Rau: Not if you withdraw your plaint, I can take up his case to ensure that he walks out a free man at the first hearing itself. Why, his confession to Slesha is worthy of the court dustbin and no more. Any district court lawyer would make out a case of consensual sex given the familiarity the family friendship had bred.
Rajiv: Oh stop it my friend. I was mad to violate her chastity but I won’t be mean to slur her character to save my skin.
Rau: So be it if you are prepared to spend your life in jail losing your wife as well.
Rajiv: So what. If Ramya forgives me, won’t my penitence in jail make our reunion sublime in the end?
Ramya: That only means you want me to languish as your chaste wife all the while.
Rajiv: I’m sorry; I’ve failed to see it from your point of view.
[Rajiv goes into the bedroom and locks the door. Ramya and Rau suspecting the untoward frantically knock at the door and plead with him to come out (mime). Rajiv pulls out the revolver from underneath the bed.]
[Enter: Slesha.]
[She takes out the bullets from her shirt pocket and shows them to Ramya and Rau. Rajiv comes out of the bedroom and sees the bullets in Slesha’s hand.]
Rajiv: Oh what a life that won’t let me die even. Why am I not dying out of shame having been caught in the act?
Slesha: Why, from the look of you I knew you would push yourself over the precipice and so I had emptied the cartridge.
Rajiv: If only you could have visualized the impending joy of dying in my face as I clicked the revolver, I’m sure you wouldn’t have tried to stop me from dying.
Slesha: Can’t I feel your misery from the pain I see in you now.
Rajiv: Believe me, the pain you see is but the loss of that joy. If only you could grasp my soul, you would get the essence of my mind. The thought that my death would make it easier for the two women I had hurt made me rejoice at the threshold of death. But having stopped me from dying, you had only made life difficult for them and me as well. Aren’t you guilty on both the counts?
Slesha: Far from it. You would have died leaving your poor image for an obituary. Why not live to better that before death visits you on its own. As for Ramya, she would’ve lived in guilt for pushing you over the precipice. With you gone how would Divya have the joy of forgiving.