“Maybe lust features on the reverse side of love’s coin.”
“Beautifully put, but I may add that lust is the abettor of love for without it, there can be no lovemaking,” he said. “Well, I imbibed her philosophy of love, and all was okay till I wavered from it to impress Ruma, which was much later. As if sex gave me my due, it forthwith put a price for its favors, and I too was willing to pay for it as I had been on my own by then; and maybe, it was prognostic of my sex life that the first buy in a way was a rare buy; it’s a rickshaw-wallahdoubling up as a pimp, who took me into a dimly lit middle-class brothel; how odd I felt as I came face to face with the madam! Though the way she received me was promising, to my disappointment the girls she fetched were no seductresses; so as I tried to excuse myself, a stunning dame stepped out of the shadow near the entrance; well, I failed to notice her as I made it there in the fashion of those who enter brothels, focused on avoiding the focus of the passerby. When she wondered how none of the girls impressed me, I told her it was possible that none of them might’ve liked me; saying she was bowled, she led me into her chamber.”
“Looks like you’re lucky with those.”
“Maybe, my innate love for women tended them to be affectionate towards me,” he said. “From then on, I sought her at every turn and she gave me the time of my life for long; but as she began to bloat, she said she was sad that her body could no more provide what her love craved to give me; how moved I was for her sensual concern for me, but when she offered to turn into a procuress for me, I told her that I wanted to remember her as a mate and not as a madam. How sad that the charms of these women are so short-lived; it’s as if by giving in to all, they lose all they have. Whatever, I always cherished the romantic times we have had.”
“Won’t it make an interesting contrast, your romantic negation of favors on offer with that of Devdas’s sexual abnegation of an alluring Chandramukhi?”
“More so to the sophists, who celebrate sentimentality,” he said. “Well, as in all walks of life, these women too present a mixed bag, and it’s not that brothels are the only slime-spots of society as there is a moral decay in every walk of life; if anything the world is in need of a moral revolution than ever before. So, before casting the proverbial first stone at them, it’s as well that we may count our own warts; whatever, after failing me in love and fulfilling me through sex, maybe life wanted to show me more of its variety in some of its mundane dimensions that was shortly after that rendezvous with Raju’s neighbor.”