BALARAM'S TALE OF WOE
As the husband I did not quite relish listening to my wife flirting with her friend Dharman. Her bashful, tinkling laughter was especially painful. Equally painful was the tender intonation with which she pronounced the word Dharm, more often than was strictly necessary. I was not eves dropping. The phone in the passage was easily audible from my room, and Monica was not trying to be secretive. I closed the file before me; emotions jostling within me made concentration impossible. Has Monica launched into an affair?
The telephone conversation finally ended. It had lasted almost an hour. I was not timing it. It so happened that the clock was striking the hour when the phone rang, and it struck again soon after the call ended.
Monica went for her bath which today lasted much longer than usual. It was close to twelve when she came out of the dressing room looking fresh and lovely in a blue voile sari slung low down her waist with scanty sleeveless blouse that left most of her abdomen bare. Sexy was the word to describe her. She was ready for an outing. I did not enquire where she was going, but before she left she told me to tell callers that she would be back after 'two or maybe three hours'.
"You may take the car. I'll take an auto," I said.
"I am going by a cab anyway," she replied. I went on with my files, but found it impossible to concentrate.
Is she going to meet this Dharman? And if so was she having an affair? Must be, otherwise why is she going by cab? She certainly cannot park her car in front of his house. Yes, they are taking their relationship to the next stage. Monica was not dressed for shopping or even for a party. In fact I have never seen her dressed so daringly. An affair; there was no doubt about it at all.
My heart was racing and my hands were clammy. I was not angry, and I was not annoyed, but was I excited? Excited when I should have been raging.
At two I left for the library and returned at a quarter to four without doing any useful work. Monica had not returned. It was nearly four hours since she had left. I prepared some coffee and was sipping it when I heard a cab stop in front of the house.
The bell rang. I opened the door. Monica was standing on the mat as fresh and as lovely as she was when she left, but now she was a bit cross-eyed. A smile partly loving and partly mischievous was playing about her lips.
"Had a nice time?"
"Hmm. Very much so."
"You seem uncertain."
"Well I am."
"You could give me a chance to judge."
"Well it is not a matter that I can possibly present to you for judgment. I am in a hurry for a bath."
"Bath again? You had been to the gym?"
"No."
"Swim?"
"No."
"Table tennis?"
"No." Monica went past me looking away as if she did not want any more questions.
2
There was nothing odd about my behaviour. When an impotent man suspects that his wife is having an affair his response has to be subdued. My marriage of eleven months was unconsummated. I was aware that I had a problem even when I was in school. I had early morning erections, but when my schoolmates talked about masturbation I did not know what it was all about. By the time I was in college the early morning erections had ceased. I did not have the desire for sex that so harassed my friends. I found various excuses to put off marriage, but eventually had to yield to parental pressure. I was 34 and Monica was nine years younger.
Even though I knew my problem was not at the penile level I swallowed a dose of Viagra on my nuptial night. Monica came into the room dressed in a nightie made out of thin material. She offered milk. I took a mouthful and as per costume offered it back to her, and she took a sip and returned it to me. I hugged her and then I kissed her. I had a faint hope that confronted with a real woman my penis, which had not had that experience in recent years, would rise up. It did not.
We sat on the sofa. Monica, to my terror, had none of the shyness women were supposed to have on their first night. She held my hand and rubbed her cheek on my arm. She must have left the zip on the back on her nightie deliberately loose for her dress had slipped down displaying most of her breasts.
I moved to the cot and yawned. I avoided eye contact with Monica as she lay by my side. I had to take the initiative. I did not. Tired after the hectic four-hour long reception she, to my great relief, was soon asleep. I put off the light and did the same. Next morning when we were having toast and poached eggs I told Monica what she was in for.
"Monica, I have bad news for you." She looked up. "Yesterday we did not consummate our marriage. I know the reason. I could not."
"What do you mean?"
"I am impotent. I do not get penile erection."
"Never."
"When I was very young I used to get, but not now. Yesterday for the first time I was with a woman and nothing happened. The only hope I had, spluttered out." Monica did not say anything. She munched the toast with a sombre expression. The disappointment must have been acute, but she did not show it. After breakfast Monica came and sat by my side on the sofa.
