“Isn't it said that one can't be in love and remain wise at the same time,” said Chandra.
“How true,” said Sathya, “once she said that I better go into some business instead of pestering her. She theorized that money brings status to men and power over women, and that if I became moneyed, she would be on her knees, begging to be taken as my mistress. She's wont to maintain that if she fails to make it with me, it would be worse for her as she would miss me having received so much love from me. She always felt that I would forget her soon enough as she gave me nothing but her indifference for remembrance.”
“Femme fatale plus and no less she is!” said Chandra, feeling Sathya's exasperation.
“Well said,” said Sathya. “Once I told her that I better enquire about her at her previous workplace. Stung to the quick, she extracted a promise from me that I wouldn't do anything like that. Though it was apparent that she had something to hide, my sense of decency didn't allow me to spy on her. But I thought it didn't make any sense to go along with her any longer. It had been a year's fruitless wait by then. Also, the trauma of the unrequited love began to take its toll on my health abused by my chain-smoking, I became weak and weary. It was then that she came up with the suggestion that I get transferred to our Hyderabad Office and leave Cal for good. Once I was away from her, she reasoned, she would be in a better position to appreciate what I meant to her. She said she would not take more than six months to decide one way or the other and I managed to come here on transfer.”
“What a kind-edged cruelty!” said Chandra distressed at what Sathya underwent.
“Why, you've the words to capture ironies!” said Sathya appreciatively. “But, before I left Cal, she called me home for lunch and wanted me to bring my horoscope along. She sought the opinion of her father, an amateur astrologer, about my future in a pragmatic manner; whether it would be average or less. Well he predicted that my life would hover around the average and as she promised to write to me regularly, I bade her goodbye with mixed feelings. When the Madras Mail moved out of the Howrah Station that evening, I experienced a peculiar sense of relief coming out of a cauldron of stress under a vacuum.”
“Is it any better now?” asked Chandra.
“I realized soon enough there was no escaping from love,” said Sathya wryly. “Either you're in it or out of it. In some ways, it was worse than ever. If it was the distance she kept then that pained me in Cal, it's the pain of her absence that's hurting me here but the only thing that keeps me going is the correspondence with her. To be fair to her, she is prompt in her replies that are comforting for their contents.”