Perils of Youth
Nithya matured at nine, a little early, even for the Indian clime. More than the biological change, it was the cultural fuss the happening heralds that made her conscious of her altered persona.
She felt as though the oni on her bosom robbed her off her personal freedom. The custom that pulled her out of the child circuit and at the same time denied her admission into the Venus Club, left her clueless about her own identity. Nevertheless, the imperatives of her sensuality and the male proclivities to her sexuality began confounding her. In all that, her sex education was limited to the thumb rules her mother happened to dish out to her.
With the passage of time, as nature perfected the female in her, her frame acquired the womanly graces and her manner imbibed the feminine nuances. However, privy to her own attributes, as her impulses courted curiosity for company; she began to grasp the singularity of her sex appeal from the body language of the enamored males. Soon, her vanity goaded her to explore the nuances of male desire from the emanations of her admirers. Besides, while her compelling looks ensured the adoration of her parents, her application of mind evoked the admiration of her teachers. Thus, pleased with herself, she acquired the poise of a princess.
But, she didn't come across her prince charming, though she was through with her studies. The campus culture that didn't mix the sexes in the college and the parents who forbade dating ensured that. Nevertheless, as she got her degree in humanities, her father went out of his way in search of a suitable match for her. After all, marriages had to be arranged affairs and the dowry was a determining as well as a deterring factor in the real time matchmaking. But as her father was hard up to cough up dowry, Nithya's prospective nuptial was slow in materializing. Just the same, the talk of it that was thick in the air gave wings to her amorous inclinations. However, as the eagerness in her mind and the lethargy on the ground mismatched, the moment of her cherished conjugation remained in the realms of her dreams.
It was at that juncture that her destiny seemed to ordain an apparently agreeable route to the sought-after altar. All those years, her father had put the outhouse on hold lest any man in the garb of a tenant should dabble with the virginity of his desirable daughters. What with the elder three happily married by then, and Nithya, the last one, on the verge of
it, the idea to let it out took hold of him all again. And abetted by his wife, who averred that it could be even a solution to Nithya's marriage, if only they took in the right tenant after proper screening, he tied the "To Let‟ board to the gate of their AC Guards' house. Though that brought in the interested in numbers but for want of a hard knock from a bachelor with the right resume, the board began to lose its sheen.