Chapter 18 – A Brush with Water
It had been exactly two and a half months since he had last seen her. Now he was almost positive that she had planned it out this way.
"Was this your intention all along? Wait until I marry and then you can let me down easy?"
He was looking at his text stream with her from last week.
"Ha! Which one do you peg me for? A mercenary or a martyr?" she had written back.
"You tell me." Had been his reply.
"Gaurav, my world does not revolve around you." She had written back and he had been surprised at the bite in her response.
"You have made that abundantly clear time and again, Salome. The fact that my only interaction with you for the past two and a half months has been through this stupid device that I am starting to abhor should be evidence enough."
"Do you want me to apologize for being rude, Gaurav? Alright, I will. My mother is…well, let's just say that in some people, narcissism knows no bounds."
"Do you need anything? Any help from me?" he had written back.
"No.. no.. I am alright.. I likely won't be able to see you for another month or so. Don't hold it against me."
"I am still not convinced that you are not purposely avoiding me." He had told her one last time.
"Oh come on Gaurav. You have cut yourself off from my body. What else is there?" She had replied.
He had been too angry to answer. And a half hour later, she had sent him one last text.
"I am sorry. Truly. You didn't deserve that. Treat your wife well, Gaurav. It's easy for a woman to fall in love with you. You don't make it hard at all…"
He had not replied to that one either. He hadn't known what to say.
It had gotten him thinking though. Was his wife in love with him? He didn't think so… she was so… different from what he had expected. She was not flirty or coy or any of those things. She read a lot and she was evidently very very good at math. They had a routine now where he would get home from work and as he was settling in, he would look to her for her math puzzle of the day. Most of them were not as complex as the infinity paradox, but just hard enough to puzzle him through dinner when they ate together. After dinner, she would tell him the answer if he had not gotten it yet. He found that such routines were so easy to establish; why had he never noticed before…
He took her out to see the city during the weekends. She liked to it a certain degree, but he could tell that it fatigued her quickly. She was someone who liked parks or gardens or nature much better, although she did like going to movies with him. And he was discovering that she had a liking for foreign films. He had teased her and told her that her English was not yet good enough to understand all the subtitles – which required him to translate occasionally when a word was completely foreign to her – but she had answered that most foreign films had less dialogues and that it was all about reading the body language and the subtleties in expression. He had thought that interesting and had taken to watching some with her – she liked the Cantonese ones the best. There was one movie in which he timed 20 minutes without a single utterance – it was incredible!
He walked out of his room as he thought of what had brought on his particular line of musings… oh yes… whether he thought his wife was in love with him?
He returned to the same answer…. He didn't think so…
For one, she never made any demands on his time aside from when they were together by chance or by routine; she never sought him out otherwise. And secondly, she never asked him why they slept in separate beds - they have been married for more than two months and she had not shown the least bit of curiosity about that, which he thought was strange. Thirdly, well… she just had no tell-tale signs of a woman in love; no coy looks, no flushed skin; no change in her breathing around him… no eye-batting – which he doubted that she would ever do - he smiled at the thought. In fact, there were times when she didn't notice him at all… not that he was complaining… it was just an unusual experience and one that made him feel comfortable with her in a way that he has never felt with anyone before.
He walked into his parlor to grab something out of his modest library and then noticed his father standing on the balcony looking down.
He couldn't stop the expletive that escaped his lips as he rushed towards the window and looked down as well. Imli, who had evidently been watering the garden, had just turned her water-hose on his wife who had been passing by.
Even though she tried to run away from Imli, Vidya was completely drenched in a few minutes and he saw her turn around with laughter to lunge at the hose in Imli's hands to return the favor to the other woman.
He looked back at his father and could only imagine what was going through his head. It was enough to make him run out of the room and down the stairs and out of the house, but he slowed himself when he was outside. He saw Imli grab the hose from Vidya with force and in the process pull off the pallu of her sari. He shook his head in disbelief; everyone in this house was hell bent on taking his wife's clothes off. At the sight, he broke into a run and rushed in front of the hose just as Imli sprayed the water again at a now completely wet Vidya. And sure enough, he felt the force of the water on his back, pushing him towards his wife.
The only thing that concerned him at that moment was the fact that his father was still watching his wife from the balcony. He grabbed her hand in his and ran back into the house, forcing her to run with him.
"Gaurav…" she started, but he did not pause to listen as he rushed up the stairs. Her sari was dripping everywhere and her bare foot slipped on the stairs as she tried to keep pace with him. He turned around and pulled on her hand with greater force before she fell.
"What..?" she started again, but he could hear his father's footsteps from upstairs. He picked his surprised wife up in his arms and turned into the hallway of the wing on the right to rush to their room. She looked at him, perplexed, and he tried to not look at her. He didn't know how he was going to explain his behavior to her when they reached their room. But then he saw her become distracted by something behind them and scoot closer into him just before she put her arms around him.
He hadn't known that his wife was afraid of his father…
------------------------------
Edited by sridevi27 - 14 years ago
Book Talk
Bigg Boss 19
