Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life - BS Murthy (polar express read aloud txt) 📗

an affront to her dignity. After all, it was one thing for a woman to take a lover and another for her man to act as a pimp for her. And with her husband turning a pimp, wouldn’t she be reduced to a prostitute? So, for her to bed with an unknown character even at his behest would be demeaning. What was the guarantee that her debauchery could be confined to a one-night stand to be put behind in due course? What if Vivek were to insist on an encore every time? Would Gautam be able to put his foot down, at least till the contracts were signed? By then, wouldn’t she have crossed the lakshman rekha of her fidelity? Who knew, she might find it difficult to imbibe Sita’s psyche after all that.

Answering his fears about their future relationship, she said she believed in being faithful to him because she loved him and that he was considerate to her. So, she was sure that his failure by itself wouldn’t drive her into another’s arms as she valued him as a man and lover as well. At any rate, she wouldn’t like to prostitute herself even for his sake. But, should he let his deprivation affect him and thus turn into an awkward individual, then she wouldn’t know what the future held in store for her chastity.

Admiring her sense of loyalty, Gautam gnashed his teeth at Manian’s deceit. While the prospect of their ruin frightened him, her refusal to fall raised her in his esteem. Thus, having seen the beauty of her soul, he set out to savor the body that held it to the hilt. In his emotivity, he perceived her frame as the temple of his love and paid his obeisance to it through prolonged lovemaking. But, as his new admiration for her came in conflict with his old ambition, he tossed in bed all night. Thus, trying to find a solution to the vexed problem, he veered from one end to another. In the end, having visualized the true magnitude of his loss in either eventuality, he was urged to go after Manian’s neck to direct the fatality on his own.

But, soon his sense of history gave him solace as he recalled those who had lost their lives owing to the treachery of the trusted. When it dawned on him that Manian’s deceit did not put his head on the block and instead placed the chastity of his wife on the line, he wondered whether fate was considerate or cruel towards him. At length, when he saw the virtue of sailing with the wind than swimming against the current, he felt that his fate had inexorably placed his wife’s fidelity on a sticky wicket. Well, for her favor to favor Vivek, he had a premonition that eventually her fate too would extract its price from him. So be it.

Amidst her disturbed sleep, Sneha too applied her mind to his predicament.

‘By the way, am I reading too much into the script?’ she thought at length. ‘Wouldn’t a chance rape rob me of my chastity any way? Then, how could a one-night stand with his consent dent my fidelity! Besides, won’t it be stupid for us to go back to square one to uphold a questionable virtue nurtured by notion? Anyway, it’s up to him to decide. Is that so? No, it’s the sanctity of our marriage that’s at stake. Once the marital thread that binds woman to her nuptial bed is sapped, won’t that tend her to turn loose? If it comes that, won’t that damn my character? Moreover, what’s the guarantee that my rendezvous with Vivek wouldn’t affect my future relationship with Gautam? After all, all men are possessive about their women. The nagging thought that I enjoyed another man might leave Gautam cold in our marital bed. Who knows, branding me loose, he might even show me the door. Oh, it’s too great a risk for me to run for any money.’

Having resolved thus, she sank into a tired sleep only to be confronted by her man at dawn. While Gautam took over from where he had left, she showed him how his proposition would jeopardize her future. When he sought to assuage her fears, she clung on to her apprehensions. Cornered thus, he thought of Houdini. Why not open up her old family wounds to enable him to take her to Vivek for dressing them. Thus he reminded her about her obsession to see her people prosper and make Suresh’s cousins his poor cousins. When life brought them to the verge of victory, how stupid it would be to throw in the Kassenbouw towel?

At that, she seemed to need no more persuasion, save her apprehensions about the after affects

“How can I be certain that you won’t put me in others’ beds as well,” she said as though seeking his assurance. “What if I seek more of the one-night stands on my own? Who knows, I might fancy this very guy. Won’t that usher in our liaison? With no burden of guilt, what if I turn loose in time?”

When he granted her freedom of sexual conduct, they both felt as if their marital good faith gave way to unfettered infidelity.

Shortly thereafter, even as the Business Monitor anointed him as the king of lobbyists, Gautam felt as though fate ordained a jewel-less crown for his coronation. Whatever, the media made him the most talked about man in New Delhi and as the word about his Dutch success spread across the business world, Global Facilitators became the most sought after lobbyists in India.

Though Gautam knew that he had an unfinished business with Manian, he felt that firing him would send the wrong signals in the bureaucratic circles about his own cussedness. Besides, he reckoned that it would provoke Manian to bad mouth him. Deciding to sidetrack him, Gautam dispatched him post-haste to Madras as the In-charge of Global’s southern operations in the offing. And to add insult to injury, he was asked to report to a fresh recruit at Global’s Corporate Office. Thereafter, when he was eased out for non-performance, Manian, as the saying goes, became history.

