Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel by BS Murthy (read full novel txt) 📖

with them. Maybe, the inability to jell for the lack of intellectual parity is still understandable, but then, how many strive to grow intellectually any way? Whatever, it was my perceived outgrowing that kept me aloof from Raju when I needed him the most. Had I not shunned him, maybe, he would have probably helped me steer clear of the perilous path that led me to my doom. Don’t I see now that by cold-shouldering him, I lost my way in life?”

“I see it differently though,” I said. “Your mistake was that you removed yourself from the reality of life. Even if you continued to value his friendship, still you would have dismissed his approach to life as an apology for failure. Maybe there was no way you could have emulated him given your state of mind then.”

“Probably true,” he continued after a little contemplation, “but still his association could have made some difference to my life if not my way of thinking. Well that’s all about ifs and buts of life. Why, it would have been the end of me as a six-year old, had not life preserved me to see more of it. It was one of those auspicious days, and my auntie took me along with her to the temple on the banks of the village tank. Wanting me to stay put at the bathing ghat, she herself got into the waters for a bath, but as I followed her on the sly, I was nearly drowned. She thanked god for having kept me alive and thus averting a life-long guilt for her, but I believe that it was my destiny that ensured that I escaped. Maybe, it didn’t want to end it so soon without allowing me to enjoy the fruits of love and suffer the pains of loss. It’s as if my life has an inextricable link with death, didn’t Rajan’s end in that road mishap along with my wife pave the way for me to taste the joys of his wife.”

“But there was that talk of the ‘accident of accommodation’.”

“It’s the malady of man to see the sinister in all,” he said apparently hurt. “Why not give some credit to my grey matter if not to my soul matter? Which fool would think of stage-managing the head-on crash of a vehicle in which he was a co-traveler? What motives can one’s malice attribute to me for the recent accident, which besides robbing me off my leg wiped out my entire family?” 

“I’m sorry for hurting you with my thoughtless remark.” 

“Don’t worry about that,” he said after a pause. “Why, you’ve only lent your voice to the rumor that’s thick in the air. Well to satisfy your curiosity about whether or not I get swayed away by women, you may know that it was my weakness for Ruma that imbalanced my life. When we first met, she was somebody’s wife and Rathi was my one-year old spouse, so the seven-year itch was nowhere near. Though I was mad about Rathi, still I had a roving eye to which, thankfully, she paid a blind eye, and that evening I was bowled by Ruma at the sabzi mandi.  Oh! Ruma had a face to pull and the figure to hold, why, as a beauty she could be a rarity, pleasant to espy and gripping while ogling. Having seen me drawing Rathi’s attention to her, Ruma took the initiative to interact with us, and had they not taken to each other readily, well; my passion for the stranger would have taken the path of dissipation. If not for Rathi’s premature death, maybe, there might not have been a tale worth telling, surely, her steadying influence on my life would have ensured its smooth sailing in the vortex of time. What a made-for-each-other couple we made! And to be fair to Ruma, it was she who made life exciting for me in so many ways.” 

“Don’t they say that men and women make unique combinations in different permutations?” 

“That’s the way it is,” he continued. “When Rathi invited Ruma for dinner, the very next day she brought some fine Spanish wine along with her, to cut the ice, so she said. She told us that she crossed the caste barriers with Rajan to marry for love; however, stuck up with the old values, their families tried their best to bust their union and so they left for Oman, where he made a name for himself as a civil engineer. When they felt financially secure, as homesickness began to unsettle them on the foreign shores, they made up their minds to windup their show there. So she came ahead of Rajan to put things in order here before he packed up there to join her. What a time we had that evening! I couldn’t hide my fascination for Ruma, and she never ceased being coy at my compliments, which prompted Rathi to say that she found our flirting rather thrilling. When Ruma blushed to the roots, Rathi hugged her like an elder sister, and as it occurred to us that it was time to call it a day; we realized that it was too late for Ruma to return home. So as Ruma stayed back for the night, having made her feel at home in the guest room, Rathi teased me no end that I had lost my eyes to the guest. When I said in jest why not I plan a perfect murder for her widowhood to make her my other woman, Rathi said in half-jest that she would join Rajan above for a heavenly time. Won’t that leave Ruma and me to have a raging time on earth? How I were to know that my jest and her half-jest were prompted by our fate!” “Call it superstition if you please but they say tadhaastu devatalu hover around to vet our ill-utterances.”   What with the recollections of that love tragedy haunting him, he turned morose for long.

