Of No Avail Web of Wedlock by BS Murthy - HTML preview

Part 2

As Priya drove him into the sprawling compound of an elite complex, Venu began to see the futility of his daydreams entertained in his modest dwelling.

‘Is not our status gap too wide to fill?’ he thought as she drove the car to her duplex villa. ‘Surely she would’ve known that the moment she stepped into my apartment. What for then has she brought me to her arena than to show me my place? Didn’t she hint that I’m better open-minded? What a tease it is? Oh, how I brought it upon myself; instead of being formal, I got warmer to her. Why the women in my life are so cruel to me. What if I deny her the vicarious pleasure by bidding her adieu at her doorstep itself? Won’t it serve her right?’

Parking the car in her portico when Priya nudged him towards the main door; he looked at her as if to read her mind for a clue to her intentions.

‘Am I seeing the devil in a Devi,’ he began to rethink on his vacillating ground. ‘Why am I not being able to give allowance to her genuine change of heart? Willy-nilly, have I become a misogamist without my knowing about that? Maybe that’s the damage my aborted marriage caused to my psyche, but I should not allow that to ruin my life. Why place the cart before the horse, let her show her hand now. ’ 

Thus as he stood at the doorstep, she stepped in to usher him in. 

“Oh my man, tell my name,” she said in all smiles. 

Her strange welcome made him co-relate it with her ‘customary entry’ statement at his place, and that brought to the fore the fuss his folks made to force him and Chitra to tell each other’s names to grant visa to enter his apartment. So it dawned on him that she could be alluding to the just weds’ entry into their marital home, and that raised his hopes all again.

“Oh, Priya,” he said tentatively as she took his hand.

“Welcome, though belated,” she said pressing his hand.

While she led him round her luxurious villa, to his dismay, he saw their economic disparity in full view.

“It’s frightfully rich,” he said as they returned to the drawing hall.

“Don’t frighten me like that,” she said as if pleadingly.

“Again I’m sorry, if I’ve sounded so,” he said taking her hand.

“Do you know what it cost me?” she said leading him to a sofa.

“I’m not yet into the real estate business,” he said in jest taking his seat.

“The price I paid for it is the self-imposed tax on my life,” she began by taking his hand, “After you stopped seeing me, as I started missing you, I developed second thoughts, and even as I was slowly veering towards you, as luck would have it, Veda my cousin visited us after a long gap. After her graduation, even as she wanted to marry her classmate for love, her father forced her to tie her life with a better qualified though oldish looking man, twelve years her senior. Though I was five years her junior, she treated me as a friend and used to confide in me a lot, so she was wont to lament then that as her uninspiring man fails to excite her, she lies as cold fish in her nuptial bed; that was shortly after her marriage but as if fate didn’t intend our union yet, she changed tack during that fateful visit. She said that it’s as well that her father derailed her love for she came to realize that there are other womanly wants that only a man of means can meet; so she maintained that in the long run love alone is of no avail to woman’s life. And that was that.”

“Won’t my story vindicate that, so no faulting that,” he said melancholically.

“Never mind women’s outcry about their lot in the man’s world,” she said after pressing his hand with empathy, “with a little bit of looks and a fair amount of luck, marriage tends them into exalted settings. However, save a slave of Razia Sultana, that could seldom be the case with men for woman tends to look up her station for her mate. Thus, banking on my good looks, even as I raised my matrimonial bar beyond the reach of the suitable boys of the middle class but the upper class parents either cold-shouldered my father’s overtures or pegged the dowry over the moon. Yet it took me quite a while to realize that the marital bar I set was beyond me to cross over onto the higher material zone. So, when my hopes became dupes, giving go ahead to my sister’s out of turn wedding, I came here to increase my social height by becoming a chartered accountant.”

“Wonder how you grew so much in a short time!” he said admiringly.

