“Before you came in,” said the lad embarrassedly.
“So you’re here all through!” Roopa couldn’t help but exclaim.
As he bowed his head in confirmation, her embarrassment insensibly turned into an acute awkwardness.
“Why the hell did you come in?” Sathyam questioned the lad angrily.
“I’m ticket-less,” he replied by way of an explanation.
“When did you remove them from the purse?” Sathyam asked in enquiry.
“I found them lying on the floor,” he pleaded with folded hands. “I swear I didn’t touch them even.”
“You want us to believe that they dropped down from my purse just like that,” said Roopa still feeling embarrassed. “You can explain all about that to the police at the next station.”
“Please spare me,” frightened, the lad begged for mercy. “I took them from your handbag after you slept off. I thought you would look for them only after going home. When I realized that you found them missing, I kept them in your view so that you won’t be searching behind the luggage. Please let me go.”
“Let’s leave him,” she said overwhelmed by pity for him. “After all, he hasn’t harmed us. Moreover, he might fail at the hands of the police. These days, isn’t the air thick with the news of lock-up deaths?”
As the chap went out of the coupe relieved, the couple looked at each other embarrassed. However, the very thought that they were at lovemaking when that lad lay below embarrassed Roopa no end.
‘What would have happened had he strangled Sathyam and raped me as well?’ she thought at length and found the very idea spine-chilling. ‘Of course, the lad is well built and would have got into mood for that, what with our doings around him. Why, he even came out of his hiding to steal the anklets! God knows, in what shape he might have seen me, and for how long!’
She couldn’t believe that she passed through that ordeal unscathed, unknown to her but soon the embarrassment and the horror the moment embodied combined to produce even a feeling of adventure in her mind-set. Slowly the whole episode appeared exciting to her with the aura of a queer romantic adventure.
However, Sathyam was upset about the whole thing, ‘Could it be a bad omen for my married life? In a way, hasn’t Padmavathi prophesied just that?’ Thus he was nagged for long by many a doubt about his married life in the offing.
“Let’s forget about it,” he said at length as though to ward off the impediment by dismissing the incident itself.