Her home is a lovely place. I loved going there, but then a visit there was not without its dangers. You see, my mother-in-law couldn’t stand me- she was my girlfriend’s mother. Precisely why I vowed that I shall love her daughter that much more- and that is how we two became lovers. She would invite me when her mother was out, her father in office, her brother in school and she was alone- and I would think of a Hindi song: my father is in the field, my mother at the bazaar, I am alone and you can come home. The adventure was too good. I remember the day when she hid me in her kitchen when her father paid an untimely visit. Or the day when I jumped out of her back window when I saw her mother coming from the front. I trampled the flower beds, and the watchman got a good dressing. But then everything’s fair in love and war. And I took my life-risks visiting her. She too was in love with me for what I did. You see, she had read a nasty play called The Rivals and was inspired by the heroine.

And so to satiate my darling heroine I came to her place one winter morning. The watchman again showed me those big eyes. ‘Why are you after a poor man?’, precisely the question I would have liked to ask my mother-in-law. But then she was out and I made my way to the girl in the house. And she was wearing the same red skirt to torture me. It hardly reached up to her knees, and the lovely expanse of fair legs would make me mad. And then she would take a lock of her hair falling from her forehead, roll in with her fingers and look at me with that mischievous smile, ‘Why did you come, darling?’ We had made an arrangement to call each other darling when we were alone- it seemed she was watching too many classic English movies and fascinated herself with being one of the ladies from the gentile society who is invariably addressed thus by her suitor. She didn't mind paying back the compliment.

‘The smell of the flowers in the garden was intoxicating. I was attracted like a fire moth.’

‘What! You didn't come to meet me? And I was sitting all morning thinking that some handsome knight would come for me.’ She and her knights!

‘Well, the knight is here before you, madam.’

‘But the knight didn't come to meet me. He came to see the flowers. Well then, why are you inside. Get out and go to your flowers.’

And so I got out. My mother-in-law was a genius. She was a real gardener. Spring or autumn, summer or winter, you come to her garden and you are sure to be fascinated at the bounty of nature. The occident and the orient was fused in the garden- the yellow daisies and the orange marigold, the pink lotus in the miniature pond and the white lilies beside...there were more flowers in the garden than my vocabulary could carry. And it really was a different feeling walking in a forbidden place- me in the garden which was my mother-in-law’s personal domain. And yet it was here that I committed the greatest outrages- from trampling the flower beds to plucking full-blooming red roses. Little did she know that those roses were lodged between the pages of her daughter’s romantic novels.

‘The rose is red and the lilies so fair

To pluck the precious, do I dare?

Well, it’s been some time that I plucked a rose, isn’t it?’ I asked her. She was sitting by window, looking out at the garden.

She jumped up. ‘Don't! My mother will kill you and then me. I shan’t find my knight then.’ She always had her reasons. Last time she had forbidden me similarly, saying that if I were to pluck all the roses then there wouldn't be any left for her knight. And like last time I picked the rose.

‘You know, this looks far better lodged between your hair.’

‘I don't know, but how do you know.’

‘You shall see.’ And then I went inside again and stuck the rose where I wanted. It was strange. She would always talk of her knight who never came and then again she would accept all my lover’s nuances like a timid girl which she was not. It was not a doubt- there were none as to whether she loved me. Just the proceedings....