As if to back his reasoning, his networking led him to Prathima the fascinating.
A fabulous woman in her mid-twenties, she was married to a lout of a clerk albeit the sole heir to a sizable estate. And as his widowed father-in-law treated her as a daughter, she didn't have any inkling of the marital fate in store for her. But having been reared on a diet of discipline, the death of his father, a couple of years after their marriage, made her husband go wayward. Well, he gave up his job for a permanent place at the gambling table, leaving her high and dry at home.
Well, it was not long before he had lost all, including his aptitude to work. And that forced her to take up a job to make both ends meet for her and her parasitic man. Soon, distressed by the detestable husband, she was distracted by the attentions of her boss to lose her balance.
But it was not long before the peon at the office got wind of the affair pointed out that while the boss was making merry with her allures, she had to bear the brunt of the rough and tough. Why not she let him line up men who would pay for what the boss got it free. And it was up to her to fix the toll for her sex passes that he would be issuing on her behalf. When she protested, he said it was useless pretending to be Sita, having herself crossed the lakshman rekha and driving home her vulnerability, he hinted at blackmail in case she failed to fall in line. Lacking the needed moral rectitude to brush him aside, she agreed to go along at last. Besides, she felt that in a way, those escapades might recompense for her exploitation by her man and boss alike. When she took the plunge the fact that she was childless helped her in her abandonment.
Her husband didn't fail to figure out her wayward ways soon enough - not from the wear and tear of her frame but from the bulge of her purse. Though irked by the thought that other men came to enjoy her, he came to see that without them there was no way he could be a parasite on her and in spite of them, he still had all her body for his use. What with her man acquiescing to her frequent outings, she had no qualms to suffer from in her wantonness and that enabled her to bestow her amorous best on men she came to entertain. Since that fetched her better price for her amorous services, ironically, it helped her serve her man‟s cause even better. And it was at this juncture that Chandra came into her life.