Adultery When the unthinkable happens... by Ramesh1990-COMPLETED

[Ramesh_Rocky]

We are always right – aren’t we? Even when we are wrong, we think we are right – or else we couldn’t live with the contradiction. Even when life has given us enough lessons; we still cry ourselves hoarse about the unfairness or it – isn’t it?

I was getting drawn into the whirlpool of thoughts. For it had been five years – five long years since the incident at Kolkata – just before I had left for the US – totally leaving behind the memories that brought nothing but pain – and pursuing my mediocre American dream.

But first things first, I am getting ahead of myself.

I am now AVP, without a designated portfolio with HK Corp Inc. I look after strategic innovations. They call me ‘brains’ – to my face sometimes – I don’t give a damn. A month back, a mail had arrived in my inbox from Kajol.

“Glad to get your email address from Preeti, who had come over to invite us for her sister’s wedding. How are you doing! Rizu and I are now married. Our boy would be turning five in a couple of months time. Lots to tell. Can you drop in sometimes by month? Take care of yourself.”

I ground the cigarette in the nearby ashtray. I was in the smoking section of the transit lounge between layovers. I had landed straight from London where I had gone for a meeting and now there were a couple of hours to kill before my flight.

What did she want? I had a very hectic schedule. There was an acquisition process going on and that demanded all of my time. However, over the years, I had learnt to live with this constant pressure bordering on panic. Now it was all routine. It was a shock to get Kajol’s mail. We hadn’t spoken after the show down in Riz’s house. Goodness – it was so long back and yet felt like the day before.

At that time I had been mad with rage. Mad at Kajol of course, cross with Riz to some extent for siding with her. And then there was the professor and also my ex boss Rao. Funny, how the latter two came to grief. Much as I would have loved it for the professor to undergo a rigorous imprisonment for a long period, fate had cheated me out of that privilege. He never faced the trial; for in the wings of the jail reserved for the under-trials there exists a well entrenched hierarchy system where the murderers come at the top and rapist and child molesters occupy the bottom rung. Bharadwaj didn’t have a chance. Two days after his arraignment, he was sent to the prison hospital with several missing teeth, a couple of broken ribs and a punctured rectum. He barely lasted a week.

Mr. Rao’s case was tragicomic. I had imagined doing every kind of brutality to him – smashing up his smug face – throwing acid – praying to the devil to lift him up etc. However, what had happened was entirely funny and I would have enjoyed it if it didn’t relate to me. Somehow a newspaper reporter, who was on the crime beat, had approached him for clues and got rebuffed. He had seen the potential of a scandal and followed Rao up like a hound. Next thing, Rao’s profile had been splashed across tabloids – calling him the hero who had saved his employee’s wife from a mad rapist. Then the conjectures began – what was he doing with the wife – why he had gone out of station to meet her – why all the attention when he had already sacked the employee etc. Quickly that snowballed out of control and the tabloids had a field day with insinuations ranging from being some kind of Don Juan to being or a nefarious schemer – or maybe a secret lover etc etc. The name of the company he was heading was also prominently displayed. And that proved too embarrassing for a Mr. Bajajbhai whose hoardings and promotion materials invariably carried the company’s name. Promptly, he issued a quarter page advertisement in the dailies stating that their company no longer associated with either Mr. Rao or his company. Like dominos falling, other major clients followed suit, including HK Corp. Alarm bells had started ringing in the London HQ; who rushed in a team to handle the crisis. Their first decision had been to sack Mr. Rao. Funnily thereafter, despite his ample contacts, he couldn’t get a placement anywhere – for he had become the untouchable commodity. He had completely vanished from the professional circuit thereafter …

You see you never teach life anything …

Preeti had relayed me the above after she came over to New York; for I had shut myself off totally. The wounds were fresh and they were still bleeding. After the fight with Kajol; I had returned from Kolkata and stayed in our old flat for a week – the time I had at my disposal before flying to US. All those days, I had waited eagerly for her to call me back and to say that she had changed her mind – but that never happened. On the last couple of days I had sent off all her clothes and other personal stuff to Riz’s address. Then I had hired a lawyer specializing in divorce cases and given him the money and the details. He had quickly prepared the papers for me to sign and assured me to see the job through – it was after all a simple case – as it would be a divorce with mutual consent. I just signed wherever he wanted me to and got rid of him. Next I had gone to the bank and transferred half of my advance salary to our joint account...

Did she need any money?

