‘I couldn’t care less for once,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘If it comes to that, won’t I make up something for an explanation?’
‘Oh, what a perfect ten you are!’ he said, watching her wear the brown Venkatagiri sari
‘But Sandhya is ten plus one,’ she said. ‘Well, I mean it.’
‘You’re the passion of my life providing the life-force,’ he said contemplatively. ‘And she sustains that to solace me in life. Oh, how you complement each other to make it a meaningful life for me.’
‘Why not a ménage a trois then,’ she said enticingly.
‘Not that I want it any less that to happen,’ he said taking her hand into his, ‘but what I seek more is that you succeed with Sathyam.’
‘Though I would love to live with you,’ she said, moved no end, ‘I would try to make myself more eager towards him, if only as a tribute to our love.’
When they stepped out of the house and got onto Sathyam’s Lambretta for a ride into the wilderness, riding the pillion, as they crossed the city limits, she enlaced him eagerly.
‘Oh,’ he said, without turning back, ‘how pleasantly hard it is.’
‘It’s my dream ride,’ she hugged him closer. ‘Take me to some no man’s land.’
When he finally stopped the vehicle near Shamirpet, she spotted a place yonder for their rendezvous. Spreading a bed sheet under a banyan tree, they sat for a session of sweet nothings, and having eaten some rotis with dalfry bought at a dhaba on their way, they settled for siesta. No sooner they woke up than she goaded him to move around the place ‘like grazing cows’.
‘You’re crazy really,’ he said.
‘Am I not in love?’ she walked nonchalantly ahead of him.
Soon spotting a mango grove, she ran towards it, dragging him all the way and as they entered the grove, leaving him perplexed on the ground, she climbed up a well-grown tree. When she perched herself on a low branch, and invited him to join her there, he obliged her saying, ‘How you amaze me!’
‘Oh,’ she said cuddling him in delight, ‘how you brought out the real me.’
‘Roopa,’ he said holding her dearly, ‘even in the wildest of my dreams, I haven’t imagined anything near this.’
‘Oh, how I feel the animal in me coming to the fore now,’ she jumped down, pulling him along. ‘Couple with me the animal way.’
‘Now I’m feeling,’ he said lovingly, ‘that you’ve become truly insane.’
‘True, but then, I am a woman in love, am I not?’ she said excitedly. ‘I want you to lay me at every place where I’d craved for you. Maybe, it’s the only way I might be able to erase those painful memories of pining for you. How I wish you stayed put in me. Why has not nature made it that way?’