As Global’s lobbying in the industrial arena seemed to run at breakneck speed on the Dutch steam, Gautam desisted from using Sneha’s charms to clinch arms deals. And in spite of the appetite for her, no one dared to think in terms of a quid pro quo for facilitating multi-million contracts. Anyway, backed by the sexual thrust that Sneha’s girls provided to the fire-power of its clientele’s armaments, Global Facilitators spread its wings into the murky world of lucrative defense deals.

As Gautam paid a blind eye to her escapades, Sneha became the fair sex guru of free sex. And Gautam too could not resist for long the allure of the women who came into his life drawn by his looks peppered by his power and pelf. Thus, in a remarkable adjustment of emotional togetherness, the Gautams did not allow their moral transgressions to affect their marital equation.

 

Chapter 17

Baring the Soul

 

When Gautam was done with his painful confession, time seemed to have come to a standstill to witness the interactive silence of the tormented father and his penitent son. Soon, as if pushed by a synchronous urge for solitude, they both rose to their feet. And avoiding eye contact, they moved to their own portions in Misty Nest. Lightened by his confession as Gautam reached his room to pray for Sneha’s soul, an insatiate Suresh made a U-turn to her quarter to know more about his mother.

As Suresh reached the threshold tentatively, her life-size painting appeared to greet him affectionately. Yet, as he stood rooted benumbed, her welcome smile seemed to beckon him. Thus, aided by the radiance of her persona that emanated from every square inch of its frame, he found himself moving closer to her. Having seen her in an angelic light, he was seized by an urge to touch her feet. Then, as he looked into the full-length mirror that was witness to her charms, he thought he could discern the true image of his mother.

Experiencing an unusual fondness for his mother, he was seized by a compelling urge to caress every object of hers. Oh, how he scanned her cupboard as if to seek every nook and corner of her heart. At last finding a secret shelf beneath a false bottom, he thought it could be a treasure trove of her memory. Spotting a bunch of diaries therein, he wondered whether they would lead him to the essence of her self. Yet, he picked them up with a premonition that they might bare her torturous soul as a woman. As his urge to gauge her mind goaded him to read them, his sense of decency to preserve her privacy tied his hands. But, his hope that they would put the aberrations of her life in proper perspective gave a go-by to his qualms.

He was struck by the very first entry he encountered!

'G is my God, oh, God don’t mind that.'

Overawed, as he went through the dairies one by one, he found in them many a facet of her extraordinary life and times. It became clear to him that she was a sensitive woman who loved her man from the depths of her heart. She was caring and considerate to one and all, what a fine soul she had! Wasn’t her ambition to make a prince out of her son the recurring theme of her scheme of life? How pleased he was that his mother had cared for him though she had failed to let him perceive her feelings for him. But, he was perturbed by that phase of her life that heralded their eventual ruin.

'Isn’t it God’s own blasphemy against his devotee? What else is it that G wants me to pander to some minister’s son! Seems G’s cornered by M’s deceit, but what a way it is to wriggle out of it! Didn’t my sixth sense tell me that M is not   to be trusted? Warn I did but G paid no heed. Of what avail is it now that G realizes that doomed are men who make light of the feminine sixth sense? Poor G, how I pity him! Didn’t the old jackal reduce G to sparing his wife as a sex bowl for someone’s cum! Not even Eskimo like, is it? Where is the reciprocity, leave alone any cultural constraint? Wonder, how life can make pimps out of husbands! Well, out of fathers for that matter. Why blame them when it’s the arrogance of the powerful that seeks satiation through others’ women!'

'So, to save our business skin I’ve to turn Global’s whore! Why not turn a global whore with a wider exposure? Oh, man has to be brave or crass to send his wife across. How brave was G though he looked dazed! And who is this V who seems to have seen me? Whoever grants a whore the right to know whom she is to satiate? Would I have agreed to play G’s bed ball with sound sexual ethics?  Isn't my moral fiber weak for my consent'

'No mistaking, it's my obsession to be wealthy made me concede. Was my initial objection a sham then! Why G too had no other option. Oh, how our greed for wealth makes us stoop to V’s power and lust! Not even his, but his pop’s, that is! If not for our fear of losing what pressure would V have come to exert on us? It would be but a zero with capital Z. After all, power feeds on fear, doesn’t it?’

'V is out of town, so G hasn’t set up the stage. Is it any respite? What a cold comedy it's going to be on my hot sexual stage! Why can't it be fun, the one-night stand? Isn't variety is the spice of life. That is, if I shed a little of my shame.