“But it took twenty years for the world to become small for us,” she said wryly. “So, I plunged myself headlong into the accounting field with a single-mindedness that even surprised me. Goaded by my aptitude and guided by my guru, I reached my chartered goal in the top gear that is even as I pursued the company secretary course to its fruition. Soon, I began my journey in the corporate world to improve my clout on the marital front that too with great expectations. But lo, as I upped the ante, my aura upended my marital equation; so with no right man in sight, I became an old maid in the end. See the irony of worldly success as it affects the sexes; it helps man make a cut with women, the higher his status all the more he attracts women, but it fails the fair sex by constraining men from courting them, and what’s worse, the lower a female on the social ladder, even more she’s a game for all and sundry.” 

“Don’t tell me that you couldn’t find your right man in the right time,” he said.

“Maybe I might’ve but I couldn’t recognize him even if I had chanced to meet him that is after losing you,” she said melancholically. “It’s not just the case with me alone nor is it peculiar only to women. It’s natural for both sexes to eye a dream match but the hazard lies in their inability to picture it on the canvas of reality with the colors of probability. If done, that would enable them to have an idea of the vaunted one for face recognition as and when that one turns up to ring the wedding bells; if not, it would be a case of passing over an optimal match in time in one’s vague lookout for something better that is till the law of diminishing returns catches up. More than boys, girls seem to be losers in their search for a better match, and it is equally lost on both the sexes that their best probable mates appear in first batches.”

“Why this feature of life is memorably captured in Benign Flame,” he quoted from his memory. “In case of man, ‘with his eligibility on the wane and despondency on the raise, he lands up with a languid dame for all the sprightly in the race would have married by then’ and with regard to woman, ‘it does often happen that a maiden would shun a Gog in time, only to opt for a Magog, past her prime, wasting her time in the meantime’, and that’s sad indeed.”

“What about opting for the Gog past her prime?” she said affecting to be jovial.

“That could be an interesting story, if there’s any,” he said half in jest.

“Isn’t that possible to make it interesting?” she said smilingly, “but getting back to my past; after we parted, my daydreams made me chase the mirage of a better match for over three years and then my dream career that followed only raised the bar of attrition for my bridal hand even more. Maybe, my manner too conveyed my contempt for the ‘not so well to do’ to act as a barrier to keep the unsuitable boys at bay, so none bothered me with their advances. It’s thus, catapulted into the material zone, as I looked down upon the also-rans in the rat race of life, I lost my way to the altar even when it was high time to ascend it. Yet, as the goodies of life that I was able to acquire and enjoy afforded me a sense of material fulfillment, I got used to live in a make-believe world blissfully unaware of what I’ve been missing.”

She paused as if to regrasp what she had been losing.

“But the hour of reckoning came at the dawn of my thirtieth birthday,” she resumed her recap of the way she had waded through the web of wedlock. “That’s nearly ten years after life first took me to the crossroads of marriage, and some parallel here with Chitra for it’s at that age she entered your life. By then, winning the trust and confidence of one of the bigwigs of the business world in town, I became the company secretary of his corporation of amalgamations. Early that morning, the old man came to our ladies’ hostel with a greeting card and a birthday cake to grant me the leave of absence for the day. After he left, being on cloud nine, as I read a letter tucked in the greeting card, I was nonplussed.”

“Did he propose to you or what?” he said in jest.

“Well, his thirty-five year-old heir to his business empire lost his wife after she delivered a still born boy, and simply put, he wanted me to fill the void in his son’s life,” she said. “But knowing that I thought of his son, our director without a portfolio, as a good for nothing, he penned a rosy picture of mine wielding the real power as the future empress of his vast enterprise and all that goes with it. Not failing to address the maternal weakness of the feminine gender, he made me envision the scepter being passed on to the one borne out of my womb. In short, that long letter carried everything to seduce any woman, more so an ambitious one, into that corporate wedlock.”

“So, you became Mrs. Somebody,” he said withdrawing his hand that she was holding all along.

“You can relax for now,” she said in all smiles taking his hand all again. “Somehow, wedding the widower didn’t appeal to me, in spite of his wealth and status not discounting his good looks. Though I was old enough to be objective in these matters, yet I allowed myself to be swayed by this girlish whim on that count. That apart, as I started delving into the matter, so to say, I began to rediscover myself; true, to begin with, I craved for a rich lifestyle and hoped to facilitate it through matrimony, and when I realized its improbability, at least in my case, I strived to improve it on my own accord, and succeeded too, to the extent possible. After all that which made me an old maid, my fate seemed to beckon a life of unimagined riches and high social profile but with a rider, as would often be the case, that is to wed someone whom I didn’t admire. So, realizing that even as I made money the crux of my life, the core of it was the quality of my mate, I declined the proposal.”

