“Wonder how did you let your sentiment sway to mar your life!”
“Maybe, that's the hold sentiment has on unexamined life,!” she said, “and placed in the same position, I tell you, I'll keep sentiment at arms length. Well, when Vasu's father sought my hand for his son, my father was taken aback. Though my father didn't make any fuss, he swore against the match. When I tried to checkmate him by refusing to marry another, my father forced a stalemate by restricting my movements. At last it took "him‟, you know who I mean, to bring my father around by telling him that one can live with a broken heart but it would be hard to carry on with a troubled conscience. Oh, how he captured my feelings! When he told him I got too far with Vasu, my father married me off in style befitting his status to begin my run of the mill.”
She paused as if to come out of her past disappointment freshened by her memory.
“True to my father's prophecy,” she continued, “Vasu showed his true colours soon enough by beginning to supplant my father's money as if to improve my quality of life. While my father gives in, thinking he has a cross to bear, Vasu believes that as the jungle belongs to the lions and tigers, this world is for the rich and the powerful and it's for the smart to get rich by hook or by crook. That's the man who finds me cold in bed, and you need not be surprised about it.”
“Sorry for fishing in troubled waters,” said Chandra visibly upset. “Believe me, had I known I would've sorted out with him myself.”
“Maybe, it's good that you've alerted me,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, you should've shut the door on him and be done with it. But still, I would've been left with a man who tries to philander with my money. I think it serves him right to cut off at his source. It's time I left him.”
“Don't act on the rebound,” he said concernedly, “as you did then.”
“Thanks for saying that,” she said. “I don't want to cry over my father's shoulders now. As I told you, I spurned my lover on hearsay and messed up my life, and when I had the chance to rectify the mistake, I let my sense of chastity ruin me. I should've known better that woman's character is sourced in her heart and not in her hymen. Oh, how vanity and sentiment took turns to ruin my life! Now, let me apply my mind and see.”