Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life by BS Murthy (novels for teenagers .TXT) 📖

it about, he felt doubly shattered. And yet, as he kept nursing the slight he felt, his hurt ego ensured that he sustained his resolve to get even with those who humiliated him.

When Sneha brought some schoolchildren for a picnic to Nagarjunasagar, Dame Luck smiled on him as though to tempt his destiny. Assigned by his boss to guide the party, as he entered the guest-house that morning, he saw her in the sofa waiting for the unknown him. Bewildered by her beauty and bowled by her charm, he stopped in his tracks. When she got up to greet him, the flow of her frame stunned him even more. As she went about assembling her flock, struck by her poise, he didn't take his eyes off her. Further, enthralled by her bewitching smile and enchanting tone, he felt as if he had retrieved his lost hope. While he stood rooted lost in her charms, sensing that she had stolen his heart, she bowed her head as though in guilt.

Taking them around, he felt that his sprouting love was ever on the rise as a dam in the making. Instinctively, he felt that as his wife, Sneha could wipe out his hurt and make him forget his past. Thus, guided by his conviction, he tried to charm his way into her heart. When he perceived reciprocity in her coyness, he felt ecstatic about his future.

When it was time for her to take the kids back to Guntur, for fear of losing her hand, he contrived to accompany her. Spurred on by her fondness for him during that journey, he lost no time in proposing. And she joyously responded by inviting him home.

When they were engaged shortly thereafter, not only he was thrilled but also felt avenged. The chance happenstance made him believe that the hand of providence was at work in his life. When Sneha told him that their engagement was a remedial measure to her family as well, his sense of destiny reached the core of his hope. Having got a wife who was better than the one who had spurned him, he felt hopeful that the other vow he took would as well come true. And that became Gautam’s abiding faith.

The wedding that followed became the talk of the town as the love marriage of the time. Besides, his handsome persona and her divine figure made them look like they were made for each other. In that romantic backdrop, the praises showered by their cousins, and others made them value each other even more. As they divined the just married, even as the eyes of her parents were welled up with joy, the hearts of his parents emptied their anxieties.

The nuptial night however ushered in new hopes for the vindicated groom and the blissful bride. While Gautam’s passion took her to the frontiers of her dreamland, her amorous eagerness drove out his sense of rejection from his subconscious. It was as though the force of her physical charms dented his desire for material possessions. The fulfillment of their consummation buttressed his self-worth and furthered her hopes for the future. But, his feeling of being avenged that her charms buttressed blocked his vision to the beauty of her inner self. Likewise, having been swirled by his manly passion, she found herself gloating over her womanly fortune. It was in that sensual setting they were to begin their married life at Nagarjunasagar even as the euphoria of their fortuitous union restored equanimity to Gautam’s hurt ego and brought balance to Sneha’s twisted psyche.

When she first set her foot in the township, Sneha became a big draw with one and all. While her charms whetted men’s appetites, her simplicity endeared her to the womenfolk. Even as her unassuming manner drew the youth to her home, her dignified demeanor kept the lechers at bay. But, destiny didn’t seem to have tranquility in store for them as they soon found themselves heading towards New Delhi.

As Sneha frequented the Officers Club with Gautam, his boss didn’t lose much time to develop a crush on her. While Gautam was engaged in one sport or the other, his boss turned solicitous about her affairs. Mistaking her respect towards his elderliness as her admiration for his youthful heart, he soon started imagining the possibilities. So he began scheming about the ways of seducing her and saw Gautam’s absence-at-home as the means into her enticing arms. Thus, assigning outstation duties to Gautam, he began calling on her on the sly.

Though she guessed his motives soon enough, she was out of depth to handle his trespasses. That only emboldened the boss and thus he began to court her in earnest. As his ardency increased, Sneha was seized by her impulse to show him the door. But on second thoughts it occurred to her that if snubbed, he might take it out upon Gautam. And were she to take her man into confidence, he might take his boss to task. Either way, she feared that it would hurt Gautam’s career and her own future not to speak of shattering her parental hopes. It was not lost on her either that his visits might send wrong signals to the neighbors making their way to Gautam’s ears in the end. Confounded thus, she was immobilized by her predicament.

But the seducer, mistaking her stance as a veil of soft resistance, waited for an appropriate moment to unmask her charms. When he ambushed her in the end, she raised an alarm that ensured his retreat. Fearing his misadventure was sure to hurt his promising career and so as to long distance himself from the scandal, the boss pulled all strings to get Gautam transferred to New Delhi. Outraged though at his boss’s perfidy, Gautam felt the development could be a blessing in disguise for Delhi would provide better opportunities for his development. Above all, he was gratified by his wife’s chastity and felt he was doubly blessed for that.

