‘Oh here’s the godsend,’ said Roopa enthusiastically. ‘Tara, join us for the caroms.’

‘It’s my pleasure,’ said Tara, greeting all, ‘though I don’t know who is going to suffer at my hands.’

‘Who shall partner whom?’ Sandhya thought aloud.

‘Let it be the couple,’ suggested Tara, ‘versus the neighbors.’

‘Madam, you seem to be a sound strategist. Knowing that a man and his wife won’t see eye to eye, you want to pair us for your easy pickings,’ said Raja Rao, sending the females into peals of laughter.

‘Roopa, you had better partner him,’ said Sandhya amusedly. ‘If I say that we might pair, his tongue would wag yet another way.’

As Roopa turned out to be a novice and Tara being quite adept at the game, not to speak of Sandhya, Raja Rao sensed that there was a drubbing in the offing. As feared, Raja Rao and Roopa got the stick in the first board.

‘Oh, we’ve lost,’ said Roopa, apologetically, ‘because of me.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he seemed to assure her in more ways than one. ‘We shall make it in the end.’

‘I suppose,’ Sandhya teased him, ‘playing caroms is not as easy as wagging the tongue.’

‘In no way are we going to give up,’ he said to Sandhya, and added, ‘Are we Roopa?’ Roopa for once got scared.

‘How I wish I had a better hand to lend you,’ said Roopa, having recovered her wits in the meantime. ‘But I know that you’ll make them run for their money all on your own.’

While the game progressed, as he began to regain his touch, he was seized by a desire to let Roopa savor the thrill of winning. In the euphoria of Roopa’s praises then, he played like a man possessed, and that proved to be detrimental to their opponents in the end.

‘I haven’t seen you play,’ said Sandhya, watching him in wonderment as he went on a pocketing spree, ‘half as well at Kothalanka.’

‘After all, I can’t let down my partner, can I?’ he said, thrilling Roopa no end.

Wrapping up the game in time, he involuntarily extended his hand to Roopa that she shook in excitation. Though sorry for Tara, Sandhya shook his hand in admiration. While Tara shook hands with him in congratulation, Roopa watched his demeanor in contemplation. ‘Is he enjoying her touch?’ she looked for signs of his crush on Tara, and seeing none she felt relieved, but thought nevertheless, ‘Why this possessiveness for a man who’s not mine even! But how could it ever be love unless one is besieged by jealousy?’




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