Hi everyone,
This is the first new chapter in Manasi's saga and should give you an idea where I wish to take this forward.
I hope you will be as encouraging as you have always been.
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Three years had gone by. I had settled down in Pune about 6 months ago. After all that had happened, I just couldn't face Raju anymore. My guilty conscious never allowed me the opportunity to face up to the truth nor pour out my heart to him. Instead I made Nita talk to him about how I had lost the spark to be with him anymore and pressed him for a divorce. Raju was aghast that I wanted out of our marriage. True to his good nature and polite upbringing, he tried hard to persuade me to reconsider. We spoke on the phone, once at Nita's office and another couple of times at the lawyers. I was a silent piece of furniture. My thoughts clouded by my recent past.
Inspector Patil had hushed up the matter. Nita and I had confided in him and told him everything that we possibly could. Of course, we didn't go into the minute details that I had shared with Nita all this while about my sorry love story with Lallan. I felt bad about lying so blatantly to Patil and the guilt showed on my tear-streaked face all the time.
Nita noted my apprehension and quickly assumed control of the narrative so that Patil wouldn't expand his questionnaire. He was pissed off at Lallan and wowed to ensure he rotted in jail for a long while. He even mulled over putting certain unsolved drug cases, a hit-and-run case and others on Lallan so that he would be buried in legal work and wouldn't be able to come out of jail soon. Seeing the alarm on my face (God, what's become of me!) Nita seemingly acting righteous asked Patil not to do that and let the law run its own judicious course. Patil reluctantly agreed at her insistence.
After coming back from Ahmedabad, I had just landed on Nita's doorstep and the poor soul had taken me in without any questions. Raju was mystified about all this and finally the divorce bombshell gave him an alternate story. A story where the only protagonists were the two of us and our fights that began and ended with my drinking problem.
In this time, I had given up my ambitions of Stanford, a comfortable life in the states and well, a happy life with my husband. Now I was just a shadow of my previous firebrand self.
The divorce was finally settled two years after my little escapade and Nita was proud of me that I had not touched a drop of liquor all this while. Only I know how difficult this period was. True to his good nature and perhaps, more than enough love for me, he let me have the Mumbai apartment apart from a generous one-time alimony since I had declined anything else. Frankly, the money was enough for me not to work ever again, not that I cared about such things at that moment. Nita took charge on everything and ensured I didn't miss out on any benefits.
Nita had taken over the role of my mother. She got me a job in the Indo-German Academy in Pune and through another counsellor friend, Maya, arranged for a decent home for me to stay. It had a lovely little kitchen garden in the back and a small little patch of green next to the walkway to the house. I had placed a lawn chair over there and mused over my life with a coffee in my hand, often finishing with my face wet with tears.
Nita had suggested that I should not divorce Raju as now was the time I needed his presence in my life the most. But I just couldn't own up to the fact that I had messed up. I had cheated him, my job, myself. I hated myself more than I hated Lallan. And I timidly accepted whatever Nita decided for me.
Lallan had extinguished my future like a flicker of a flame pinched out by his fingers. I often wondered in those lonely nights what made me, an educated, self-respecting young vibrant woman to bend to the will of a low class vile and uncouth person like Lallan. He didn't have a big dick, forget good looks or a great body. He was a truck driver married to a maid-servant and lived in a slum, for god's sake! Yet there was something about him that made me want to be his bitch. His kuttiya as he called me. I couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was, but it was there. The raw animalistic fervour with which he mauled me. Fucked me without any thought to my comfort. His arrogance and his viciousness. I missed it. God! I was pathetic!
Usually these thoughts ended with my fingers furiously busy between my legs and me crashing to sleep with my body twitching in post orgasmic haze.
And the fever. Never in my life I had been as frequently bed-ridden than the time soon after coming back to Mumbai from Ahmedabad. I had just curled up and slept in the jeep driven by Patil back to town. Didn't say a word. Didn't eat, didn't drink. Just slept, till I reached Nita's house. And then promptly fell sick.
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I missed Mumbai. I missed helping those poor desperate women who were victims of domestic abuse and thinking back to the times I had been able to help made me smile through my tears. Yes, in my own small way, I had done good to the world. Yet my world had crumbled. No. Collapsed around me. I had no world. It was just me in a sea of clouded thoughts and misery.
That evening, I re-stocked my bar and dutifully emptying one bottle of whiskey every night, hoping to forget everything and yet ironically, I remembered every little detail of the debauchery I had humiliatingly faced. Each night I went to sleep with a wet face and woke up with my sheets wet under my ass. In a few days I ran out of clean sheets and clean pajamas. I didn't bother with them anymore, staying naked most of the time.
My job was slow. Playing counsellor to people wanting to migrate to Germany to study or work wasn't exactly an area of expertise. But since I had a vast experience of hand-holding people, Maya, Nita's friend in Pune who helped with the job and home, insisted that this was just a modified version of helping people adapt.
Frankly at that point of time, I really had no say in where my life was taking me. It seemed Nita was making all my decisions for me and I was perfectly fine with it. I don't think I had a sane enough mind to sift through the mess I was in and restart my life. She called me often to check on me and also sent Maya to visit me. I wasn't drunk but she definitely got a shock seeing me going about things, naked. She mentioned it and I dismissed it with a wave of my hand. My behaviour was dutifully relayed to Nita, who spent an hour the next day berating me for being a wanton slut. I guess I was. I just didn't care anymore.
It took a while for me to get out of the veil of self-pity and anger I had pulled around me. The different versions of the stories through Nita and Patil made me cringe with its dishonesty. It was crude and yet helped portray a decent enough account of what had transpired. And yet I didn't open my mouth. I had enough, I guess. And I had Raju to think about. Thank god we didn't have any children. How would I ever have escaped that was beyond me. I guess all this was making me mentally and physically weak and hence the regular fever.
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