Mimosa, with Samosa, Vani (Part-11)

“Would you like to go to a book signing party?”
“No thanks, I have to attend parent-teacher conference”
“Would you like to go to author’s tea tonight?”
“No thanks, I have a dinner planned”
“Are you trying to avoid me?”
“Why would I?”
“I have a feeling that after we chatted last week, you have been avoiding me”
“You are right. I don’t feel it’s right to continue to flirt with you while I enjoy my married life on side”
“I haven’t even touched you”
“Doesn’t matter. Emotionally cheating someone is worst than doing it physically”
“We are soul mates”
“I don’t buy all that”
“We share a connection that people don’t share with the persons they live with. It’s very rare”
“I don’t want to get into all that. It’s simple for me. I can only love one person at a time, and I choose Shekhar over you. Please don’t contact me again”
“If you say so, why not. But whenever you want to come back, I will greet you with my arms open”
“Will you leave your wife and kids, and come to me?”
“No. You are mature enough to understand”
“You are mature enough to understand that I reject the proposal to be your virtual mistress”
“You took me where my real partners never took me”
“I strayed”
“You lived”
“I should kill myself”

That was the end of my virtual affair with the greenish blue eyed stranger, or so I thought. Shekhar didn’t bother enough to know why I was happy some days and what made me sad sometimes. He treated life as he always did, and while I nursed my broken heart. Ruchi thought it was unemployment taking a toll on me, and tried to engage me into bike rides along the trails every evening. I recovered. But the hurt didn’t go away.

Then one fine day my greenish blue eyed stranger released a new book. About a woman who was just like me, and a man just like him. Only I remained loyal to him, like Meera to Krishna, in the end. The readers loved it, and he was crowned the next Salman Rushdie. He wrote every detail that we lived. He copied every email we exchanged. He wrote about my white dress, about my diamonds, about our walk along the lake, about the twinkle in my eyes. He wrote about my fantasies, about my longings, and about my desires that I shared with him, only. He wrote about my dreams unfulfilled. He didn’t write the rejection, and made me feel rejected again.
I ignored him, and his book, but the world didn’t. She sounds so real, she feels so real, they said. Is she for true, they asked. He denied, of course, and rejected my presence again. She is my fantasy he said, and I search for her in every woman, only to fail.

I shut down my virtual world, and got back to Manisha and Neena, and our kids, and the failing job market, the plunging Dow Jones, and Shekhar. Shekhar didn’t notice anything, but I feel guilty. I punish myself in weird ways, like skipping food, not putting on makeup, not shopping, not exercising and sometimes eating loads of ice-cream. One day Shekhar asked me what was wrong, I couldn’t tell him. He thought a little vacation with the colored drinks with tiny umbrellas on a sandy beach will help, and on our vacation, he gifted me a book to read. The one my stranger wrote for me. I hugged him, and cried till my eyes dried out, and told him that it was the story of my life. He said he understood, and told me that I should let myself loose, and enjoy life uninhibited, like her. He said that he wants to see the wildness in me unleash, and I told him he didn’t understand what I meant. He told me to forget everything, every failure, every sorrow and live life as it happens, as it unfolds. I closed my eyes and let him kiss me. While he kissed me, I opened my eyes and wondered if I should tell him what happened between the writer and me, and wondered how he would react if he were to see the wild encounter we had, virtually. My eyes tear up, and Shekhar holds me tight, and whispers “Did you enjoy”. Yes, I did, and no, I didn’t.