Sonu's husband Viswam is a writer. He files his short stories in a folder named 'Stories' in their computer and invites Sonu to read and critique the stories. He welcomes the suggestions she offers. One evening while searching for a misplaced file Sonu quite by accident chanced upon a file rather intriguingly named 'Fiction challenges Fact' in his accounts folder. She opened the file and found it was a short story. It was not like him to hide his stories. Challenged by the title she read on.
The story was about a woman who visits the U.S. on an exchange scholarship where interesting things happen to her. He relates the incidents as if he is excerpting from her diary. When she started reading Sonu had a smile on her face. The main character in the story was doing much the same things she had done in her recent visit to the U.S. Suddenly there was change in Sonu's demeanour. Her eyes widened, she was sweating, and her hands trembled. It was clear that Viswam did not want her to read the story, but she could not stop.
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Extracts from the diary of Bindu Rajan
Thursday 23 May 2002
It is exactly a month since I landed in U. S. in a teacher exchange programme. I am taking three days off from my college in Houston to meet my friend and schoolmate Rita in Austin. Rita and her husband Mike were at Austin airport to receive me. I was meeting her for the first time after her marriage. She seems to be happily married. Her husband Mike is tall and handsome. He has adapted to a life style of an American with an Indian wife. He orders her about the way our rural husbands do and Rita, in true darmapatini fashion, does his bidding with cheerful alacrity. They seem a loving, caring couple.
As I was resting in their home after bath and breakfast my mind wandered to my own life with my husband Viswam. During the early days of our marriage we were a loving, caring couple too. Then our common interests held us together, but after ten years the things we do not have in common has raised an invisible wall between us. The core of the problem is he has no friends and does not want any. The result is we do not have a family with whom we are close, and there are no community activities we take part in. I am outgoing and gregarious by nature. He does not object to my friends, encourages me rather to take part in social activities. I do, but sometimes attending function by myself makes me feel as if I am a widow. It can be miserable. Our sex life is also not what it used to be. He expects the same keenness I had during our early days of marriage. He expects me to take the initiative from time to time. He says it stimulates him. I have never been able to do so. I constantly brood on what I feel are his shortcomings, and I do not feel that I must go all out to please him. May be if I focus on the good in him our life might change.
Rita had met Mike when they were in the same school in New York both doing advanced training in sociology. For Rita, who was then not in the first flush of youth, it was love at first sight. Mike was a divorcee after a marriage that barely lasted two years. They were married, and soon after both got jobs in Austin, and they moved to Texas.
Rita and I talked about our school and college days in Madras. We can do that for hours at a stretch. After lunch Rita left for her work and I spent two happy hours playing pool in the basement with Mike who had chosen to work from home to keep me company. My experience with snooker helped me. With Mike teaching me the finer points I was able to give him a good fight. He is a fine player. He said this is the first time he has played a decent game on his table since they installed it a year ago. He said we must have some more games and I agreed. I like the game, which is much less difficult than snooker, and I like playing against Mike whom I am certain I can beat at least once before I leave.
When Rita came home she brought a movie cassette that she said she wanted all three of us to see. The movie, Overreached, was doing very well at the box office. It was about a young bachelor who has come recently to a neighbourhood. The woman next door, a mother of two, falls madly in love with the handsome youth. The various ways in which she tries to attract him and seduce him is the subject of the story.
The woman had just then started her manoeuvres when the phone rang. The call was from a neighbour of an aunt of Rita who lived in a small town about an hour's drive away. The neighbour said that the aunt had chest pain and she had asked her to inform Rita. Rita had of course to go. I declined the offer to accompany her because I did not want to be in the way if the lady had to be hospitalised. It was seven in the evening. There was time for Rita to drive up and come back before night fall at around ten in Austin. Rita left, and Mike switched off the player and said, 'We'll talk.'
He was a student of sociology and I suspected that he, like most Westerners, was into their perennial favourite topic of the Indian caste system. He was into something deeper. He wanted to know how democracy operated, not in the cities, but in the villages. I had a lot to say, and he had firm beliefs too, with the result that at times the argument became heated, but never acrimonious. We got to know each other well with the result that when we got back to the movie shortly after it was natural of us to be seated side by side holding hands.
The director of the movie had handled the scenes with great delicacy. The young man is repairing the fence, and the woman is at the other side hanging clothes out to dry. Incidentally the story is from rural America of about fifty years ago when women washed clothes and string them out to dry. She undoes her blouse buttons when he is not watching and as the breeze blows, her blouse flaps this way and that way, exposing part of one breast, and then part of the other. The young man wants to see and at the same does not know how to do so without the woman noticing. I tighten my grip on Mike's fist. His hand is on my thigh and unknown to me I am pulling it up. I am without sex for three months and I am excited.
The movie now becomes tense. The woman has written to the young man, and the letter has by mistake gone into the bunch of letters meant for her husband. She ventures into his room to retrieve it. I am terrified, and as always I close my eyes or bend down. This time I turned and buried my face on Mike's shoulder. He took his hands from my thigh and put his arm across my back and held me firmly by the shoulder. His face must have come close to mine for I felt his breath on me. I was hot—ready to explode.
The phone rang; Mike took it. It was from Rita. She was taking her aunt to hospital. As her aunt's son has come down from where he was working Rita said she will come home as soon as she saw her aunt comfortable in her hospital bed. Rita said that by eleven she expected to be back. I took this chance to go up. I emptied my bladder and washed myself for I was wet from excitement. I changed my thick skirt for a nightie of very thin material. I was mad with desire for this Mills and Boon hero, and reckless. I wore neither bra nor knickers. With a thudding heart I ran back. I was worried that we may not be able to resume the cosy position we were in.
Soon the action becomes extremely frightening. The woman is climbing up the creaky wooden stairs to enter her husband's study to recover her letter. It was too much for me. I buried my face on the lower part of Mike's chest and he held me in a tight embrace.
