He had yet another sip of Laphroaic from his glass before he continued.
“Coming back to the ill-fated girl, the cousin who rescued me from the embarrassment of my life I told you about, abhorred the eligible bachelor in equal measure for his conceited ways, was not prepared to voice her apprehension lest her dissent should be construed as an envy for the girl’s glorious fortune-in-the-making; well I too kept mum for I knew that I wouldn’t have been deemed as a viable alternative by the mother of the bride and so, sadly for others’ decency of silence and her mother’s blinkers of falsity, the daughter had to suffer him as her man to her lifelong dismay. But when it came to my relationship with Raju, my faculty of judgment deserted me; it was like the accursed Karna losing his fighting prowess in the combat with Arjuna that had cost his life; but though I lost my soul, my fate had to wait to undo me as my destiny had other ideas for my life. At that time, I lived in a rented portion of a house owned by an eminent family that fell afoul of fate; while the girl was reduced as a makeup woman of a B - grade film heroine; her brothers were compelled to run odd errands to sustain the joint family. As love would have it, she had taken to a man who was not of her ilk and as his parents were not so helpless or as progressive as these days, their inter-caste affair was a non-starter in every way; the social space too was constricted for them to find a place for indulging in premarital sex; if only Cupid had reckoned with that when he kindled love in their hearts; whatever, they remained lovelorn till she prevailed upon him to marry a girl from his caste. But the rumor of her liaison that never was, put paid to her parental quest to find a suitable boy for her from their own caste and it was at that juncture that I entered into her life.”
“If only Cupid were not blind, love may have a better vision.”
“Well, I was sure at the very first sight that she was not my kind of girl,” he said seemingly contemplating what I had said before he continued his story. “So with no romantic leanings on her, I was free in my manner, and she too was open with me without being flirty. Slowly but steadily, we had struck a beautiful relationship, and, so to say, she took charge of my life; by the time I returned from work, she used to wash and press my clothes besides setting my bed right; how her brothers used to protest in jest that she washed my undergarments even as she refused to touch theirs; well she was wont to aver that I was her very special one, and once, when I was down with typhoid, my benevolent cousin came to take me along with her, but as my caretaker would have none of that, I had no heart to go against her wish; oh, how she rolled the roles of a mother, sister and wife into that womanly care! But later, when I decided to leave the place in search of better pastures, how upset she was; she seemed as if she were bereaved but she was reconciled to the dictates of fate as she put it. You may know that she didn’t let me carry much of my meager possessions as she wanted to have them as keepsakes! When her promised memento was not forthcoming even as I was all set to go, I went on reminding her about it and she kept on telling me that I hadn’t gone still; and as I was about to board the city-bus at their gate to reach the railway station, she took my hand and planted a kiss on it; as our moist eyes blurred our vision, I waved at her as much in sorrow as in joy but she was seemingly immobilized for any reciprocation.”