even though we lived in Bombay, and the girls I grew up with were all modern, my family had come from the south, and were very traditional. I had an abortion, and my mother arranged my marriage soon after. Although Suresh was from a slightly lower caste than my family, he was from near our village in Karnataka, and he had a government job. He was willing to marry me [with an adequate dowry, of course] despite my circumstances. We met for the first time only a week before our marriage.
I found my new husband attractive enough, although he was 10 years older than myself; and he treated me quite well. I was relieved that he didn’t want sex straight away. We spent the night in one bed, and he touched me gently for a brief period before we slept. In fact, my husband seduced me nearly as my first lover had. He told me he wanted our relationship to be right; he knew of my shame, but he told me outright that he wouldn’t ever hold it against me. Mistakes are made, he said, lessons are learned.
For my part, I knew I had to please him in return. I surrendered to his advances as soon as was decent, although I had little sexual desire after what I’d gone through. Dutifully, I kissed my new husband, the stranger to whom I was bound for life. I allowed him to undress me, to caress my body. And then he did something that a friend had told me of once; he lowered his head between my legs.
I was shocked; shocked at how pleasant it was. I hadn’t thought I could possibly enjoy myself with a man again, I’d thought my life was over in that regard. But my new husband had learned somewhere how to please a woman, and he spared no effort. It wasn’t really the action of his tongue against me that pleased me so much, although that part was certainly very agreeable. No, it was more; that he treated me with such respect, so much more than I deserved. It was because the act was only to please me; he could have demanded anything of me, and as his wife I would have had to comply; but his first concern was my pleasure, not his own.
I held his thick curly black hair in my hands as his tongue teased me in the most wonderful way; and I knew he was good. I had been lucky, my new husband wanted to be good to me. As I realized this, I felt a hot flush of joy; perhaps my life would be worth living after all. Perhaps there could be love after marriage.
I had known orgasms before, but this one, the first with my husband, was different. It was a good orgasm, a right orgasm. Instead of frightening me, it reassured me. I looked into his clear brown eyes, and I was sure all would be well.
His penis was long, hard, and dark. It entered my young body at last, and he surged forward and back within me, held me tightly in his arms, kissed my face until he made me climax again. It’s hard to describe the joy I felt; my life was not over, my life was just beginning. Yes, in India we do it in reverse order as compared to the West. First marriage, then sex, with love following behind.
My new husband made love with me every night, he told me I was beautiful, he kissed me passionately before leaving for his work. For a couple of years, life was very good. But Suresh wanted more for us; more than our ***** apartment in a poor section of a crowded and polluted city. He wanted to earn enough money so that we could buy a house somewhere better, like Bangalore, or perhaps move back to the small town where he’d grown up and start a business of some kind. I begged him not to give up his good job, but he said we must leave Bombay, as it was just too unhealthy there.
So we found ourselves in Kuwait; I often thought as I cleaned the vast marble floors, of how I once thought I’d have a girl to help with my own domestic work. The first two months were uneventful, as we settled into our new roles. Our culture is very much about accepting whatever circumstances one finds oneself in; but I knew that Suresh was seething inside, he was burning with shame that he had been so stupid as to ruin our prospects. And with anger at the man in Bombay who had duped him.
The next fatal mistake was mine, though. I was cleaning the floor, and I saw 50 Kuwaiti Dinars under a chest of drawers. It was dusty, the note must have been there for weeks; I put it quickly in the end of my sari, sure that no one would miss it. The following day, I found out otherwise.
“Usha. Step in here, please. I want to talk to you.” The voice made me jump; it was Yusuf, the 18 year old son of our employers.
He was the only member of the household that I didn’t like. He had never spoken to me before that, but I often thought he was looking at me. He was speaking to me from the door to his rooms.
“Yes sir?” I said.
“Come in here. I want to show you something.”
He was tall and quite fat. He usually wore western clothes, unlike his father. He never went out during the day, and he had terribly pale skin, and a puffy, unhealthy look to him.
It was the custom of the house that when a servant was in the private rooms of anyone for any reason, the door remained open. Yusuf went inside ahead of me, and sat at his computer screen.
“What’s the meaning of this, Usha?” he asked, waving at the screen.
There was a video image of me finding the note and hiding it in my sari. My heart fell through the floor as I watched it repeating automatically.
“If I show this to my mother, you will be fired immediately.” He said, “And if I show it to my father, you’ll be arrested.”
He leaned back in his chair and smirked up at me triumphantly. I felt dizzy and I couldn’t find breath to speak.
“What do you think I should do, Usha?” he asked.
“Don’t...” I whispered, “Don’t show it to them, please, please don’t show it! I’ll give it back, I didn’t mean to take it.”
“Of course you did, don’t be stupid,” he said as his eyes travelled lazily from my face to my feet and back again. “Why do you always wear that stupid sari, anyway? You could be hiding anything in there. Go and close the door.”
Instead of closing it, I left through it quickly. I found my husband in the garage, polishing Yusuf’s big car. I told him what had happened.
“I had a bad feeling about that money from the first time you told me.” He said.
