Twister

“Sujatha, please look at me” Sanjay took her face into his hand and tried to turn her towards him. But she adamantly turned away. Her face was swollen as she had cried whole of that evening.

“What have I done to be treated like this?” she said amidst the sobs.

“Without telling me what happened, if you cry like this, what can I do?” he said calmly and got up from the bed on which he was sitting till then.

“Don’t you know what you did?” she said sarcastically.

“Only thing I know is, in the afternoon, after lunch, you suddenly said you were not feeling well, took permission from your boss to leave and rushed home. I asked you what was the matter, but you never told me anything in the office. I thought you were really sick.”

“Don’t act, as if you didn’t know that I was not sick for real.”

“Oh God! What is the matter with you? Are you going to tell me anything at all or are you just going to lie there and cry forever? I hurried home to be with you and see if you are alright and here you are, crying for no reason” he lost his temper this time.

“No need for you to shout at me. It should be me, who should be shouting.”

“Will you just stop that crying and tell me what I did?” he yelled.

“What is going on between you two? I feel ashamed even to ask. How could you do this, what happened to your love for me?” she burst into sobs and buried herself in the pillow.

“Wait wait, whom are you talking about?”

“Who else, your accounts department sweetheart, Priya” she raised her head and looked angrily at him.

“Oh Priya, what is going on between us, nothing” he said with a puzzled look on his face.

“Don’t act too innocent. I saw that typed letter in your desk, with my very own eyes. My Darling Priya…Oh God! How could you…” her voice broke.

“When did you see that without me noticing? First of all, why do you check on my desk all the time? Just because we work in the same office doesn’t mean that, you can meddle with my things like you do in the house.”

“Oh! You are telling as if you let me touch your things at home” she flared.

“Why not! You open all my mail, read everything, and you never let me keep my things in the places I want. You always have to do it your way.”

“Now it is me who does things in my own way, is it? I try to keep the house clean. It is you who throws things here and there all the time. Here I am, working double shifts, one in the house and one in the office, and look what I get for that?”

“Every time, we have an argument, you raise that issue, as if I asked you to work. It is you who wanted to work. If it is that difficult for you, don’t work. At least I don’t have to see you everyday in the office also.”

“I know, I know, that is the chance you are waiting for. If I am not there anywhere near you, then you can happily go around with that Priya” she flared at him like a wild cat.

“Already I am struggling to lead this life with you; I have neither the patience nor the wish to go at the back of another female. You are enough for me for this life” he said.

She scoffed and turned the other side.

Sanjay sat next to her and pulled her close to him and said, “If you stop crying, then I will tell you a secret. You know Sridhar, my good friend, the one who works in our office but in Delhi branch?”

She wiped her tears and with a frown on her face said, “Yeah, so?” she asked as if she was not much interested in listening to his story.

“That letter was by that fellow to Priya. Last month when he came here, he saw her and fell in love with her. After going back to Delhi, he called me up one day and said about that. He was little afraid to approach her directly, so he asked me to help him out by giving her the letter what he was supposed to write. I said ok, but then that fellow did not know how to write a love letter, so he asked me to write one for him. I didn’t want to write in my own writing so I typed it. Now is everything clear, are you happy?”

Suddenly Sujatha was relieved of all her doubts. Her husband proved to be sincere and once again she was caught for mistaking him. She very well knew how to face such kind of a situation. Now she had to find some other issue.

“If that was what, what happened, then why didn’t you tell me before itself?” she asked, trying desperately to hide the smile which was popping up on her lips.

Anticipating that his wife would take a turn like this, Sanjay decided to tease her a little.

“What happened when I told you about Niranjan’s secret about his second marriage? You went and told everybody in the office.”

“Hmm, that was not me, I just shared it with Latha, and she went and told everybody.”

“Whatever. There is a saying that, a secret is no longer a secret once it is known to a woman.”

Sujatha was not going to give in at any cost.

“Hey! There is nothing like that. Then why did you tell me now?”

“If I did not tell you now, God knows what’s going to happen to Priya and Sridhar, but my life would have become a living hell. Now, I proved that I am innocent, so for doubting my fidelity you have to be punished” he said smiling mischievously.

As everything was OK now, she loosened herself a little and laughed at herself. Things like this always happened between them and most of the times she lost the battle. She felt quiet embarrassed and guilty at the thought of accusing her husband. All this while Sanjay was watching her mood change, he thought he could reconcile now.

At that very moment, Sujatha suddenly recalled that Sanjay had written that letter to help out his friend. Not knowing that a new issue had raised in his wife’s mind, he was innocently coming closer. With the new doubt in her mind, she was quite restless.
She immediately turned around and found her husband giggling at her. Seeing him, she got all the more irritated and started hitting him with a pillow.

“When did you get the expertise in writing love letters, I don’t remember you writing one to me?”

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Previously published at www.e-katha.com