“How strange, after ignoring my hand devoid of means, you gave up his in spite of its plentiful wealth! Surely it requires a rare strength of character that I never credited you with,” he said in all admiration. 

“Thanks for your appreciation,” she said pressing his hand. “Then as it occurred to me that we could’ve as well built a material edifice on our marital ground, I realized my stupidity in nixing you. Hoping against hope, even as I made up my mind to try to reach you, slighted by my snub, the old man made it untenable for me to continue in his employment; so I had to resign to retain my self-esteem. So, even as I looked around for my proper relocation, my father had finally managed to fix my sister’s marital destination; well, unlike me, she remained rooted to the ground and was no mean a looker either but yet for long she too couldn’t wade through the complex web of wedlock that you so well described. Whatever, that led me to the station of our separation to try my luck to ascertain your location, but I came a cropper at the factory you worked and the room you tenanted not to speak of the college you attended.”

“It’s all the more painful that I wasn’t married as yet then,” he said in vexation, “So as to put my disappointing past behind me, I distanced myself from my acquaintances there. But for that, maybe it would’ve been a different story and that brings home the truism that our nature is our fate.”

Wanting to smoke, he withdrew his hand that she still held, and added, “If you don’t mind, I would like to smoke.”

“Surely I would, if you smoke alone,” she said mischievously.

She picked a Gold Flake King on offer and he lighted it for her before lighting his.

“What about some whisky as a return of favor?” she said taking a puff.

“Why not if it adds flavour to your narrative,” he said smilingly.

 “Soon after my sister packed off to her marital home, my father bestowed a like amount on me that he spent on her wedding,” she resumed as they started their drink. “With my staying power thus enhanced, I set up my private practice, and what’s more, dabbled in the stock market to augment my income in the meantime.
Soon I happened to run with the bulls at the bourses before catching the scrips at their tails in their bear hugs only to triple my stock holdings before the former ran amuck all again. Maybe, I owe that as much to my luck as my nature for I always believed in a definitive today rather than an unknown tomorrow. Whatever, with part of that windfall, I booked this villa still on the drawing board then.”

“I’m sure you’ve added your touch to its interior décor,” he said admiringly.

 “Without realizing that possibly it could please you,” she said looking at him endearingly and continued to recap her past, holding her glass. “Soon, as my practice picked up, so to say, I had no time to breathe. But as I made my small bucks, my profession enabled me to have a closer look at the big bucks, and that changed my outlook of the moneyed. I could see that manipulation is the underpinning of undue wealth and fraud is the architect of the filthy riches. What is galling is that when it comes to the entrepreneurs, the system succors the fraudulent among them on the specious ground that if they were to be squeezed hard then their enterprises go bust leaving the employees high and dry. That way, the bigger the business entity, the greater would be the leeway for its promoters to loot the banks and scoot with the public wealth with impunity that is. So, is the case with the unscrupulous officials, the higher their position in the system all the better protection from prosecution! Thus it dawned upon me that I wasted my youth wanting to wed someone with a potential to game the system with utter disregard for the public good not to speak of the national interest.”

She emptied her glass as though to exhibit her state of emptiness she experienced then and refilled it as if to show him the urge she has developed to redress the situation.

“How I cursed myself then for losing you I only knew,” she said wiping her wetted eyes. “I was about to touch thirty-five then, and realizing that crying over spilt milk would only make it worse, so as to get the best out of a bad bargain, I looked around for a decent man never mind his financial position. But it didn’t take me long to realize that the phenomenon you quoted from Benign Flame is not peculiar to men alone as most of them nature intended for me had already tied the knot by then. However, as someone suggested one who seemed right for me; he not only looked decent but also carried himself well, so thinking that I could at least be lucky the second time, I began dating him. But soon I could see through him, credit woman’s sixth sense, that as much as he liked me, he had an eye on my money as well. Yet, as I didn’t want to let my surmises spoil my second chance, I got his background checked, which revealed that he was neck deep in debts being an inveterate spendthrift ever fond of an easy life. So that was that.”

