‘What about her?’ he continued recalling that fateful event with a sinking heart. ‘Instead of sinking deep into me, didn’t she slip out on the sly? Didn’t it seem an end within the end to me? How hurt I was for forcing that one-night stand on her! What a pain it was later to realize that she was going strong with that chap! And how she began distancing herself from me! Didn’t that force me to seek refuge in my business? But, what a narcotic success is! How it helped dully the pain of her peccadilloes! If not for it, wouldn’t I have put my foot down on her? What a longing I had for her then! And by the time she rediscovered her love for me; didn’t I myself develop a roving eye? That was that. And after that, was she not one of many, sexually, that was?’
Lest he should have been unfair to her in his reminisces, he began reading her letter all again.
Yet, it’s not with the intent to hurt you that I say this; but how would it have been had you put your foot down on my waywardness! But then, you are a gentleman, and I didn’t prove to be your worthy ladyship. And still, thanks to your large heart, I was cozy as your wife.
‘Why didn’t I reprimand her?’ he cried inconsolably. ‘Any man would’ve done just that with a wayward wife, wouldn’t he? But then, was it not my misplaced sense of honor that made me ignore her waywardness? Oh, if only I had realized that it made no sense to keep my word in the face of her abusive ways. How did I fail my woman all the while believing I was more than fair to her? What if I end my life for having undone hers? But, is not life itself an end within the end? Why, won’t youth bring an end to the childhood to start with? And how successively life ends its own phases till death ends it once and for all? Why not I let my old age end the waywardness of my middle age?’
All the same, as he came alive to the rituals of her death, he thought about their son.
‘If anything he’s the worst sufferer for my foolhardiness!’ he began to think. ‘At least, Sneha and I had a wild go at life but what about him? What if his life gets snuffed out before it blossoms? What a pity it is to die in the flower of youth. How I failed her as husband and him as father. Damn my success when I failed my family! What an irony, though we wronged him, he needs to perform her last rites now, and God willing mine in time to come!’