Note: It takes wild imagination to write an engrossing story. But it takes a great amount of courage to share a chapter of one's own life. As woman of this story is a respectable corporate executive now, I can't share real identities and locations. However, to make it interesting for myself and vulnerable for her, I have mixed real names, locations etc with imagined ones.
As this is a real story and at that time, I was thinking on my feet as situations arose, narration may not be flawless or most logical. But, making her my slave was indeed joyful and I hope you like it.
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Migrant students can hardly afford living in New York city. Therefore, as someone who was on full scholarship from India, sharing a small apartment with 3 to 4 students and long commuting to University was the only option. PhD itself is a challenging project and such difficult living conditions didn't help. But, all of us make sacrifices in the hope of a better future, so there I was.
My guide expected quality work from his team and was especially ruthless to underperformers. While I was able to sail through, another Indian student, Reshu found it extremely difficult.
With height of 5'6" and a figure to die for, she was indeed hot. As she preferred to wear knee-length skirts or tight leggings of sheer fabric with body-hugging shirts, she was irresistible.
Reshu's pedigree wasn't particularly promising as she graduated from an average college in India and was immediately married to an IT engineer at Microsoft in Bellevue. Her husband was a gentleman and helped her financially to get into a PhD program.
It was only after a few weeks' of interaction with her, I realized that she was quite an irritating person to cope up with. While she was amongst the prettiest woman around, none cared to be friends with her due to her attitude.
While her husband helped her financially to get into the program and rented a decent apartment for her closer to the University, she was not nice to him also.
As we were working on similar problems for our PhD and she needed my help quite often, she made sure that I was not seriously pissed with her. Her need to be in my good books only magnified because she had no other friends.
She had an entire apartment for herself as her husband visited her in every 2-3 weeks. While I frequented to her apartment often for project work, I never met with her husband as he only came during the weekends.
My relationship with Reshu was quite formal to start with. However, she soon started telling me how her husband irritated her with several calls and unnecessary care.
As her apartment was nearby, I was spending more and more evenings at her place as leaving late from her place meant less traffic and spending less time in my cramped apartment.
As I was spending 2-3 hours with her almost every evening, she spoke with her husband frequently. In the begining, calls were longer and she moved to the bedroom to attend those calls. However, slowly calls started becoming terse and she received most of her calls in front of me. And, in several of those calls, she was rude with her husband.
As a concerned friend, I advised her not to be so insulting to such a gentle husband, only because of his overly caring attitude. But she ignored my counsel.
And then one day when we were working at her apartment, she told me that she had a bad fight with her husband and he is no more calling her. He in fact even cancelled his trip to New York.
I knew, such a moment wasn't far. Hence, I told her rather angrily, "How much more insult a self-respecting man could handle? You deserve this."
She was taken aback and refuted, "He pisses me off sometimes and then I can't control myself."
I was in no mood to relent and said, "Then you must learn to control yourself, for your own good. You must remember, till he is pissing you off, all you can do is, cut his calls. But now as you have pissed him off, your education may be cut short. Hope you realise, it's your first year of PhD and he is the one, footing all your bills."
This time I had her attention and she didn't utter a single word. At this moment, I realised that I had exceeded my mandate and if she behaved as she did with the rest of the world, she might show me out.
But to my surprise, she bowed her head and nodded, "You are right."
Feeling empowered, I said, "Reshu, as much as I have known and understood, Anay has been a decent guy. All marriages have some issues or other but considering everything, he has been pretty generous with you."
She nodded again, giving her consent that she agreed. Hence, I cajoled her, "So dear, it only makes sense for you to treat him better. He is doing well in his career and also supporting your endeavours."
She looked at me and said, "I know that I should behave better and I have been a bitch." She stopped mid-sentence, as if collecting her thoughts and continued, "It's because I know he is so much better and intelligent than I'm, I feel insecure and my this highhandedness is my defence mechanism."
I knew that she was being foolish but different people deal with their issues differently. Hence, I only nodded.
She resumed, "He pampered me better than I deserved since beginning of our relationship and hence, I have grown stubborn. I have now started taking him for granted but I know that he may drift apart if I don't change."
She stopped only for a second before adding, "I know, I should be shown my place before it's too late. Thank you for pointing my mistake and listening to my blabbering."
I told her to do the most logical thing after that, " Then you must call Anay and set the matter straight." Though at the same time a more entertaining idea started forming in my mind.
She looked at me expectantly and asked, "Should I? Do you think, this will work?"
I looked hard at her and replied, "Frankly speaking, I'm sure it won't work. One, he may get psyched out and think you are playing some game. Two, if today's issue is resolved so easily, you will be back to your harsh attitude in a couple of weeks, if not days." She nodded, agreeing to what I said.
I continued, "You must be prepared for him slowly so that your behaviour towards him see a natural change. Your highhandedness must be slowly broken and molten so that you actually start putting up efforts to deserve him."
She displayed a weak smile, knowing it was true. Sensing that she agreed with my assessment I hardened my voice with every word and added, "Though your husband is in no position to put you in place, as a bitch like you should be, I am."