Mixing another drink for them and discerning a sense of ease in him, she was amused at the value men attach to the virginity of their brides never mind their own nocturnal forays into women’s sexual fortresses.

“What next in your marital suspense,” he said as she remained silent for long.

“Not the climax,” she said smilingly.

“When we reach it, maybe that could be engaging,” he said prognostically.

“Let’s hope so,” she said looking at the antique clock, “but it’s time I cooked something for dinner.”

“If it’s not my goose, I love to assist you,” he said in jest.

“Am I a fool to have brought you all the way for that?” she said coyly.

Confining their talk to generalities, they went about preparing some sambar and alu fry, and when finished, she excused herself to have her bath.

‘So far the script is promising but what after the interval,’ he began to review their exciting encounter. ‘No doubt she sounds sincere in whatever she says. It takes some strength of character to say no to such a rich man’s hand never mind his meager mind. She comes out as a highly evolved and principled person, won’t that make her an ideal foil for my philosophical disposition. Moreover, hasn’t she rekindled my old flame with a burning desire for a conjugal life with her? But the only hitch is our economic disparity that might discomfort both of us; but sensible that we are, maybe we can talk about it if we come that far, won’t we? All said and done, if I were to miss her again now, life could be more burdensome than ever for the hopes she has raised in me; let me see what it holds in store for me.  Won’t I know that soon enough?’ 

It’s thus he waited for her return in all anticipation.

‘So far so good but what after I disclose that,’ she began thinking after recalling the sequence of events starting from that heartwarming moment of seeing his photo in the divorcee’s folder in the marriage bureau. ‘Surely he’s on track but what if he backtracks after knowing my doings. Am I not neck deep in love with him already, in a girlish way; better late than never, and what a feeling it is to fall in love. Oh, what an extraordinary man he is to have foregone the marital joys that too with a sexy dame just to uphold his moral uprightness. Hats off to him and given my own disposition, won’t I gloat over being his wife that too seeing him adorning the bar in a principled manner. No way am I going to lose him now, at any cost that is. What if I don’t disclose? Well, besides being unfair to him, I cannot reconcile myself with such falsity. I shall kiss and tell and, if need be, beg him to have me now and here.’

Reaching her wardrobe after her bath, she scanned it for an appropriate wear and having zeroed in on a white voile sari with a thin gold border to adorn herself with a maroon sleeveless blouse, she set out on her seductive mission. Thus dressed to kill, when she reached him tentatively, he kept staring at her as if in a trance.

“Hi, Venu where are you lost?” she said coquettishly.

“Oh, Priya, you look splendid in this dress!” he said admiringly.

“So, let me thank my sari,” she said smilingly, and kissed its pallu mischievously.

“You’re impossible,” he said feigning helplessness.

“Why give up dear,” she said sitting beside him.

“I’m all eager to hear,” he said gluing his eyes on her.

She refilled their glasses as though to provide fillip to her narrative and he offered her another fag as if to let their smoke-filled puffs herald that to his ears. 

“Don’t mistake me as a drunkini, I just want to shed my inhibitions,” she said coyly.

“You’re welcome to have more of both,” he said smilingly.

“That’s lovely; soon after that fiasco of a date, Rekha became my personal secretary to redraw the lines of my life,” she began blushing to the core. “In my depressed state, her vivacity drew her closer to me though she was ten years younger than me. Not wanting her to tread on the perilous path of vacuous maidenhood, even as I made my confused life an open book for her, she took me into every recess of her exuberant mind, and that brought us even more emotionally closer. Besides, the way I handled the grapes of wrath made me her role model, and what’s more, she came to develop affection for me bordering on fetishism. By then this villa too was ready for occupation and she too was bowled over by its splendor; so I suggested that she may as well stay with me; and true to her character, not wanting to take advantage of my liking for her, she insisted on becoming my paying guest. So to say, my admiration for her and her adoration of me insensibly fused in the ambience of this exotic setting that we shared thereafter.’  

