When she realized that she was being unfair to him as wife yet she bemoaned, ‘But I can’t bring myself to love him. Am I not the worse for that?’ Then she thought that if only she could love him, her life would be lively as well and that very idea for the attendant impracticality made her feel bitter about her fate, ‘Oh, loveless life is no better than a lifeless corpse.’

‘But he loves me,’ she contemplated in the same vein. ‘Isn’t it said that it’s better to marry someone who loves you than the one whom you might love. Why, hasn’t it turned out to be true in his case? Well, for all his love, an unresponsive body for a mate is what he gets from me. How wasteful is misplaced love, for the one who loves and the loved one as well!’ As she was overcome with pity for him, she looked at him instinctively, and found him staring at her adoringly.

‘Why am I not being rude to him? Maybe cruel even!’ she thought as she felt guilty. ‘Since I’m not enthused about him, do I have the right to dampen him? Oh, I should accommodate him though I may not love him. Maybe, sense of fairness demands that.’

“I’m sorry,” she said, extending her hand to him, “for hurting you.”

Overwhelmed by her gesture, he was at a loss for words. As his eyes welled, he soaked her hand with kisses. Feeling gratified by the gratification she had caused, she found herself seeing life in a new light.

“How long does it take us,” she asked so as to start a dialogue, “to reach home from the railway station?”

“Just under half an hour,” he said as though her gesture relaxed his nerves. “My friend Ramu would be receiving us at the Secunderabad railway station. I had sent him the Lorry Receipt and he would have shifted the luggage to our house by now.”

“Did he attend our wedding?” she continued just to keep it going.

“He couldn’t make it,” he said with apparent disappointment. “It’s a different story though and you’ll get to know of it, by and by.”

“Tell me now,” she asked more to please him than driven by any curiosity.

“Ramu is in love with Meera, his colleague where he worked earlier. Though she agreed to his proposal, the hitch is, she is a Tamilian and he, an Andhra like us. They got around her parents in due course and anyway his father too is too broad-minded to mind the match. But it was thought ideal to postpone their wedding till his younger sister got married so as not to spoil her chances in our prejudicial times and since her wedding coincided with ours, Ramu couldn’t come to our marriage. When the dust settles down, Ramu would marry Meera. But, for the present it’s courtship for them.”




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