Read The First Time (Love in No Time #1) for Free Online Page A

universe conspired to divide English from Hindi and make English rule as a language par excellence. I was made to rule English and I did as if I knew where I was going with this, expression-wise, though being and of English in a North Delhi university setting made you culturally classy (of class) and oh-so-English in a “white” way and therefore less of a native in a “brown” kind of way. I was training myself to reject a brown colony for a white one elsewhere. But in the meantime I was stuck in this brown colony and engaging in this complicated project of colonizing others by pretending to decolonize my brown memsahibness .
    I was attempting to apologize for my “whiteness” by nativizing brownness of others—translating English texts into Hindi lessons for women who spoke neither but could understand their hierarchy and its power; whose language of everyday speech was also not Hindi and who desired to learn English not Hindi. For you see, the desire for whiteness had been embedded deep into the native skin, irrespective of class, like a tattoo marked in indelible ink.
    There was the phone again. The shrill sound cut into my academic thoughts. I opened my door and reached for the olive green receiver. I say hello but no sound emerges from my larynx. I try again. It's a croak but at least I made a sound.
    “Ms. Sharma, are you ok?” Hmmmmm . . . yummmmm. Ah, the man of the hour. I mumble a “yes.”
    “Why did you run from your phone today?” (He continues to ask as if my yes was actually a moment of silence).
    “I don’t know,” I manage.
    “I am sorry if I upset you again. That was not my intention at all. I was just playing . . .,” He sounds unsure but really apologetic.
    I cut him off like the bitch that I can be, “You were playing or toying with me, Sir? There is a difference.” My voice is braver and my tone is crispier. Good, good. Control is good, I tell myself.
    I can hear the smile in his voice. “Oh, you are the expert Ms. Sharma. Have you been playing or toying with me?”
    I gasp—“What, when?” Words are tumbling out now.
    “When, what?” he repeats the question in a different sequence and then answers, “every time you sit besides or behind me, in the bus, on the scooter . . .” and he actually trails off, prompting my “what?” that brings him back on the trail.
    “Ms. Sharma, I know you watch me, your hands want to know things about me that right now only I know, and you breathe into my body like your next inhale should take all of me into you—so, you tell me what all this is about? Is this playing or toying?”
    “It is just semantics, Sir,” I snap back.
    “Semantics? Big word Ms. Sharma. I would ask you to explain but right now I care a fuck. I am only interested in your wicked intentions with me.” He pauses for some affect. I show him nothing.
    So he powers on, “Oh, Ms. Sharma, I like you. I always liked you. But I didn’t know if you felt the same. And all your playing or toying or whatever has me so intrigued that I have actually stopped seeing straight. I like your playing or toying or whatever but I am not sure if you are ready for me to play with you. Believe me, I would like to—play with you and at the cost of appearing crude and crass which I am not but then you bring out the worst in me, my playing may not be subtle or gentle or confused even. You will know how I play, mind you, play and not toy. I don’t do toying, semantics or no.”
    He stops—to catch his breath, perhaps? Mine is arrested—halfway in my throat and my nose. He wants to play and play hard—like a no holds barred kind of play? What am I, a small town, well-bred, conservative miss do-right supposed to say to that? I could only wonder what his kind of playing entailed. And where would his playing take place, I wonder. Scooters and public buses are not ideal places for what I think he has in mind.
    He still lives with his widow mother and his younger brother in the house that is two