Stories Varied - A Book of Short Stories by BS Murthy (read aloud books txt) 📖

a term introduced by perverted men who want to lend legitimacy to their extramarital dalliances. Flirting invariably has a sexual connotation to it.”

She got up from her seat and walked around the room gesticulating and muttering something to herself. Suddenly she stopped, turned back, looked at Sanjay and asked, “Did my husband sleep with her? You are his friend. Did he ever tell you anything about it?” [*]

“What if Chaya lets Suresh sleep with her and if she does not?” he said tentatively.

“Won’t it make a fucking difference for me,” she said unequivocally.

“Would it be possible for Suresh to sleep with her unless she grants him the final favour?”

“What makes you think that the bitch won’t let him screw her?”

“Why not recall what Sathyam told his seducer friend Prasad in Benign Flame that you only gave me to read, sorry I haven’t returned it as I want to read it all again, ‘money and looks are okay to an extent to lure women, but better realize it’s the luck that enables one to lay them. Why, you can’t screw even 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’.”

“Could be, but you know that bitch was ever after him.” 

“I also know Suresh always preferred you over her.”

“Gone are those days my dear, these days he is over the seven-year itch and that bitch could be taking advantage of that. In spite of your friendly blinkers, you couldn’t have failed to see their wayward ways.” 

“Look Maya, I was only trying to play it down to cool things for you.”

“Thanks for not wanting to fish in the troubled waters of an old flame.”

“That makes me recall Chaya’s words at your wedding.”

“I know that bitch has a gift of gab, what did she say?”

“Bereft of money love is but a hackneyed expression.”

“Maybe Cupid is a lesser god than Mammon.”

“Yet they collude to consign some to the doghouse of life.”

“As Astraea the goddess of innocence connives,” she said nostalgically.

“What else can the star-crossed lovers do than blame the conspiring deities?” 

“Not holding it against the jilter is gentlemanly isn’t it?” she said taking his hand.

“Thanks for the compliment,” he said pressing her hand.

“But what about that bitch?” she said withdrawing her hand.

“Maybe she is merrily leading Suresh up the garden path?”

“Don’t you know how desperate she was to hook him then?”

“That was when he was an eligible bachelor.”

“You think she could be flirting now to hurt him.”

“Who knows if she at killing two birds with one stone?”

“What if I expose her to her man to give her a taste of her own medicine?”

“That’s a suicidal prescription.’

“Why do you think so?”

“What if her man deserts her?”

“She gets her just deserts, won’t she?”

“Were he to murder her or get her killed?”

“Won’t that leave the world one bitch less, why won’t it?”

“But life’s mistakes come with collateral damages, won’t they?”

“And what’s life without risks?

“What’s this hatred in the bosom of a loving character?” he said taking her hand.

“Maybe I’m burning with jealousy.”

“Born out of mere suspicion, isn’t it?” 

“How distressing it is to imagine their togetherness,” she said squeezing his hand.

“Ouch,’ he yelled retrieving his hand. 

“Sorry, my distress acquired a physical force,” she said breathing out into his palm. 

“Depression I can understand but not this desperation,” he said fondling her shoulder.

“Only a woman in my situation can grasp that.”

“Could be,” he said withdrawing his hand.

“Did he lead me to the altar to bring me to the crossroads of life?” she said taking his hand.

“So be it, take a look at the signboards of redressal on the other three roads.”

“Maybe that’s the way to approach life,” she said resignedly.

“Don’t be pulled down,” he said pressing her hand.

“Won’t you help me in taking my pick?” she said looking into his eyes.

“If only you pull your socks up.”

“How can I as my soul is seized at its core by sexual jealousy?” she said in tears.

“Get freed and it would lead to orgasmic nirvana,” he said wiping her tears.

“Am I to languish as sanyasin as they indulge in lust? No way.” she said determinedly.

“I only want you not to jump the signal and upset the applecart that’s all.”

“Who’s applecart, theirs or mine?” 

“Do you take me for a double agent or what?” 

“Sorry for spoiling,” she said sounding apologetic.

“If it’s your marital right to retain Suresh isn’t it her womanly right to covet him?”

“Well, her man too has a right over her fidelity, doesn’t he have?

“Of course, but that’s not the issue, is it?”

“Why not, as I have a right to alert him about her infidelity.”

“That would boomerang on your marriage, and rightly so?”

“Why do you sound so scary?”

“Am I not concerned about you?”

“Don’t I know that more than ever?” 

“So better give up that idea.”

“It would be no more than a subsiding storm.”

“What if that derails her marriage?”

“Didn’t she ask for it by trespassing into my marital space? Let her go to hell, how do I care.”

“If her man starts harassing her, why won’t Suresh offer her his shoulder to cry on?”

“Oh, that’s bound to exacerbate my predicament, why didn’t I think about it?”   

“Worse, if her man were to divorce her, won’t your man feel obliged to man her show?

“Oh God, that would be like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire itself.” 

“That’s all about the dilemmas of life.”

“Take me to the signboards of other three routes at the crossroads.” 

“Before that know man always comes back to his wife in the end?”

“Well.”

“So take the languid route to reclamation,” he said sounding persuasive.

“You know that I’m not a laidback type.”

