“Are they not making the right noises these days?”
“God bless them,” he continued. “What a good turn one of them gave to my life; I was so put off with that metro jaunt that it was quite a while before I ventured into a brothel, where I chanced upon an angelic whore, who later became my Good Samaritan. Since she struck my romantic chord straight away, I stuck to her for it’s not the sexual variety that I sought even in the paid sex. After a hiatus, when I returned into her ardent arms, she told me that in the meantime she had conceived my child but was constrained to get it aborted. While I felt that something in me snapped, she said it was time that I got married and became a father, when she told me to court a suitable dame, I said that I was unlucky in love; she said that she knew a girl, who would be an ideal wife for me, and as if to goad me to her candidate, she said the dame had a rare sex appeal to eroticize the romantic in me; she said that the girl was not privy to her double life and even if she came to know about it, she was sure she would be sympathetic towards her. It was all too tempting not to follow the lead, more so as I was just then shunned by Devi, who opted to marry Raju, a bank clerk then; now I realize in hindsight that if only his father was half as resourceful as my dad had been, he might’ve been no less an engineer than me.”
“Isn’t it interesting that one woman should lead you to another woman?”
“Didn’t I tell you that my life is rather unusually unusual,” he said joyously. “Her lead led me to Rathi and I fell for her, so to say, head-over-heels, and her parents too were for hastening our wedding. With the wedding a week away, I went to thank her, you can guess who, and she offered herself as her wedding present; well I couldn’t say no to her and she dragged me into her bed, as she put it, to refresh my memory of an amorous woman’s lovemaking. Oh, what a time she gave me for one last time, but the day before the marriage party was to board the Circar Express to reach Rathi’s place, it occurred to me to take a VDRL test, just in case; and to my dismay, I tested positive. Nonplussed though, I rushed to a specialist, who said the tests could go awry at times, and how I wished that was the case in my case; anyway, putting my fears at rest, he said that even otherwise, he would treat me in time to make it harmless for my bride. What a nervous time it was waiting for the fresh report, oh, it was the anxiety of a lifetime; but how relieved I was as the second test negated the first result is beyond words.”