LOST FOR LUST.
The air outside is warm. It is October already yet there seems to be no sign of the winters setting in. Minakshi fans herself as she melts in this suffocating weather. “They call it the October Heat”, says her mother-in-law, who is sitting on the couch across her, chopping Areca nuts for her afternoon paan. “I wonder when it will cool down a bit”, says Minakshi. She hates this weather. It makes her feel dizzy and it prevents her from visiting the lily pond in their community park. It is her place of retreat-one that she loves spending her time in. The doorbell rings. The maid opens the door. “Uff Maaji(mother) it’s so hot outside. I can’t bear it anymore”, says Rita as she enters through the door. Minakshi’s face lit-up as she saw Rita. Throughout the day she looked forward to only two things — reading the newspapers in the afternoon once everyone is asleep and meeting Rita after that by the lily pond.
Minakshi belonged to a middle class family. Last year she got married to Rajat. Their marriage had been fixed through a matrimonial website. He belonged to an upper class family. They had their own textile company, which Papaji (father-in-law) had just handed over to Rajat. Rajat being their only son, they wanted a simple girl from a humble background for him. Minakshi, on the other hand, was one who had completed her Bachelors. Being the eldest among the three sisters, she was married off first. In fact, her parents considered Rajat’s family to be a farishta (angel) in their lives. Minakshi never had an issue with getting married. She always wanted to settle down in her life. But like every other young girl, she too had dreamt of a love marriage with her Prince Charming. In this case, it had all happened so fast that she never got a chance to spend much time with Rajat before their marriage. Rajat was what one would define as a ‘gentleman’ in quite the literal sense of the word. He was an extremely obedient son who dearly loved his parents, well educated, hardworking, wasn’t in the habit of smoking or drinking, and was a very well- behaved person. He loved his wife. Minakshi too respected him a lot. But she could never really convince herself to love him. Time and again she would keep thinking about it, ‘Maybe I do love him. It is just different than what I thought being in love would feel like. It doesn’t necessarily have to be all rosy and cheesy with butterflies in the stomach.’
Day in and day out these thoughts would keep swirling in her mind, till one day when she saw him for the first time. He wasn’t exactly the kind that fit into the conventional definition of ‘handsome’. But there was a certain charm about him that had attracted her to him the very first time she saw him. Was it his ignorance towards his messy hair flopping on his forehead every time he looked down to read? Or was it that smile that he bore every time his little pug jumped into his lap? He was a man of medium stature, well built, and had a scar right above his left eyebrow. Yes, she had noticed it all. Each time she would see him, she would yearn to just go up to him, sit with his arms around her and listen to him reading to her the novels he would always roam around with. And that was exactly why she loved visiting the lily pond. Every day in the afternoon, he would bring out the pug to play in the park. He would sit on the same bench across the lily pond and read, while the pug would play around for an hour or so. It was Rita who had first noticed this change in her as they both sat by the lily pond, and she noticed Minakshi staring into the distance, lost in her happy thoughts.
“Looks yummy no?” she asked with a sly smile.
“What are you talking about?” Minakshi went red with embarrassment.
“This Gulab Jamun. Maa made it for Papaji(father-in-law) this morning. Today he is retiring, so she thought she would try sweetening his day a bit with this. Poor Papaji. He looked so morose. But Maa’s Gulab Jamun is a pure work of art. It made his mood lighter in seconds! But wait a second. What did you think I was talking about?” Rita was Minakshi’s only friend in the colony. The other women were all way elder to her and she used to get bored in their company.
“Nothing.” She replied in haste.
“Really? Then why did you look towards that bench the moment I said ‘yummy’ huh?”
‘Does she know?’ Minakshi thought to herself.
“Nothing,” she repeated.
“It’s okay, you can confide in me. This isn’t the first time I have noticed you looking at him. And come on, just because we are married doesn’t stop us from admiring other men. There is something about him even I have noticed. So it’s completely alright”, Rita chuckled.
“Yes, you caught me there. He is quite charming. It is difficult not to notice him,” Minakshi said with a coy smile. But little did Rita know that it wasn’t just admiration. He made her heart flip every time she saw him.