“Being a firebrand take the proactive path then?”

“What is that?” she said taking his hand. 

“Welcome her into a threesome sexual fold.”

“What an idea sirji,” she said withdrawing her hand.

“Deadly idea so to say; if she were a flirt, she would flee from the field, won’t she?”

“What if she jumps into our bed?”

“Won’t that take you to the frontiers of lesbianism for achieving orgasmic nirvana?”

“Are you serious?”

“If you haven’t fantasized about it, ask your woman friends who could have.”

“All said and done, how I could sleep with my enemy, make no mistake about it.”

“Didn’t Byron say that there is a pleasure in passing through the pathless woods, and that was in the context of incest, and it could hold good for threesome sex as well.”

“By the way, what’s the orgasmic nirvana you were hinting at?”

“It’s the mental empathy of a couple as one of them indulges with a third character.”

“As a theory it is okay, I suppose.”

“If alive to your spouse’s innate promiscuity, it’s practicable as well.’

“Maybe but it’s not for me.”

“Better I leave you to your own counsel,” he said getting up to leave.

“With either way leading me nowhere, how can you leave me stranded as is where?” she said holding him back.

“Am I forcing you to stay that way?” he said and moved towards the main door.

“Wait Sanjay,” she said aloud as he was about to open the door.

“What’s new?” he said turning around.

“Well Cupid has given me the clue,” she said pacing up to him.

“What is that?” 

“Why not I become naughty and start an affair?” 

“On the rebound, that is?

“So be it,” she said holding his hand.

“So, the stupid Cupid wants you to set rebounds in motion.”

“Not so if it’s with a single man,” she said caressing his hand.

“What are you aiming at?”

“Wonder why it never occurred to me to ask you why you didn’t marry any?”

“Neither did I complain about it, did I?”

“You are my good boy, aren’t you?” she said hugging him.

“Be a good girl and control yourself,” he said enlacing her nevertheless.

“Did you ever fantasize it with me?” she crooned into his ears.

“Look Maya…” he began, and as if not wanting to hear anything to the contrary, tightening their embrace, she sealed his lips with hers. 

Ravi Subramanian’s prompt [*] 

 

Story 5

Autumn Love

 

She willed herself to not to check her phone to see if he had replied. It had been about three days now. She hated that she was constantly checking his ‘last seen at’ status and yes, he had logged in just five minutes ago. Yet she couldn’t stop herself. This sinking feeling to find absolutely no communication from him was becoming unbearable, almost tortuous.

And then, just as she sat down in her chair, her phone vibrated. With her heart thudding in her ear, she unlocked her phone and stared at the screen. Finally! It was his message. 

But when she opened it and read it, she nearly stopped breathing. She didn’t know if he was joking or not. What was this? [*]

‘Is it a point of no return?’ she thought involuntarily moving to the edge of the chair.

Reading his ‘have you forgotten about the castration?’ message, she sank into the chair thinking, ‘is it a lighthearted joke or as a loaded message?’, and for a clue, began to recall the events of the year passed by.

‘Oh, how my life had turned on its head when I turned fifty?’ she thought in wonderment. ‘That’s when I immunized my heart against attractions and insulated my life from vacillations! So I believed, didn’t I? But when he enamored my heart to give a flirty spin to my life, didn’t it dawn upon me that I had only sterilized it for a ritual regimen, and no more. Oh, how his first glance pierced my heart to stir my life that very instant!’

Returning from a temple when she found him alone in the drawing room, she felt as if god had sent his angle to receive her in her own abode. The moment their eyes met, it was as if they began their joint search for a love ground to share, which they had to abandon as her husband entered the scene from behind the curtain.

He was a friend of her husband’s childhood pal settled in the States. Having spent the best part of his life there, he came back with his wife for good, leaving their two children, who were US citizens. That was six months back and they had since settled in Hyderabad, where, incidentally, both her married daughters stayed. As he happened to be in their town alone, to explore some business opportunities there, that evening, he came to call on her husband at their common-friend’s behest. Introductions over, as her husband wanted her to prepare some coffee for them; she went into the kitchen with a heavy heart.

‘While my missing his sight had understandably irked me, didn’t the thought that he too would miss my sight inexplicably hurt me?’ she began reminiscing about that dream encounter. ‘But then, how the smell of the boiling decoction lifted my spirits for it portended serving him some steamy coffee with my own hands. When he said he never tasted anything better, how I hoped he would leave some dregs for my palate to share his satisfaction. What a disappointment it was seeing him empty the cup and how exhilarated I was when he said he had broken his life-long habit of leaving the dregs. Then, as he was preparing to leave, how depressed I was, but how relieved I was when my husband invited him to visit us again!’

She got up from the chair and as if to walk down the memory lane, she walked up to the compound gate.

‘Oh, how that fateful evening changed the autumn tenor of my life!’ she went on reminiscing. ‘Were it the deities I pray that chose to pave a pathway of love for me? Or was it a case of my prayers gone awry? Before he stirred my heart, how sedate was my life, sterile though? After all, there was no material change after he had entered into it.   Neither I did I venture onto his love ground nor did I let him into my sexual sphere. Why should life seem drab now as he cold shouldered me? Why not, won’t the change of heart alter the tenor of