The Mirza Chronicles - Chapter 5: Adventures of a Small Town Girl

"Why are you on T****r?" Mirza asked himself. The dating/hookup app had brought him nothing but pain and heartbreak in the past and he had sworn off it. Yet, reading one of those sarcastic answers on Quora to the question, "What was your experience with T****r in India?", Mirza felt this need to explore the app one last time. He was visiting a small town for a project and by installing the app, he was scratching an itch more than anything else. Like always, he didn't expect to match with anyone, especially since the nearest girl showing up on the app was from forty kilometers away, which meant from the neighboring more prosperous district. Yet, like millions of men before him, he swiped away till he ran out of profiles to swipe on. The app suggested that he should relax the parameters he had set for potential matches - Age: 28 to 37 & Range: Within 40 km. "Why not!" Mirza exclaimed to himself and dragged the bars to make the age range - 18 to 99 and the distance range to the maximum possible setting. 

Several hours later, Mirza got a notification saying he matched with someone. He opened the app and found out that he had matched with someone called Rasika. He opened her profile - it had a verified badge on it, indicating that the picture in the profile belonged to the user and she was 21. Mirza was surprised because he was more than ten years older than the girl he had matched with. This wasn't something he had anticipated while widening those age parameters. He decided to play along. He opened with a witty but dumb joke. It had a setup question and the answer was the punchline. Rasika replied, "I don't know." giving Mirza the perfect in. He texted the punchline and went on to another joke question but Rasika stopped him there, saying, "Can we just talk?" Clearly not into comedy, Mirza thought to himself and started a normal conversation. Rasika had a picture with a dog and Mirza asked her about it. She told him that it was Bruno and he had passed away a while ago. They talked on and off for a day, thanks to the very unreliable messenger on the dating app, which sometimes showed notifications several hours late. 

It did not seem to be going anywhere - partly because of the late texts and partly because Mirza didn't know how to talk to a girl more than a decade younger than him. She practically felt like a child to him. So at one point, he brought up the age difference as a joke and she exclaimed that guys her age were too juvenile for her. She "liked her men a little older". Men rarely ever feel fetishized - this was one such moment. Mirza shrugged it off and resumed the conversation - trying to be as honest with it as possible, but also being a little aloof and mysterious. While he hadn't made up his mind about anything, he knew that he did not want to start anything with this girl, especially since he was in town for a few days and also because imagining himself with her made him feel like a cradle-robber. He had logged in with a name more common than his own and would usually reveal his real name to his matches, but in this case, he decided to continue with the fake name. He had heard several horror stories about women luring horny men into compromising situations and robbing them or killing them to make him paranoid.

Paranoid or otherwise, Mirza was still a guy. He kept opening her profile between chats and going through Rasika's pictures. She was a slim, fair girl with several mirror selfies in Saari and ethnic outfits. It was hard to gauge her height from the pictures so he asked her. She said she was very short, "barely five feet tall" was the exact phrase she used. That was it - he was definitely not dating her, even if things went well. Her petite frame against his large body coupled with the glaring age difference - the optics alone terrified him. He started talking in a more relaxed manner once the pressure of courtship was taken off - he didn't care if she 'un-matched' him so he concentrated on having a good time with the chatting. He spoke about his experiences living in exotic places and meeting different people, while she confided about the pains and tribulations of being a woman in a conservative small-town family. She told him how they were already pressurizing her to get married. "But you're barely legal," he exclaimed, immediately regretting his choice of words. "Somebody knows his porn categories," Rasika chuckled. Mirza was surprised that she caught the innocuous reference. He was clearly underestimating the small-town girl.

Rasika suggested that they do a VC around eight pm that evening. "This app has a video call option?" asked Mirza, feeling old, because the last time he had logged in, the same wasn't there. Moments later, Rasika relied saying, "We should exchange numbers and do a video call on WhatsApp since T****r's VC option isn't that great and consumed a lot more data." Mirza agreed and sent her his number. Moments later, she sent him a hi. She told him that she would be calling from inside the bathroom because that's the only place she had some privacy in her house and it was a rude reminder that he was in a small town and talking to a very young girl. When she called, Rasika was in floral-printed pajamas and had disheveled hair. She seemed very self-conscious. She was whispering since she was in the bathroom and Mirza also whispered to her, reassuring her that she looked fine. She had a very pleasant smile that adorned her thin long face. Mirza complimented that. After several moments, he disconnected the call since he could barely hear her, what with a bad connection and her whispering. They continued their conversation via text.