"You sound like one who has given up the fight."
"Monica, for a dozen years I have been chasing a remedy. I now know that doctors know precious little about my type of condition. It is in the mind. I have tried urologists, psychiatrists, various traditional systems, and I have even been to god men. None has been able to help me even one bit."
"I am not giving up Bala, be assured of it. If it is not anatomical and physiological we can find a way.
"Good luck to us," I said.
Monica was wonderful. With the uninhibited enthusiasm of a researcher she plunged into a study of my complaint. She twiddled my organ, and she excited its owner by doing her own version of the strip tease; she invited me to play with her body. Nothing worked. She was most supportive and tender, which only increased my misery.
One evening abruptly she asked me if I had tried other women.
"No," I said.
"The books say that men sometimes can't do it to a particular woman but are quite normal with others."
"I have read of that too."
"Why don't you try?"
"With another woman?"
"Yes?"
"Where do I get another woman?"
"Sex workers." Monica spoke with some intensity.
"Of course that way I can prove to myself that I can also do it. But what's the use. I want to do it to my wife and not to anyone else."
"Quite so, but the jinx will surely break if you succeed with another woman."
"If I fail the humiliation would be a knock out blow from which I may not recover," I said. She must have seen reason in my statement for she never suggested that remedy again
"Your problem, Bala is clearly in the mind. One day that block will go and you will be OK."
"I hope so."
"Your case is simple," she said with lips grimly indrawn. "The usual stimulus of seeing a naked woman does not work for you. You need a special kind of stimulus. Once we find that the rest would be easy."
3
About nine months after the wedding we were at a party when an incident occurred that was to be of such significance in our lives. The party was at a business acquaintance's house. The host was liberal with supplies of hard drinks. I took a peg well diluted with soda. Monica had maybe much more. Others at the party, especially two young men whom Monica knew rather well for they had been her colleagues in her former work place, were close to being inebriated. Monica had the ability to be free with men without flirting, but today she was rather freer with these two men, and these young men under the influence of liquor totally lost their grip. They held her hands and they rubbed against her, and at times they hugged her in a sandwich with all three laughing boisterously the while. I was close by in a corner watching them with interest. Not just interest but also with excitement—I was sexually stimulated. I was surprised that I should be sexually aroused under circumstances that, as one understood these things, I should have been thinking of murder and mayhem. Yes, I sensed, and by touching confirmed, that I was having an erection of some size. It was happening after a long, long time.
Suddenly I was aware that even as she was having fun with her colleagues Monica was darting glances at me, and such was my preoccupation with my penis that I thought that she was aware that I was having an erection. My first impulse was to hide it, but with an effort of will I allowed the bulge to be visible for her to notice it. I had faint hopes that it was to be my night of nights, but I was to be disappointed. Preliminary skirmishing that night did not yield the desired results—my penis had gone back to sleep. It was then that I decided that I had to release Monica from the ordeal I had got her into.
A few days later after supper we were on the portico enjoying the cool evening breeze.
"Monica." She looked up. "The time has come for us to take some hard decisions."
"About what?"
"Our family life."
"What about our family life."
"There is no point in pretending that there is no problem Monica. We must recognize it and find a solution one way or the other. I am impotent, Monica, no one has been able to help me one bit. I have tried everything, but with no success. I will come to the point straightaway. I see no reason why you should suffer with me. We will part, Monica. We will part as friends. "
"You mean a divorce?"
"Annulment rather, for our marriage has not been consummated" I said. Monica smiled.
"I will also come to the point straightaway," she said quite unemotionally. "If my presence round the house is reminding you of your problem you can get rid of it by doing what you suggest."
"No, that's not the reason."
"In that case I do not see why we must part. We are friends aren't we? We have many common tastes and expect for this sex thing we are pretty much a made-for-each-other pair. Am I missing having sex? Not by much. It is something I can do without. In your researches you might have read that for women sex is not the central purpose of life. I can assure you that it is true."