Minakshi kept tossing in her bed. Rajat was fast asleep. She wondered what would have happened if Rita actually got to know what was going on through her mind that day. She definitely didn’t want to cheat on her husband. But she wasn’t happy in her marriage either. She had talked to both her grandmother and her mother about it. They always gave her some homemade totkas(remedies) to help her out. But nobody ever lent her a ear to understand her dissatisfaction. Not even Rita. They all seemed to have technical solutions to her problem, but none could quench the burning desire that lay deep-seated within her. She even tried talking to Rajat once, but he hardly seemed to have any time for her. She had thought about divorcing him too once. But she knew the consequences of it would be irreparable. She had seen many such serials and read many a number of books regarding this. But it seemed like women were the ones who always ended up being the victims. Since times immemorial the laws of nature (or actually the society) bind them and they suffer silently. After all Rajat was the man of the house. It was his duty to work, maintain her and support the entire family. And she couldn’t deny that he had done quite a good job so far. Any other sort of distraction would only lessen his efficiency. So she kept silent.
Another year passed by. Everyone in the family was now restless for a grand-child. Little did they know how helpless she was. Rajat hardly had any time for her. It was months since they had made love. But she could never explain this to either her in-laws or her own parents.
“Excuse me?” She looked up and found herself looking straight into his brown eyes. She went numb.
“Could you please look after Duke for a minute? I will just have to collect a parcel of mine from the colony gate.”
She looked at him. She could feel the words form in her throat but they conveniently remained stuck there. Finally after a lot of effort she spoke up and could only manage a meek, “I guess.” He smiled and left. As he walked away, she couldn’t believe how dumb she had just behaved. But of course there wasn’t much she could do about it now that he had left. After all these days of fantasizing about him, when she finally did have a chance to talk to him, she screwed it. She looked at Duke. He was ignorant to all that was going on and continued playing with the birds in the bushes. Five minutes or so passed and she could see him walking back towards them.
“Thank you so much. I am Manav. And you are?”
“Minakshi.” Her joy knew no bounds. This time she had calmed herself down and practiced it two-three times while he was away. ‘I don’t want him to think I am dumb,’ she kept saying to herself.
“Hello Minakshi. How long have you been staying here?”
“Two Years.”
“And which tower are you in?”
“I live in the eleventh tower. The Singhania’s.”
“Oh, I see. I live in the fourth tower.”
And with that conversation began a relationship, a beautiful friendship at first slowly turning into a blissful escape from the mundane marriage she was stuck in. Manav made her feel happy. And not just in the conventional meaning of the word. There was a sense of warmth and comfort she shared with him, both emotionally and physically. Even without making love to him, she felt satisfied with his presence in her life. Such was her bond with him, based on the depths of understanding each other. Manav too loved her company. It was almost as if they completed each other, added a new meaning to each other’s life.
The experience was so overwhelming for Minakshi that she had to share it with someone. So she told Rita everything. Rita was initially in a shock. She even felt a bit embarrassed listening to Minakshi describe her feelings. But she could understand the level of loneliness Minakshi was going through in her life in the first place to have the guts for taking such a step. She advised her to divorce Rajat. But that was one step Minakshi couldn’t dare to take no matter how much she suffered in her relationship. Years passed by this way, and soon Manav and Minakshi’s affair had matured both emotionally and physically. They seemed content and happy with their lives. Manav never questioned Minakshi about Rajat. He knew she was helpless in that matter. His mother too was a divorcee and he knew the consequences one had to bear under such circumstances. They used to be very careful with their own relationship as well. They had taken enough efforts to hide it from everyone. However, no matter how cautious one is about such things, it does come to the light one day or the other. It happened to them as well. It was the maid who broke the news to the entire family. And what followed was something that she had dreaded each and every day that she spent with Manav. Rajat’s family threw her out of the house and her parents put her under house arrest. She wasn’t allowed to meet Manav under any circumstance. They were all waiting for her to apparently get over what they called a ‘phase’. In fact, Minakshi’s grandmother even went ahead to say that she probably was possessed by some evil power to be acting out in this way. It was only after the constant pleas of Minakshi’s parents, that Rajat’s family agreed to take Minakshi back in their family. Rajat after all was a ‘gentleman’- the farishta (angel) of Minakshi’s bad times. But Minakshi had lost her life. She was constantly kept under the surveillance of someone. No one trusted her in the family, including her husband. She had embarrassed the whole family in the society. “Nak katadi humari (we have lost all our respect)”, said her father-in-law in complete disgust.
Months passed by. Things started taking their normal course. Minakshi is sitting in the room; her mother-in-law is reading verses from the epic- Ramayana. “And that is how Lakshman chopped off that lusty demon’s nose,” she told the maid, as she described the famous episode form the epic where Ram orders his brother to chop Surpanakhas’s senses as a consequence of her expressing her desires to be with him. And as Minakshi sits by the window, over hearing the conversation, she can’t help but think of her own fate — her own nose being chopped off with shame, she being stripped off all her dignity. Tears roll down her cheek as she identifies with Surpanakha, a demon. Both lost their lives and they lost it for LUST.