In Mirza's experience, keeping a conversation with the opposite sex platonic was a difficult task, and eventually, he ended up flirting a little with Rasika. It was one of her pictures on Instagram where she had a crop-top on and Mirza commented that her belly looked enticing. He immediately apologized to her because just earlier in the evening, she had told him how the boys she met on the app were usually just creepy and he genuinely did not want to creep her out. She told him that it was okay. "You have the right vibe," she commented. The conversation became bolder and bolder from that point onwards. They talked about sex and to diffuse the escalating situation, Mirza told her that physical attributes barely matter to him over personality and behavior. This seemed to have the opposite effect on Rasika and she seemed more excited by this. It was a little after midnight and Rasika started sharing stories of her sexual adventures - these were rather vanilla instances, to be honest - she had snuck up to a boy's apartment in her society a couple of times while on walks to have sex and had visited some hotel with another boy from college - what made them adventurous was the small-town setting and her unnervingly strict and conservative family. 

A few hours later, Rasika asked Mirza if he would like to see her naked - she could send pictures or do a video call. "Whatever suits you," Mirza replied, trying not to come across as a pervert. He also did not want to seem pushy - the whole exchange, while technically legal and consensual, felt a little 'pedo' and unnatural to him. Yet, being a guy, who hadn't had sex in a while, he couldn't say no to it. It was around four in the morning when Rasika video called and stripped for Mirza. They had chatted all night long. She couldn't speak because she was still in the bathroom and it was quieter being the dead of night. There's something carnal and basic the first time a man and a woman are naked in front of each other. Rasika was skinny, fair, and had small perky breasts with big nipples. She didn't seem shy at all and placed the phone on the basin and twirled around showing Mirza all of herself. She was all shaved down there and Mirza couldn't help thinking that she looked like 'those girls in porn'. Peculiarly, she had hair in her armpits and Mirza wondered if it was a new fad. As if reading his mind, Rasika said she was embarrassed about her armpits as she hadn't gone for waxing in a while. Mirza assured her that he didn't care.

"Now I wanna see you!" Rasika exclaimed, once she had put on her clothes. 

"No, thank you," replied Mirza, "this dad-bod is not made for stripping." 

"Oh, enough with the age jokes, you aren't that old," replied Rasika as she coaxed him to undress. He obliged after a while. There was a long mirror on the wardrobe in his hotel room and he pointed the camera to give Rasika a view. 

"You are 'thiccc' with triple Cs," she joked. 

"It's called fat," he retorted. 

"Wanna meet sometime?" Rasika asked. It was late and they were both groggy, so Mirza said 'yes' but no specifics were discussed and when they hung up, Mirza thought that was the last of it. But the following morning, Rasika texted Mirza if he wanted to go somewhere that afternoon. He said "sure' but the question was where. She did not want to meet at any public place because she did not want to be seen by her relatives, "who were all over town". "How about we go to a hotel?" she suggested. Mirza asked her, just to make sure, if she meant 'take a room' or 'in the restaurant'. She told him she meant 'get a room' so that "they could talk freely". At this point, Mirza knew what was happening but he didn't want to assume. So he asked when and where she would like him to pick her up. She said she wanted to bunk her college in the afternoon and it will give them a few hours' time before her brother came to pick her up. 

Mirza quickly booked a cab for several hours and called up a semi-posh couple-friendly hotel a little out of town and booked a room. He still wasn't sure if she would turn up. All of this seemed too good to be true. But a few hours later, he pulled up with the cab near her college gate and called her. The cab driver gave him a brief look when he figured out what was happening. A thin girl in a navy blue salwar kameez (which was the college uniform) walked up to the car and waved to Mirza as she opened the door and got in. She was the same girl from the video call but looked way smaller in person. Mirza was a little embarrassed but he stopped thinking about it soon after because Rasika could talk. She started complaining about how suffocated her folks make her feel, the boys in her college and how they spread rumors if you just talk to them and how judgemental the people in the town were. They stopped at a mall on the way to the hotel and she changed into a t-shirt and jeans so that the hotel staff don't know that she was a college student. They proceeded to the hotel where Mirza asked her to wait in the lobby while he completed the check-in formalities. He also did not want her to see his real name on the ID proof he gave to the receptionist. 

The hotel was way out of town and mostly empty as they rode up the elevator with a bellboy who showed them to their room. It was a large lavish room and they locked up once the bellboy left. "So what next?" Mirza asked, as they sat on the couch next to each other. "You'll have to initiate," she replied, "because I get very shy." Mirza mumbled saying even he was shy and didn't know what to do next. Rasika got up and came to Mirza and straddled his lap and sat on it and kissed him. She was tiny compared to him and his embrace engulfed her. He picked her up as they kissed and took her to the bed. All the feeling of awkwardness Mirza had was wiped away by Rasika's enthusiasm. "It is true what they say," Mirza's inner voice narrated, "there's nothing sexier than a woman willing to be with you." They kept kissing, grabbing and nibbling on each other. 

