He closed his eyes as if to reminisce those times in his mind’s eye.

“Then Anand’s arrival for higher studies enlivened our lives even more,” he continued. “As he reminded me of my own youth, I became attached to him, and perceiving that he would grow up to be my replica, Ruma too had developed affection for him; so as he began to stay more with us than in the hostel, I began to confide my inner-most thoughts to him, and so did she, maintaining that she loved him most, of course, next to me, her man. Won’t that remind you of the woman on rebound whom I might have had in my youth. Well, while the infectiousness of his youthful zest lifted our spirits, his affectionate manner buoyed our self-worth that freed our union from the self-imposed strain of yore. That Satish and he took to each other had only enhanced our fulfillment.”

“Isn’t it interesting that a happy story needn’t be an interesting copy?”

“I appreciate that you care for your prospective readers and they too need not turn the pages,” he said smiling wryly. “After Anand’s graduation, though Ruma wanted him to join our firm, I didn’t want to stifle his career in our small outfit; so he moved out to begin his career in some other place. I knew all good times would come to an end, but how were I to know that they would lead me up to one bad phase after another; why can’t life make it neutral in between its highs and lows?”

“Given its penchant for variety, isn’t it a boring proposition?”

“How nicely you’ve put it; I’m glad you have it in you to make my memoir as memorable as possible,’ he said, and continued with his tale. “Soon, we started missing Anand, and once when I said that if only ‘Rajan Builders’ were to be some ‘Imperial Infrastructures’, it would have been a fitting launch pad for his career, her repartee was that it was ironical that what served the uncle’s mid-career should be unworthy of his nephew’s apprenticeship; maybe what she said in jest was about the changed times, but I felt she was reviewing my progress card, and that brought the limitations of love not backed by money back to the fore. But the next day, when she said in earnest how ‘Rajan Builders’ would stunt Satish’s future, my apprehensions of yore came to the fore making me worry about my smallness in her vision; so when she began a correspondence with Anand, which she came to relish, I started suspecting that she had transferred her affections to his personal account; oh, how miserable was the thought of having lost her love and esteem. Maybe, her affection for him was innocent and my worries about her state of mind were misplaced, but as I came to be obsessed with success all again to regain my supposedly lost position in her heart, the devil took hold of me in its second attempt, so to say, squarely and firmly.”




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