I scratched my chin. That didn’t make sense. She was married to Riz now and … maybe … well I didn’t know Riz’s financial condition now… that I could take care of now – last year my earnings including the stock options were well over the six digit mark … but did I want to get myself involved in her world … well there would be a time to determine that … later

She had got my email address from Preeti …

After I had moved over to NY and settled down in a suburb that was two hours away by the shuttle. The divorce formalities would take more than a year – as my lawyer had advised me and that was that – I had shut the door on that part of my life … Life was routine, after the initial excitement of having landed in the US was over. Get up by the alarm clock, bath and breakfast of cereals and juice, short drive to the station to catch the shuttle, arrive at NY Central, move in the milling crowd for the four blocks to reach office, coffee and early morning meeting, roll up the sleeves and get to work and stay till it was late – most days having ordered a sandwich from the nearby deli for lunch; return and reach home by about ten and a quick whiskey and soda followed by a microwaved dinner and then hit the bed after setting the alarm. This was pretty much the routine. Except on the weekends, where sometimes I would try to cook up a traditional dish – realize that I was no good at it – and walk over to the local mart for the weekly stocking up on supplies.

Preeti came after three months. She was supposed to arrive much earlier. I had asked her for the reason. “Mr. Ching didn’t want to let me go”, she had smiled, “probably I remind him of a daughter or so.” I raised my eyebrows to convey a ‘is that so’. However, subsequently throughout I had found that whenever Mr. Ching was in NY; Preeti used to be in constant attendance upon him, even staying in the same hotel, from the moment he arrived till his departure. She doted on him, as I used to observe in the office, in the meetings when Mr. Ching used to be present and I thought I saw a reflection of the paternal touch – the way he used to address her. “You see him as a father”, I had once remarked to her. “Of course”, she had said, “isn’t he the person who has given me a new life?”

In any case, Preeti had come and without a word moved over to the spare room in my apartment. From the first night, she had climbed into my bed. My daily routine got modified now to the extent that it was now both of us who were following the same schedule, sans the stiff shot of whiskey at night – for Preeti would invariably drag me to bed. The sex was great and immediately, both of us would fall asleep. We rarely talked about anything that was of back home. She never mentioned the ‘K’ word not even when the final orders of divorce suit had come – and I was grateful to her for that.

At the office, both of us slogged hard. It was unusual for a lower level executive and for any intern to spend so much time after hours but we both did. On my part, I loved learning the new stuff outside the world of image consultancy. They had put me in marketing and by a fluke I had stumbled upon a major source of revenue leakage that could be plugged by a rejig of the administrative set up at a production facility. That was my ticket to the top. To my pleasant surprise – I had discovered that I was good at strategizing and designing restructuring of portfolios. Mr. Ching was very appreciative of that and two years down the line, I had been designated as an AVP with a quite lucrative stock option. That was when the label ‘brains’ had stuck to me.

Preeti on her part did the pure slog. Everyone knew that she was Mr. Ching’s protégé and she was doing the work of two. What she lacked was a formal qualification. At the end of the first year, she had been designated as the employee of the year and Mr. Ching gushed at the function, that HK Corp had been pleased to announce a sponsorship for any executive mba program that she could pursue on the weekends.

Both of us becoming busy in our work meant that we had little time for each other. One Saturday we had been to a local pub, downed a couple of beers and danced few numbers. On the way home she said, “Ramesh, this mba course you know. I have been accepted at the state university. Problem is it is highly inconvenient for me to commute to the campus from here.”

I had mulled over the problem. What she said did make sense. The right thing to do would be for her to find an apartment near to the campus – although that would mean separation for us. I said as much.

“You think, I should move over?”, she looked sidewise at me. We were still walking.

“Definitely”, I said, “Let’s start hunting for a suitable accommodation for you right from tomorrow.”

She had looked down and we had continued walking.

A fortnight later she had moved out of my house and out of my life as well. However, it didn’t take me long to readjust. There was enough of work to keep me busy – even on weekends…

Had I been wrong - letting her go? I scratched my chin. But that’s what she wanted.

She had completed her mba degree course in two years. The entire family had come for the graduation. I had visited them and it was a very joyful affair. Shortly thereafter, she had been called by the Singapore HQ and she had gone back to Mr. Ching, taking our farewell with a very big smile at NY.

And then was Jennifer whom I had met at a business conference. We had hit it off from the outset. She was a divorcee with no kids. She loved curry and yoga. Three months of dating and being in awe of each other all the while – we had decided that we were soulmates and it made no sense not to get married – at the ***** temple in NY. … Only that … to cut a long story short … I couldn’t bear the joss sticks burning in the house and sacred chants playing all the time … she had said sorry – that it didn’t work out and we had parted mutually in a consensual divorce …

Where had it gone wrong? … Where did I miss it all out?

The public speaker announced the security check in for my flight. I rose up from my seat.