The love you dream of

Aakash loved Zena. They had nothing in common. They met only twice. She was a mother of a two-year-old son. She was married and divorced in Moscow.

Aakash was a writer brimming with stories to tell, which none wanted to hear. So he wrote his stories in a little black book.

He had met her first at a nightclub. He was with a friend of his. She was with a friend of hers. Soon, they started talking. Then, they started seeing each other.

He used to open pages of his black book and she would take out her translator. And it may take hours for her to understand a story he read out to her.

It was a matter of languages: English and Russian. They picked up sign language in the process.

Aakash never asked Zena to sleep with him. She never wanted him to sleep with her. They bonded in a way I cannot explain. She listened to his stories. She loved art. She appreciated beauty and poetry. She cried on his shoulders sometimes too for unspeakable sorrows, he guessed.

Zena a 32-year-old prostitute... She slept with a different client every night.

Aakash never understood her need for living her way of life, but he respected Zena. Because she set a price for her body, for her time, and for her effort.

And she could not be seduced by anybody.

She did not use her body or sex as an attention-grabber. No man could charm her into bed with his wily ways. He has to pay. You want sex, you pay for it...

(Many were willing to pay for it. None realised that their money was milk for the two-year-old back home.)

No man could force her into having sex when she did not want it. Moreover, she chose whom she slept with. Unlike most women whom he hated. Men who hated Zena and her kinds flocked to the easy women because they needed more excitement. More risk. More talk. They needed to boost their egos.

And because it was free. All they had to do was pay attention...

A short story of a movie concept in mind... wrote it so that I won't forget it like many forgotten others!