“What will we do?” I asked in terror.
My husband frowned in concentration, “We must go and talk to him, and see if we can work this out. Obviously, he left that money there intentionally, and trained the camera at the spot.”
“But it’s not clear what he wants!”
“I know, Usha; but he might be a bit more reasonable with your husband.”
I was thrilled with my husband’s bravery in the face of confrontation. Together, we went to Yusuf’s rooms. The door was open. The boy was inside at his computer. He looked angry as we entered, and Suresh closed the door behind us.
“Please sir,” Suresh said to him, putting the 50 Dinars on the desk, “Do not be too angry with my wife, she had intended to return the money to your mother, but she just forgot.”
Yusuf swept the precious note from the table with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“It’s too late now. Your wife is a thief.”
There was a silence so thick, it would have caught a running buffalo. We all knew what this was about; we all suspected what Yusuf wanted in return for keeping this matter to himself. Suresh would never suggest it though, he’d rather die. And Yusuf himself lacked the courage.
“Suresh, we know what he wants,” I said in Hindi [Suresh and I normally spoke together in English, since I didn’t know the language of my parents, but we both spoke Hindi as well].
“Yes, but we must think of some other way to appease him.” Suresh answered.
“There is no other way.” I said.
He looked at me in real shock, uncharacteristically lost for words.
“It isn’t as though I were a virgin when we married; you have also been with others. And I am taking my contraceptive pills very regularly, so there isn’t any danger of that sort.”
“But what if he were to hurt you? I don’t trust him at all.”
“You could be here in this room, and you would hear me if I shouted.”
My poor husband was in a lot of conflict, I could see that on his face. He had been so proud before, and now we were reduced to the ultimate humility and shame. I wondered if Suresh would be able to accept that this was who we were now, penniless servants in a foreign land, at the mercy of our betters.
“No one will ever know.” I told my husband; “No one here knows us, and when we do finally return home, no one will know what happened here.”
“Very well.” He said. “But you must speak something from time to time so that I know what’s happening in here, and that you are okay.”
I looked at Yusuf, and then slowly walked into his bedroom. I stood inside the doorway and looked at him again, my heart burning with shame in my chest. He looked at Suresh, who looked away in shame. Yusuf stood, and came in with me. He threw the door closed behind him, separating us from my sorry husband.
I was literally shivering; I was trying to be brave, but I was petrified, I wasn’t really sure of what was to follow. As I’ve already said, I wasn’t of unspoiled virtue before that. He was large, but just a boy. He was frustrated and desperate to know the pleasure of a woman, but he was stuck is his strict world, at least until he would be sent off to school in America. He looked as nervous as I was.
“Usha, I...” he wanted to say something, but didn’t know what.
“It’s all right, Yusuf.” I said, “I understand.”
I took a step towards him, and he took one towards me. He put his big arms around me, and I felt so small against his bulk as he held me against himself. I looked up at him, his big child-like face, so desperate for some sign of approval. I felt sorry for him suddenly, that he would have to stoop so low. He also had his pride. He was a person who appeared to have everything; yet he was missing something vital that even his mother’s servants had - love and sex.
I had no intention of giving him love, and I had no time for even companionship. But I had agreed to sex, so there was no point in making him suffer. I steeled myself, searching for the strength to do what I had to do. I put my arms around his neck, and I kissed him on his mouth. Perhaps I should mention that in my home country as well as in Kuwait, a woman kissing a man who was not her husband was an extremely outrageous act. Not to mention a servant kissing her employer’s son.
I felt a moment of panic; he was very big and strong compared to me, and he was holding my body in a crushing embrace. His lips were all over my mouth, his wispy moustache tickled my lips and my nose. But the panic eased after a minute, and I realized that I was ok. It would be over soon, I told myself, and Suresh and I could start working on putting it all behind us.
I tugged at my bulky lover’s white cotton shirt, and pulled it over his head. He began to unwind my sari. I released my hair from the bun it was normally rolled into, so that it fell around my shoulders, proud and black. We south Indian women do not normally let our hair be seen except by our close families. We take huge pride in our hair, the longer and thicker, the better. My hair was to my narrow hips, and when open it fanned out in a great jungle of gleaming black.
The young man looked at me with such admiration, such total desire, that I almost felt pride; yes, I was poor, my circumstances were the epitome of wretchedness. But I was also a beautiful woman. I pulled open the knot on the drawstring of his light trousers, and eased the waistband open before dropping it over his big chubby behind. His penis was hard already, but constrained by his underwear. The head protruded through the left leg hole, strapped by it alongside his pale thigh. Gently, I eased his underwear down, freeing it.
I was young, just 23 years old, but I had plenty of experience while, I was sure, he had none. In this ultra-repressed society, where men and women didn’t even speak to each other, my culture seemed permissive. Yusuf’s manhood bounced upward, bobbing playfully straight out in front of him, pulsing with youth and excitement. I looked at it silently for a moment; there it was, the male organ. It was big and pale, yet fundamentally no different from those that I had known before.
To be continued