She asked for another cigarette and began puffing away at it as if to puncture the smokescreen to bring into his view the secrets her place contained.

“That night, when I complained of body pain that didn’t yield to the Dolo,” she said bowing her head. “Rekha set out to massage me but hindered by my clothing, she undressed me in stages, and finding it exciting, I wasn’t inclined to resist her from embarking upon that erotic course. Soon, as if to rest her hands that massaged my naked frame, she supplanted her mouth to do their bidding, and that made me feel even more ecstatic. But when she started sucking my assets, her sensual act acquired a sexual slant to my immense delight. So, it’s only time before I too turned her nude to savor her luscious figure in my erotic mood, which set us on a lesbian course. Lying fulfilled in our embrace, as we exchanged notes, it became apparent that it was a chance encounter, brought about by her adoration for me and my admiration for her that robbed our virginity, if it can be said so.”

“It may not be fair to ask for her picture but..,” he said hesitantly.

“I wouldn’t show that to anyone else but you,” she said coyly.

“I swear I’ll keep your secret, hers included,” he said gesturing his intent.

“You don’t need to do that for you’ve proved yourself to be a gentleman twice over,” she said getting up from the sofa.

“I’m glad you regard me well,” he said as she moved towards the staircase.

‘Seemingly he’s not scandalized by my lesbian leanings, and it’s but natural that he wants to have a measure of my mate,’ she thought on her way to her bedroom.

Having picked up the photo album of her pictures with Rekha from a cupboard, she thought, ‘Why not I let him have a full measure of both of us; won’t that tilt his scale of temptation in my bisexual direction? It would for sure.’

While she was weighing her options thus, Venu took stock of the peculiar situation.

‘What charms life holds and what turns it takes,’ he began thinking. ‘But why is she making a clean breast of herself? Is it that she wants to start life afresh with me; or is it to alert me about her lesbian character? It’s all so intriguing, let me see how it all ends.’

About to step out of her bedroom with her laptop containing the folder of her intimacy, she went back to her wardrobe to pick up her light blue nylon lingerie to foretell him what was in the offing. Thus, displaying her provocative figure in that enticing attire, when she descended the staircase, espying her wide-eyed, he became ecstatic in divining her underlying figure. Thus reaching him enchantingly and sitting beside him coquettishly, as if to steady his nerves, she shared her drink with him; but soon, having placed the laptop in his lap, she leaned on his shoulder as though to guide him through her lesbian course with Rekha.

“Both of you shame those Playboy girls,” he said without taking his eyes off the very first picture.

“I’m sure Rekha would also love to kiss your eyes,” she said in utter relief.

“Thanks for your extraordinary openness,” he said pressing her hand.

“Move the cursor for more of it,” she winked at him.

As he went on feasting his eyes on the lesbian doings of the mates, she kept on looking at him in all desire.

“Maybe these are among the most sensuous acts ever pictured,” he said in all admiration, “but who has captured this sexual intimacy so vividly!”

“I’ll come to that later but for your current account these are last year’s figures,” she said coquettishly.

“You’re really impossible Priya,” he said pressing her bare shoulder.

“Now that you hold the sketches of its physicality, I shall paint them with the emotionality of lesbianism for you,” she said eloquently. “You know that the essence of lovemaking lies in the pleasure of giving and the ecstasy of receiving; in man-woman coition, given the differing physical means of give and take, the attendant emotional experiences that invariably vary are beyond each other’s grasp. As I’m a virgin in that sense, it’s only my visualization subject to your correction (she winked at him). But in the lesbian union, the biological medium of giving and receiving being the same, it affords the mates an emotional equivalence on an unvarying libidinous plane. I suppose the same cannot be said about the gay get-togethers.”

“Why, you make me feel like a sexual midget,” he said in great awe.

“I would withdraw my words then,” she said in jest.

“Jokes apart, your understanding of sexuality is remarkable,” he said.

