Adultery Born of Deceit

[untamable_rohini]

The next five years in Delhi passed like monsoon seasons—intense bursts of hope followed by long stretches of humid waiting.
Tulika threw herself into her SSC preparation with a discipline that bordered on obsession. She upgraded from the Mukherjee Nagar institute to a premium online-plus-offline course, waking at 5 a.m. every day to revise current affairs before the city stirred. Her notes filled three large ring binders, color-coded: green for Polity, blue for Economy, red for Quantitative Aptitude. She attempted the exam every year—Tier-I cleared four times in a row, Tier-II twice—but the final merit list always slipped away by a handful of marks.
Each failure was a bruise, but she never stopped. “Next attempt will be the one,” she told herself in the mirror every morning. She joined online forums, watched YouTube toppers’ strategy videos until 2 a.m., practiced mocks under timed conditions. The pressure of repeated near-misses only sharpened her focus.
Meanwhile, Vikram’s real-estate career rode its own rollercoaster. The first two years after moving into the 2BHK were golden: three more solid deals in Noida and Dwarka, enough commission to pay off the remaining loan from his chacha and buy a second-hand Maruti Swift. He strutted around the flat like a man who had finally cracked the code. “See? I told you—persistence pays,” he’d say, pulling her into a celebratory hug.
But the market cooled after COVID. Lockdowns killed footfalls, buyers vanished, projects stalled. Vikram’s phone, once buzzing with client calls, grew silent. He pivoted to smaller deals—reselling flats in under-construction societies, brokering rentals in Rohini—but the commissions shrank. Debts crept back in, quieter this time: credit card bills, personal loans from apps, EMIs on the car. He started drinking more—first one peg after a bad day, then two, then three. The late nights returned, though now they were spent staring at property portals rather than chasing clients.
Through it all, their physical intimacy remained the one constant rhythm. Almost every night, even on the days when words between them were scarce, Vikram would reach for her. And Tulika, tired as she was, would let him. It had become their unspoken truce—a way to feel connected when everything else felt fragile.
Her body responded to the years of consistent love-making, good food (when they could afford it), and the natural settling of maturity. By 2024, at twenty-eight, Tulika had transformed in ways she barely noticed at first.
Her skin, once a warm wheatish tone, had lightened to a soft, glowing fairness—partly from staying indoors for long study hours, partly from the fairness creams her mother sent from Hyderabad “just to try.” Her face had acquired a refined beauty: high cheekbones more defined, full lips naturally pinker, almond eyes brighter from the quiet confidence that comes with surviving repeated setbacks.
Her figure had ripened fully into womanhood. The daily intimacy, the way Vikram’s hands and mouth worshipped her breasts night after night, had encouraged them to grow into a lush 34D—firm yet heavy, nipples darkening to a deep rose. Her waist had narrowed slightly from stress and skipped meals, settling at 28 inches, while her hips flared out to a generous 36, creating the classic hourglass that turned heads when she walked through the market or the coaching center corridors. Her belly remained softly rounded, a gentle curve that Vikram loved to trace with his fingers after they finished.
She had become more beautiful than she had ever been in college—elegant, sensual, quietly magnetic. When she wore a fitted saree to family functions or a simple anarkali for rare outings, people stared. Women asked for her skincare routine; men lingered a second too long on her walk. Tulika noticed, but she didn’t preen. Beauty, to her, was secondary to the job she still hadn’t secured.
Vikram noticed too. On the nights when deals went well, he’d pull her close and whisper, “You’re getting more gorgeous every year, jaan. Once you get the posting, everyone will be jealous of me.” On the bad nights, he’d look at her with a mixture of pride and something darker—resentment, perhaps, that her beauty and brains hadn’t yet translated into the financial security he craved.
By early 2024, the 2BHK flat felt both like home and like a cage. The balcony plants she had nurtured had grown wild; the walls bore faint marks from shifting furniture; the bed still creaked under their nightly rhythm. Tulika’s study table in the second bedroom was piled high with fresh mock-test papers, her laptop screen glowing late into the night.
Vikram’s phone would buzz occasionally with a lead, and hope would flicker again.
Tulika would smile at him across the room, still believing—just barely—that the next attempt, the next deal, would finally change everything.