Stories Varied - A book of short stories
Page 47As he averred that he was constrained to lead me to the altar forthwith for his only sister was yet to be married, I believed him as that’s the prevailing custom. That’s fine, but what was fatal in the end was his proposition that it made no sense to waste time before our nuptial time. Yet what a time we have had on the sly till I discovered, on that accursed day, that I was but his other woman; or was it a moment of deliverance from his deceit? When I happened to see him from afar with a woman and two kinds in a cinema hall, I thought she could be his cousin of sorts. Not wanting to embarrass him, I refrained from approaching them, but settling behind them, well after the movie began, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Courtesy the kids, it didn’t take me long to know that she was Usha his wedded wife. What with my decency of not hurting her overpowering my instinct to shame him, I left the theatre to bring the curtains down on our affair. Back home, I reflected hard and long as to how to deal with him. First I was tempted to get even with him by pulling him up for his shameful act but on second thought I felt it was too lenient a sentence for his utter perfidy. That way, he would know why I walked out on him. But what if I put in my papers to leave him in the lurch guessing as to why I had left him; was it owing to my discovery of his double life or did I ditch him for he never knows why.
Shrugging off the past, though I readily wedded Murali, it took me a while to shed the baggage of guilt from his bed. Though it made no difference to the physicality of our sex, as it bogged me down in the emotionality of coition, I could see that past is the future of the present. Added to that was Murali’s confession about his own past – an unfructified love between him and his classmate owing to her parents’ superior status. Thinking it prudent to keep mine away from him and determined not to let the sapphire of my life turn literally blue, I began applying my mind.
What’s the big deal about premarital sex that woman should feel self-condemned when men shirk if off after they jerk it out? But then why do women tend to linger on to the sexual acts, emotionally that is? Is it because they are the recipients of male cum in their female receptacles? And what about the sexually adventurous dames, after all there could be some, though none of them can get away like Catherine the Great that is after boasting about bedding with hundred lovers, or whatever was the number. By any chance was it the source of her greatness, I shall Google that later. What a variety it could’ve been for the queen of yore in comparison with the sex workers of the day, well, isn’t it like comparing apples with oranges? Surely, the queen could’ve chosen her mates but the whores can’t deny any Tom, Dick and Harry, even as they can pick and choose, and that’s man’s world in woman’s backyard. How strange! When it comes to parity in sexual choices, won’t legalizing sex-work make it a level playing field for women? So went my reasoning for sexual smooth sailing in my marital bed that fetched two off springs.