When the plane landed at Begumpet, he left the airport with alacrity and with his heart in his mouth; he rushed to Roopa’s place in a taxi.
Pacing up the steps, as he pressed the door buzzer, he felt as though his heart was short-circuited, and when Roopa opened the door tentatively, as her heart missed its beat at his sight, she was breathless. Unable to comprehend their respective positions, staring at each other, they stood rooted at the threshold.
‘Won’t you let me come in?’ he said, at last.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she gave him way, and bolted the door after him as though to secure him once and for all.
‘How do you do?’ he said looking at her longingly.
‘Pulling on,’ she mumbled, unable to come to terms with his unexpected arrival.
‘It’s been so long since we last met,’ he said as he sat down.
‘It’s over seven months,’ she sighed as she said, ‘and I thought you’d forgotten me.’
‘Why so?’ he said in protest.
‘You would know if only you’re a woman.’
‘Being a man,’ he said dejectedly, ‘it’s none the better for me.’
‘Don’t you think you should only blame yourself for that,’ she sounded critical in spite herself.
‘But why?’ he exclaimed in pain.
‘For having prefixed forgetfulness to your maleness.’
‘How can you say that?’ he protested haplessly.
‘Why, you didn’t come to see me as promised then, did you?’ she said as the bitterness his earlier failure to meet her overtook the sweetness, his presence occasioned.
‘You would never know,’ he said as his tone got the measure of his frustration, as he recalled his state of mind in which he had to leave for Bangalore that day, ‘how desperate I was to meet you then.’
‘Where there is a will,’ she said still smarting under the hurt of the perceived let down, ‘there is a way, isn’t there?’
‘Believe me Roopa, there was no way I could have come to see you. I had to catch the train on the move as it were,’ he said, and added after a pause. ‘I even thought of writing to you, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that.’
‘You should’ve written,’ she said in the same vein, ‘and that would have made so much difference to me.’
‘Roopa,’ he said with a pleading tone, ‘why don’t you understand me?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said as her love, aided by the presence of her lover, abetted her mind to overpower the bitterness it bore.
‘Let bygones be bygones,’