‘Never mind his dull demeanor, Sathyam must be good in bed,’ he contemplated in wonderment. ‘Come to think of it, given a good time in bed, won’t all women turn a blind to the faults of their men? How strange! But then, it’s all so different with Rani. Though she loves me, doesn’t she think by giving herself, she’s doing me a favor? Why, she couldn’t get rid of her Electra complex even after six years of sex life with me that made her mother twice over! Before her giant of a father, isn’t every man a contemptible midget for her? Short of being explicit, doesn’t she tend to imply that I owe my status and all that goes with it to her redoubtable father?’
‘No denying it, though,’ he went about drawing up the balance sheet of his married life. ‘After all, it’s our marriage that shifted my gear to the fast track of life from the middle-class morass that it was in. If not, I wouldn’t have been any better placed than Sathyam. Maybe, I would have been even worse off for all I know. Oh, how I would have got a wife like his! Instead of eyeing Roopa, I would have been envying Sathyam now. Supposing I got a winner for a wife, won’t it have been a tough ask to keep her wooers at bay, that too with my limited means.’
Then he recalled an incident that his wife had made him privy to. When someone made a pass at her, she told the bewildered dasher that he might hope for her favors after acquiring her father’s stature and her husband’s looks!
‘Looks like man’s status provides his woman the amour of fidelity against seduction,’ he began to think. ‘Isn’t it better than the chastity belt of yore that would have still left room enough for her deviancies. Well, fidelity apart, being sure about themselves, women of means lose their innate womanliness, don’t they? Isn’t it sad for the female persona, but none seem to care, even men! Is it not their vulnerability that makes women charming to men and sans a semblance of timidity, won’t femininity suffer? But for all her perfect features, doesn’t Rani lack that feminine grace that abounds in Roopa.’
‘Am I in love with Roopa then?’ he wondered. ‘What nonsense, leave alone the patience, do I have the inclination to love? I’m just impatient to take her to bed, at the earliest that is. No more and no less.’
He tried to believe what he assumed.