‘What else we can do now,’ said Raja Rao, consoling Sandhya, ‘than braving the cruelty of fate?’
‘Oh, how fate had chosen me,’ said Roopa melancholically, ‘as the villain in his life. What an irony our life has turned out to be! While I slighted him all through, he died burdening me with his magnanimity.’
‘Stop feeling guilty dear,’ said Sandhya cajolingly. ‘After all, he died with a feeling of being loved by you. That’s what matters to his soul and to your conscience as well.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Roopa, staring at Sathyam’s body, ‘that’s the saving grace of my life with him.’
‘It’s time,’ said Raja Rao to Tara who came by then, ‘we informed the police.’
‘Leave all that to me,’ said Tara, though beside herself, ‘and take care of her.’
At that, as Roopa realized that the police would come to take away the body for post-mortem, the irony of the tragedy dawned on her.
‘Oh, how he feared he would be arrested,’ she thought feeling sad about it all. ‘But they would be here soon, to take away his body. What if they revisit to confiscate his booty as well?’
Then, having recalled how relieved Sathyam was at his brainwave, she resolved, ‘No, I can’t let that happen, if only to see his soul rest in the Sathyam Memorial Clinic.’ Thus, closeting with Raja Rao and Sandhya, she narrated all that happened, and concluded, ‘He told me that he kept that money on the loft. We shall remove that before they start looking for it.’
As Raja Rao and Sandhya shared her sentiment and volunteered to shoulder her burden, the prospect of her immortalizing Sathyam’s name through the clinic enabled her to face the calamity with equanimity. Shortly thereafter, Tara came back, and Sandhya went home to tend to Saroja. And as the Police began investigating into Sathyam’s death so to assist them Raja Rao left Roopa to Tara’s care.
‘You know that I look life straight in its face,’ said Tara in undertone to Roopa. ‘You should welcome his death though in a weird way. Well, he lived believing you’re faithful to him and died before knowing you’ve a lover. Don’t you fool yourself; it was only a matter of time when he would have got wind of your ways, and how hard that would have been on him you can imagine. How he would have suffered all his life for that hurt and death seems to have saved him that fate. And that’s life!’
‘Oh, I haven’t seen it from that angle,’ said Roopa, even as she began to contemplate on that.