As they gossiped after breakfast, the topic of children cropped up in time. ‘What’s your prediction about her children?’ said Sandhya thrusting Roopa’s hand at him.
‘It would be a pleasure,’ he said, grabbing what was on offer, ‘speculating the prospect.’
‘But don’t turn it into a farce,’ cautioned Sandhya, as he began fondly feeling Roopa’s outstretched hand.
‘What a lovely hand!’ he thought, enjoying the feeling of her touch. ‘Why, it’s a classic psychic hand with those shapely fingers in their full length. How I failed to notice the beauty of her hands all this while!’ While, he found himself fondling her hand, more to communicate his love than to envision her future, seemingly in a trance he thought, ‘Obviously enamored of the character of her main attributes, I became oblivious to the charms of her remaining features.’
Then divined by desire to espy her features, he mapped her feet with his caressing looks. ‘Oh, what an attractive woman she is! Won’t she have a curvy frame from head to foot to make her deadly in bed? Oh, what a dame she is! Is there a better lass to possess?’ as he thought, so he gripped her hand ardently goading her passion.
‘What are the indications?’ Sandhya was impatient.
‘It’s not very clear as yet,’ he said gravely, however, not leaving the hand. ‘As I told you, the lines are liable to change.’
‘But,’ said Sandhya pointing at a sideline below Roopa’s little finger, ‘I’ve heard that this line indicates children.’
‘The lines there indicate the affections for the opposite sex,’ he predicted with hope. ‘As Roopa has a single line, she is likely to have a deep affection in her life.’
‘What about her?’ Roopa asked, reluctantly withdrawing her hand.
‘You mean,’ he said naughtily, ‘affections or children.’
‘I know from her nature as well as her hand that she would have only one such affection in her life,’ said Roopa indulgently. ‘I want to know about her children.’
‘She could have two children,’ he said.
‘You mean,’ Roopa suggested correction, ‘you would have two children.’
‘Factually speaking,’ he said smilingly, ‘you see, her hand indicates the prospects of her maternity and not the source of its paternity.’
‘Now I know,’ said Roopa coyly, ‘how devilishly mischievous you could be.’
‘Well,’ Sandhya joined in the mirth, ‘you can figure out my lot with him.’
After lunch, when Sandhya proposed caroms, Roopa wondered how to go about it with only three of them around. At that, as Raja Rao said that he would watch the friends at play, Tara came around.