‘Don’t you know I’m cut up with you,’ said Roopa feigning anger, ‘for not writing about the valor of the man who captured your heart.’
‘I wanted you to figure it out yourself, so that I can have a second opinion,’ said Sandhya mirthfully. ‘In fact, I’m not going to let you see his picture till you see him in person.’
‘How unfair!’ said Roopa, ‘I’ll warn him that you are clever by half like when pinned down on the back yet you claim a win by crossing her legs over the victor’s back.’
‘He’s too smart to outsmart both of us put together,’ said Sandhya with a smile of reminiscence.
‘Then,’ said Roopa enthusiastically, ‘it should be interesting.’
‘What’s lacking now?’ crooned Sandhya, pushing Roopa’s head into her valley.
‘Why are you dull, my lovey?’ said Sandhya finding Roopa numb in her embrace.
‘I don’t know,’ said Roopa melancholically, ‘but I’m out of sorts really.’
‘I can understand what’s bothering you,’ said Sandhya with conviction. ‘Though I can visualize what his love might mean to me, I know I need you as much as I would need him.’
‘Thank you darling,’ said Roopa in gratification. ‘I love you all the more for our love.’
With the fears thus dispelled from her mind, Roopa went on devouring the lips that uttered those reassuring words. Then the rosy lien on their love seemed to have lent a new vigor to their libido as they indulged to the hilt.
When Chandrika landed a week later, Janaki turned sentimental all again, ‘She brought it upon herself, this ostracized existence. We can neither invite them to our house nor can we go to their place.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Chandrika, assuring her mother, ‘things are changing.’
‘I don’t see any,’ said Janaki and went into the kitchen in sobs. ‘But how I wish they do.’
‘I love to hear about your love life,’ Roopa couldn’t hide her eagerness.
‘We’ll come to that later,’ said Chandrika, ‘but tell me how your married life is.’
‘It’s routine,’ said Roopa, ‘with the capital R.’
Then suddenly Janaki rejoined her daughters with a rejoinder, ‘One shouldn’t forget the fuss Roopa made about the match. And you didn’t heed our advice.’
‘Why do you rake up the past?’ Ramaiah, who was within earshot, reprimanded his wife.
‘One must know that the path of the future is laid on the tracks of the past,’ retorted Janaki.
‘Let’s go to Sandhya’s place,’ Roopa proposed to her sister after a while.
The moment they stepped out, Roopa was impatient, ‘Tell me now.’