“Better brush up your vocabulary for adjectives as I’m going to quote Dhaatri, the Lady Vātsyāyana, who clicked those pictures you savoured,” she said smilingly. “She’s Rekha’s close acquaintance during her hostel days; last year she came here to attend some wedding but stayed with us to catch up with her, and instead she latched onto us both. Sensing our intimacy, she seduced us into an orgy with her own threesome tales of manly kind. After clocking over twenty years in a loving and trustful wedlock, her husband wanted it opened for double-teaming her with a younger male. Though excited herself about its sexual potential, yet she was skeptical about the marital blowback; the possibility of their threesome farce inhibiting his libidos key to open their wedlock even for their twosome fare.”

“I’ve read that such sexual adventures are psychologically hazardous,” he said in interruption.   

“But he asserted that given her innate biology and imbibed sexuality,” she continued unabashedly, “woman could achieve her full sexual potential only when double-teamed in a threesome and as for the husband, if he fails to facilitate it for her, at least on occasion, he would be failing her and himself as well. Seeing her soften a bit, he maintained that inherently women are as promiscuous as men and assured her that he was mature enough to appreciate that it is but natural for woman to enjoy sex with any man other than her man. When he capped his sexual logic with the emotional appeal that she may see him joyous espying her threesome joys, even she mentally readied herself to be double-teamed, he set out to find a suitable stud in the dating sites. Soon as their first threesome went as envisaged by him, which thrilled her to the cores in both ends, on and off, he was won’t to fetch a stranger to fend for her sexual ends sans emotional hiccups.”

“Remarkable couple to say the least,” he said.

“What is more relevant,” she said, “while enjoying her threesome sexual fare, strange it may seem, she found herself becoming emotionally closer to her man with each such encounter, and he too became more loving and desirous of her, as such a highly desirable woman.” 

“So, the altruism of threesome is man’s realization that it’s in the nature of sex that his wife enjoys it with other males as much as with him, and vice versa,” he thought aloud. “But as it could be way beyond the weak hearts, its better that the couples look before they leap, isn’t it?”

“No denying it calls for nuanced thinking with marital bonding,” she said shedding her own inhibitions. “So, enjoying lesbianism with us and extolling the ecstasy of double-teaming, she revealed to us how physical attraction and sexual chemistry play their part in sensual enjoyment; while the physical attraction induces sexual desire, it’s the sexual chemistry that imparts quality to lovemaking; and as if to underscore the potency of our sexual chemistry, she had extended her stay by a week for our threesome thrill.”

“Mature stuff, really,” he said.

“Have a measure of Dhaatri as well,” she said opening a new folder, “though not in nude.”

“What do you take me for, a compulsive voyeur or what?” he said smilingly, “but surely, she wouldn’t have been an odd woman out in your threesome.”

“If I get a chance, I would convey your compliments to her,” she said coyly. “But shortly after she left, leaving those snaps behind, Rekha went to her native for the first death anniversary of her sister two years older to her. That being our first separation after our union, as I was finding it hard to cope with that loneliness, she returned to announce her engagement with her widowed brother-in-law, induced by her family.”

“What, in this age and times!” he said.

“To start with, he was no oldie of a filmy b-i-l,” she said. “Actually he was quite handsome besides being well healed and was known to be kind and considerate as well. Moreover, as he became a part of their family, her parents were keen to keep him in her wedlock, and she too had no earthly reason to negate him; so, ironically, I had to supervise her post-nuptial bidai ceremony. Whatever, she said her marriage won’t hamper our intimacy in any way for she made him privy to our affection for which he had no objection.  Thus, sometime after their honeymoon, when she wanted to be with me, he wanted to accompany her for sight-seeing, and as she saw no more into it they came in tow. But as it transpired, the very first night, when she bid him good night to make it to my bed, he wanted her to persuade me for our threesome failing which, he made it clear to her that we have to forego our own lesbian joys. Needless to say, she was utterly shocked at his sexual blackmail of a different kind.”

“Maybe that album could’ve caused that temptation,” he said amusedly.

“It’s not the case as that’s confined only to my laptop and opened to your eyes only,” she said coyly. “Seeing her shamefaced, though I pressed her for long, she didn’t open her mouth that was until he called for her; but when she revealed, I was raveled, and as he called her again, I managed to mutter that if only he tried to woo me, then maybe I would’ve allowed myself to be seduced by him. However, she told me to expect her later as sh