Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel

Chapter 6 - Orgies of Love

"When Rajan joined Ruma, so to say, we became an extended family," he continued his narrative. "I admired his sense of humor and he my sense of purpose. I always tried to excel at work though my fate laid my career low, and so I became adept at all that I dabbled with. If not, instead of becoming a project consultant, at best I would have been a frustrated worker, or at worst, booted out for being sluggish. I realized that in life, as in Derby, the colt that bolts last need not be the last one at the finish. When Rajan wanted to venture into the real-estate business, he wanted me to become his partner, but by then, I had seen how greed sets to break up such ventures; started in bonhomie to share, once it breaks even, sharing becomes a snare for the better placed partner. Why it's only time before he eases out the other, and pushed into the doghouse what else the loser can do than to cry foul. But then the fact of life is that the winner takes it all."

"Maybe but one cannot really prosper alone in the long run."

"Call it selfish wisdom, but man is seldom wisely selfish," he said managing a chuckle. "Once my father told me that he was ditched by his business partner, I don't know why, for I didn't seek the details from him; maybe I should have. So, I preferred to be Rajan's employee but he offered me a share in the profits as a bonus for my services. Thus was born 'Rajan Builders' that majored into 'Imperial Infrastructures' later on. With both the women putting their heart and soul into it, how exciting were those budding days; operating from Rajan's office-cum-residence, we stuck together, be it for work or for recreation, well; it was only in the act of procreation that we went our separate ways. Matching with her man's business concepts that began to bear fruits, nature enabled Ruma to conceive, which thrilled Rathi no end; it was as if she felt that she herself was carrying. When I wanted Rathi to consult a gynecologist, she said naughtily that she was sure that sooner than later we would make it happen. When Ruma delivered a girl child how delighted we all were, and as Rathi missed her periods, coinciding with the little girl's false steps, we were thrilled no end. Ruma hoped that it would be a boy in the offing, and said in jest that had she not jumped the gun with a girl, maybe we would have the pleasure of espying the lovers in the making."

"Wonder how could you have managed to hide your enamored eye for Ruma from her man's vision from such a close range?"

"Well I never ceased coveting her and if anything my passion to possess her only grew with each passing moment but then as I developed friendly feelings towards Rajan, I was thrown into a dilemma of dharma. So I kept desisting from my urge to seduce her wondering all the while if I were destined to have her at all. Oh, what a sweet anticipation it was."

"It reminds me of Sathyam's words in Benign Flame, 'my dear fellow, money and looks are okay to an extent to lure women, but better realize that it's the luck that enables one to lay them. Why, you can't even screw a whore if you're not destined to have her; your visit to the brothel would have coincided with her periods, and the next time you're eager, she could have shifted out of the town itself'."

"How true it is given my insatiate passions," he said as his demeanor acquired a disappointed look. "Well, as Rathi was in the family way, Ruma proposed a trip to Ooty for all of us; she wanted us to relive our honeymoon with them as witnesses. I told her that she should have known that her friend made our marriage an unceasing honeymoon, and she said that it was plain greedy for in the relay race that is married love, Rathi should have passed on the baton of bliss to the newlyweds, who followed us in the tracks of love. Maybe for that foul, fate had contrived to pull out Rathi from the course of love with a head-on crash, which ripped the right side of the Fiat apart that was as we were returning from Ooty. While Rajan was at the wheel, Rathi, with his girl in her lap, was in the back seat right behind him, and as if to make her jest come true, fate had taken them together for a heavenly time leaving Ruma and me to continue our mundane sojourn."