 

Chapter 11

Bellows of Delhi

 

But, once in Delhi, the Gautams felt like fish out of water. The smell of the place, full of airs put on by all and sundry put them off. While the superciliousness of the educated irked them, the arrogant ignorance of the rest puzzled them. The intellectual apathy of the Delhi-wallahs that tended to collage all the South Indians as Madrasees irritated them. The bigotry of the cow belt characters in equating the Indianness with Hindi-speaking hurt their own sense of belonging. They were nonplussed at the naivety of the North Indian milieu that assumed, south of the Vindhyas it was dark skin all the way.

The North Indian disbelief that Sneha could be a Madrasee for her rosy skin, nevertheless, catered to their vanity. But, the prevailing impression created by the Northern tourists that the Madrasees go about barefoot scandalized them no end. Ironically, the left-handed compliment that Madrasees were a religious lot made the Gautams feel apologetic about the lack of their religiousness.

In due course, the flip side of New Delhi greatly impressed as well as influenced them. While Gautam was bowled over by Delhi’s tailors, seeing women in sleeveless blouses, Sneha felt as though she wore a veil. Thus, they both lost no time in adapting themselves, he by acquiring a new wardrobe and she by shedding the sleeves.

Yet their stammering Hindi remained a handicap to feel at home in the city that their destiny brought them to. So as to overcome the handicap, they set out to master Hindi, underscored with an impeccable accent. And in time, they began to articulate themselves in Hindi with certain finesse even. It was only time before they even began to thump the Hindi chauvinists in their own tongue with the quip that the books that really mattered in their language were Tulasidas’ Ramayana and the Railway Guide.

But, it was Delhi’s cultural ethos that troubled them to start with. Accustomed as they were to subtle shades, the so-called show that ruled Delhi’s ethos appeared gaudy to their eyes. The excessive formality of the Northern culture that contrasted with their own informal South Indian manners perplexed them. And the elaborate hospitality of the Delhi folks made them feel foreign in their own capital. Besides, the artificial endearment in Delhi’s social interaction embarrassed them for their inability to imbibe the same. What was worse, the chitchat that invariably centered on the absentees offended their sensibility nurtured by the concept of confidentiality. On the other hand, the social nicety of reciprocity hampered them for want of paraphernalia to entertain in return.

Above all, it was the Delhi-wallahs’ compulsive need for competitive exhibitionism that confounded them the most. Insensibly, they began feeling small in the drawing rooms of others as well as in their own. As guests, they were wont to be on guard sipping tea in the carpeted drawing rooms lest they should spoil the sofas. But, whenever someone dropped in, they squirmed in their steel foldable chairs, all the while apologizing for the discomfiture caused for want of appropriate furniture. Thus, to begin with, in New Delhi’s social setting, the Gautams remained out of depth. And insensibly, the consciousness of their material lacking sunk into their psyche to distort their material orientation.

Even as the attractions of Delhi seduced them, the possibilities of success fired their imagination. As they saw the glamour that status gave to the couples and the aura riches provided to the families, their own deprivation for the lack of both became all the more acute. Thus, in time, their post-marital equanimity gave way to materialistic fatigue that opened up their old wounds besides causing some new sores.

As Sneha’s suppressed desires began to seek outlets in none too subtle ways, Gautam could see the unsavory direction in which their life might head. When he pictured the pitfalls in the path of a desirable woman with a frustrated mind-set, he was alarmed at the prospect of being cuckolded. And to avert such a disaster, he contemplated upon course correction. It was in that process he came to dust his old agenda of revenge through riches.

When he applied his mind to the task on hand, he saw some scope to squeeze the contractors who were known to cut corners. But, he reckoned that after a lifelong haul, bribe money might take him some middle class distance and no farther. And what if a disgruntled contractor got him trapped with the grease and all on his palms? Well, that would only jeopardize his job besides blackening his face. Even to get out of the mess, one needed big money, and small bribes wouldn’t get that. Oh, what dichotomy money is! How stupid it was to risk his career for such low stakes. If he were honest at least, he would still have a badge of honor to wear, however dull it might be. After all, he thought, it’s some identity for all that.

But, where else could the righteous path lead one but towards an anonymous end, that too after a lifelong trudge? And status was not about collecting peanuts until one retired into the oblivion. As for status, it was not an incremental accretion to the bank account brought about by thrift. Well, it was a short cut that could catapult man into the status zone. If one were incapable of tricking the riches his way, he concluded, it would be better to stay the honest course. At least, that wouldn’t entail one to cheapen himself. Besides won’t that help one retain his peace of mind? Otherwise, it could be a case of falling between two stools. So, he saw the need of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, as it were.

Thus, for clues of success he focused himself on the ways of life. Soon, he realized that the Delhi-wallahs loved themselves and more so their possessions. In Delhi, for man, and none the less for woman, self-interest seemed to manifest itself in acquisition without satiation. He felt material narcissism was a human