“Sorry for the digression,” he continued as we savored the Laphroaic that I replenished meanwhile. “the spiritual beauty of Rathi’s love lay in ignoring my roving eyes; it was not that she was any less sexy or I loved her any less, but I was too romantic to remain unmoved by the desirable women though she was more ardent than the best I’d ever laid. Soon after our marriage, we had set up in the first floor of a house. As the widowed house owner lived in the ground floor, her daughter came to spend the summer holydays with her two kids; about Rathi’s age, she was her namesake as well. Oh, what a sexy dame she was, possibly the sexiest I had ever seen and the one I most wanted to have in all my life; as my passion for her namesake was ever on the raise, my Rathi said she wasn’t losing sleep as her rival’s hairy legs were sure to leave me cold that was if push comes to shove; but as I chanced to divine the dame’s satin legs, Rathi said she was only jesting to pour water over my raging ardency in those summer times.”
“Oh, how unlike your Rathi, women clip the romantic wings of their men and still blame them for being cold to them.”
“Women tend to imagine man’s romanticism as an on-off switch within their reach,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you about a plain girl, who was enamored of me; much later, another I knew nursed the idea of marrying a romantic guy but was aghast as her father intended to get her married to a dull character; when she told me about her predicament, I said that though she was beautiful, yet she was not vivacious, and that it’ sex appeal that triggers romantics; I told her in half-jest that if she were sexy, I would’ve seduced her; that made her comprehend the sexual realities of her life.”
“Are you a lover or a seducer? I’m unable to figure that out.”
“What is a lover if he is not a seducer?” he said and continued. “Coming back to our sexy neighbor, as I told you, I had lost my eyes to her and she too didn’t seem to mind that; Rathi and I used to sleep on the terrace while that dame slept in the open compound with her mother and the kids; she could soon sense that standing by the parapet wall, I was forever ogling at her. That full moon night, I found her with her sari askance as she lay on her belly dangling her bare legs up in the air; oh how voluptuous she was in that moonlight then; sensing my anticipated presence, as she turned all the more inviting, so I got down and sauntered nearby to let her make the next move but she staid put in her bed though I could discern her desire in her manner. Why she had failed to cross the threshold of our adulterous zone to address our wants I would never know; in spite of my surging urge, with her mother nearby, I too didn’t dare to press farther. So our passions were locked in a painful stalemate that night; her man’s arrival the next day barred my further moves to checkmate her on our love-board of attrition. I always had the feeling that she was craving to be grabbed by me that night and had I dared to hustle her into agreeing, she would’ve been mine that night, and possibly that would’ve ushered us into a liaison of our lifetime; but destiny packed me off to this place shortly thereafter; oh how she remains the most insatiate passion of my life with a lingering longing; and had I not made it with that remarkable Sumitra, what a memorable contest it would’ve been between them for the ‘most wanted’ woman that I didn’t have?”