 

Chapter 6

Orgies of Love

 

“When Rajan joined Ruma, so to say, we became an extended family,” he continued his narrative. “I admired his sense of humor and he my sense of purpose. I always tried to excel at work though my fate laid my career low, and so I became adept at all that I dabbled with. If not, instead of becoming a project consultant, at best I would have been a frustrated worker, or at worst, booted out for being sluggish. I realized that in life, as in Derby, the colt that bolts last need not be the last one at the finish. When Rajan wanted to venture into the real-estate business, he wanted me to become his partner, but by then, I had seen how greed sets to break up such ventures; started in bonhomie to share, once it breaks even, sharing becomes a snare for the better placed partner. Why it’s only time before he eases out the other, and pushed into the doghouse what else the loser can do than to cry foul. But then the fact of life is that the winner takes it all.”

“Maybe but one cannot really prosper alone in the long run.”

“Call it selfish wisdom, but man is seldom wisely selfish,” he said managing a chuckle. “Once my father told me that he was ditched by his business partner, I don’t know why, for I didn’t seek the details from him; maybe I should have. So, I preferred to be Rajan’s employee but he offered me a share in the profits as a bonus for my services. Thus was born ‘Rajan Builders’ that majored into ‘Imperial Infrastructures’ later on. With both the women putting their heart and soul into it, how exciting were those budding days; operating from Rajan’s office-cum-residence, we stuck together, be it for work or for recreation, well; it was only in the act of procreation that we went our separate ways. Matching with her man’s business concepts that began to bear fruits, nature enabled Ruma to conceive, which thrilled Rathi no end; it was as if she felt that she herself was carrying. When I wanted Rathi to consult a gynecologist, she said naughtily that she was sure that sooner than later we would make it happen. When Ruma delivered a girl child how delighted we all were, and as Rathi missed her periods, coinciding with the little girl’s false steps, we were thrilled no end. Ruma hoped that it would be a boy in the offing, and said in jest that had she not jumped the gun with a girl, maybe we would have the pleasure of espying the lovers in the making.”

“Wonder how could you have managed to hide your enamored eye for Ruma from her man’s vision from such a close range?”

“Well I never ceased coveting her and if anything my passion to possess her only grew with each passing moment but then as I developed friendly feelings towards Rajan, I was thrown into a dilemma of dharma. So I kept desisting from my urge to seduce her wondering all the while if I were destined to have her at all. Oh, what a sweet anticipation it was.”

“It reminds me of Sathyam’s words in Benign Flame, ‘my dear fellow, money and looks are okay to an extent to lure women, but better realize that it’s the luck that enables one to lay them. Why, you can’t even screw a whore if you’re not destined to have her; your visit to the brothel would have coincided with her periods, and the next time you’re eager, she could have shifted out of the town itself’.” 

“How true it is given my insatiate passions,” he said as his demeanor acquired a disappointed look. “Well, as Rathi was in the family way, Ruma proposed a trip to Ooty for all of us; she wanted us to relive our honeymoon with them as witnesses. I told her that she should have known that her friend made our marriage an unceasing honeymoon, and she said that it was plain greedy for in the relay race that is married love, Rathi should have passed on the baton of bliss to the newlyweds, who followed us in the tracks of love. Maybe for that foul, fate had contrived to pull out Rathi from the course of love with a head-on crash, which ripped the right side of the Fiat apart that was as we were returning from Ooty. While Rajan was at the wheel, Rathi, with his girl in her lap, was in the back seat right behind him, and as if to make her jest come true, fate had taken them together for a heavenly time leaving Ruma and me to continue our mundane sojourn.”

“Won’t her lighthearted remark about your raging time with Ruma make the tragedy all the more poignant?”   

“Maybe it was a prophetic jest at its prognostic best to portend the worst for me,” he said. “Whatever, I felt that even as Rajan’s soul deserved the rituals of death, Ruma too needed the solace of her family but all had ignored my invite. Now I wonder why it does not occur to any that life is too short for one to waste it nursing grudges even against those who might have slighted us. However, Raju had prevailed upon my family to retain a hesitant Ruma to be a part of it all, and as he stood by me, I went through the motions for the salvation of the departed. But after the obsequies, as Ruma had shifted to her place and Raju and the others too had left, fending for myself in the voidness of bereavement, I had realized that women are more complete in themselves than men.”

“Maybe their completeness is manifested in their biology itself.”

“Could be,” he said and continued,” and as if Ruma learned about my predicament telepathically, she came back to my place to light the stove the next morning before sunrise that is. Well in the privacy of our tragedy,