He was city bred, though on a poor diet, like hers. But for a sense of exaggerated self-worth, he had no vice to name. The little fame that a few short stories earned him made him believe that it was demeaning for him to work under someone. Thus even as his bloated ego and the meager means denied him to gain a foothold in life, his foolhardy made him daydream about unassailable heights. But his freelancing didn’t take him far and so he remained an ineligible bachelor, in spite of his admirable demeanour. That was when fate brought him near her, and life took over to make them man and wife. But not before she batted for him hard and true on her home turf.
Her parents felt her beauty, eclipsed though by poverty, would enable her to punch above their weight; so they were not enthused about his offer to take her hand. Moreover, they felt her ascending the altar with him was like falling from the frying pan into the fire itself. But as she was bent upon seeking the pleasure of passing through the pathless woods with her fancied man, they relented to let her become his woman, and so led them to the kalyana mandapam of the village temple.
“And what a life it had been!” she recalled her early times with him. “How weary our legs were in our wild goose chase for a ‘To Let’ board of some cheap and best place. Could we believe our luck clinching that outhouse on rent? What a dream place it was, set in a garden, in the heart of the city at that! Maybe, it’s beyond anyone’s dreams. Can’t believe, how much space we provided for happiness in that tiny abode to make it our happy home! That was being hand to mouth, and when there was nothing on hand, how we used to cater to our pangs of hunger! Come to think of it, with each other’s saliva in never-ending deep kisses! Can any better it? (She paused for a while as the thought of it whetted her memory) What a flattering feeling it was seeing him write intriguing tales out of my story ideas, and how fulfilling were those moments to hear him say that I was the soul of his muse. And when we were blessed with the twins, didn’t we feel it symbolized the unision of our division? Sadly, all that changed with the avarice he acquired, well, with the helping hand of his acquired fame.”
As fate would have it, the corrupt “head” of the health department, of the state government, lost his large heart to her man’s short-stories. Seeing his idol in near penury, the ‘head ’felt, deep in his heart, that it was a blasphemy of goddess Saraswati. So, he took it upon himself to redress the wrong, so to say, and misusing his official discretion, he bestowed upon her man the ‘concept and creation’ of publicity material; that’s at an exorbitant cost with decent cut for himself. And as her man, in an act of one-upmanship, over-invoiced the supplies, the ‘head’ was too pleased to nod his head as though exaggeration was a writer’s birthright.