"You can bite me too, if you want," Rasika said, "Just do it somewhere that doesn't show."

"I am not really into biting," Mirza replied, continuing the foreplay.

Mirza was at that age where man becomes a little inwardly contemplative. So while he made out with this cute younger woman, he also kept reliving the moment within his head, analyzing it and captioning it. He noticed every little detail about her, every little expression on her face, every shiver of her skin. He thought about how surreal it was, while he enjoyed the experience. She was very vocal and kept talking about how she liked what he was doing, at one point saying something like, "Damn, you're better than I expected. Way to raise the bar for all other men." An ego boost, no doubt, but it made Mirza compare how little this girl's expectations were, as compared to some other lovers he had had in the past. He wondered if it was a good thing or bad. After a while, Rasika asked him if he had a condom. He answered in the affirmative. "Should we do it?" she asked, mischievously, also warning him that penetration is usually a little painful for her.

Up until this point, the difference in their sizes was serving more or less as an advantage. Mirza had more tactile control and reach and that helped with the foreplay, but when he put on the condom and they tried having sex, their size difference was more apparent than before. She had a very narrow pelvis and as he tried to enter her, he felt conspicuously bigger than her. He wasn't abnormally big down there or anything - he was quite average - but Rasika was kinda small. It was very surprising for him, he had never experienced something like this before. In his experience, men and women are usually compatible sexually down there, irrespective of their physical sizes. She winced as he tried to enter her. Maybe lubrication was the problem, he thought and licked her wet before trying again. She was too tight for him and it was evident from her facial expression. "Let's not," Mirza said, a while later, trying not to sound too dejected.

"I am having fun without it, it's very romantic," Rasika replied, with a kind goofy smile. What could have been a very awkward moment, passed rather quickly. They went back to touching, petting, kissing, and just grabbing each other. A couple of hours later, Rasika looked at the time and said she must leave, even though she didn't feel like leaving. They put their clothes back on and tidied up before leaving the hotel. They stood in front of the mirror and Rasika commented that they looked good together. All Mirza could think about was how much larger he looked as compared to her tiny frame. She decided to go back in her college uniform since her brother would be waiting by the time he drops her back - also since there was nobody in the hotel, it was okay. When they walked down to the reception, he asked her to go wait in the cab while he checked out from the hotel. Mirza was feeling very conscious as they checked out - he avoided the gaze of the receptionist and practically rushed out. He had done nothing wrong, but it felt weird. 

On the way back in the cab, Rasika talked normally. She told him that she had a great time. She told him about her past relationships and how she maneuvered the extremely strict rules of her household and how she eventually decided not to date because of it. Mirza was more somber. Even though she had all but said that it was a hookup, he was just feeling a little off by the experience. He had enjoyed the sex (even without any intercourse) but something just felt a little odd - maybe it was the age difference, maybe the size difference, or maybe the sneaking she had to do to meet him. Mirza knew it was not for him and he made it clear to her. When the topic of long-distance relationships came up, he told her he didn't believe in it and that's why he never kept in touch with people when he left town. She understood what he was saying and smiled. She instructed the driver to take her to the second gate of the college since she didn't want to run into her brother while getting out of the cab. They parted ways with a handshake and a smile and that was it. They never called or texted again.

After dropping Rasika, the cab driver looked at Mirza through the rear-view mirror when he told him where to go next. Mirza smiled at him - it wasn't a smirk, just a smile. Mirza did not want to say anything to the cabbie - he didn't want him to reduce her into an escapade. So he just talked to the driver normally and moved on. Mirza thought about how people see these encounters - how inevitably, the woman is painted in a bad light when she acts on her desires. Mirza actually was proud of Rasika in a way - she was a sign of rebellion and independence, getting her way in the face of such patriarchal oppression that paints our small towns. And that was the thought that made it possible for him to get over the weirdness that he had been feeling. Mirza was thinking of it as his story, so it mattered how he was older and bigger than the woman - but he realized that it was actually Rasika's story and he was just a colorful experience for her, something she would look back to in the future as a sign of her independence. She had dreams of breaking free from her family someday, something which had very little chance of actually happening, given the community and the family she belonged to, but at least Mirza could be a part of her quasi-emancipation. And that was something!

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