Not First Love by Jennifer Lawrence Page A

got the coffee, not black, with full milk and sugar as he had been told.
    It worked on Zilo too. With a few sips, Zilo felt better. He told Arthur he didn’t know who was spraying. He hadn’t made any such arrangement. He called and asked Greg. He too never gave the order. He told Arthur he will find out and let him know. Looks like someone messed with his party.
    Something occurred to Arthur. He turned to Jan and asked, “How on earth did you know the smell so well? Do you use it?”
    “There has been no need for me,” Jan answered with a smile, “You would need it more than me.”
    “I’d love to,” he said with a charming smile. Jan’s heart skipped a beat.  She looked away.
    “Yes I did recognize the aroma without any difficulty.” Ron came and sat beside her. She became pensive. After a few minutes, she spoke.
    “Remember I told you that we stayed in India for some years?” Arthur nodded.
    “My parents would leave me at my grandmother’s place during the summer vacations. Summers could get very hot there and most schools would remain closed for almost 45 to 50 days. 
    I loved to spend this time there, it was so verdant. Fragrant plants like jasmine, tuberose and gardenia were planted all around the house and as it got hotter, the flowers would bloom and it would get so heavenly. If you spent too much time sitting and smelling the flowers, you would feel giddy.   Every night I would sit in the terrace and sometimes dream about my ‘soul mate’.
    Don’t smile Arthur. I was just a teenager then.” She rebuked him.
    “Go on.”
    “Every morning I would get up and collect the flowers fallen on the ground. I would get all but the jasmine would be gone. Sometimes flowers would also be plucked off from the branches. I asked my grandmother who took the flowers but she said flowers belong to God and nobody has a claim on it. But when I insisted, she said it was a Tantrik.”
    “Tantrik?  You know that word?” 
    Arthur was stunned. It was the same word he had been looking for and searching in Google. Now out of the six billion people in the world, it was Jan taking that name.
    “Yes, I know. It’s quite a common word in India.”
    “What language is it?”
    “Well, a number of languages use this same word. But it is originally Sanskrit.”
    “Sanskrit?”
    “Yes, you know it?” Jan asked him.
    “Only one word.”
    “Which one?”
    “Kama Sutra,” Arthur teased her.
    “Oh please! Give me a break.” Jan made a face. “Put your attention into more useful things.”
    “I will think about it. Go on.”
    “I had heard stories from my grandmother how a Tantrik would dabble in dark magic. Most people are afraid so of them that they would rather overlook or avoid them than even see them face to face. My grandmother wasn’t scared of the Tantriks, although she preferred not to talk about them much.
    But It was much too interesting for me. I had a lot of leisure and I would go to the library and read about them.
    Sometimes I would tell my grandmother tell about the hair - raising accounts I had read, of how they sit in the cremation grounds and drink liquor out of human skulls.
    It was not new for her, she knew more than I did.  My excitement and curiosity grew more.
    One day I decided to stay up all night and see the Tantrik. I used to sleep with my grandmother in the huge teakwood bed. As she fell asleep, I went and sat by a window where I could get a view of the jasmine plant.
    No one came until the darkest hour that comes before dawn. I first saw that the plant was being shaken, so that the flowers fell into the ground. Then I saw a woman emerge and she started picking up the flowers.
    She was dressed in either deep orange or red I couldn’t say and her hair was loose and frayed. I was watching her perfectly still and without a breath as if she could hear me breathing.  She picked up the flowers and started going away. I was holding my breath and now I exhaled.
    Just then I saw her turn and