(Recap – In the last part of this story, Ganak began to relate about the incidence of his being falsely implicated in so called murder case. But side by side, he began about the story of Manik’s marriage. In fact both the stories had connection with the same issue.)
When he finished the narration related to the demeanor of Manik, I had asked him. ” Then, how Manik managed to get married?” Upon that Ganak continued, ” The prospective bride of Manik too belonged to our own community.. She was well informed about the past flirting history of Manik. In fact, the girl too was on the same boat as that of Manik in her flirting demeanor. She was a good looking, charming girl and also fond of movies. She knew, her beauty and youth is her valuable assets and she used that to trap the boys, having strong financial background with intent to get marry any of them.
She too had so many paramours in her life as that of Manik, who too had a good deal of girl friends. But the mind set of such boys as you know, they were always cunning and were not of foolish type. They merely enjoyed the company of girl and recovered their investment by having lustful moments with the girl and vanished ; never to look back again. Eventually, she too got tired by the deception of her paramours one after another. The truth was, both sailed in the same boat but with no result. At the end, The proverbial conjunction of “god arranges the marriages in the heaven,” and ” god made a pair, one blind and one lame,” we witnessed in their marriage. Two defeated and broken hearts came closer to one another and fell in love.”
And, again Ganak laughed his same derisive laugh with the full contents of his heart, and resumed the narration, ” But, their this marital tie was like a transitional surge that had had to ebb away. One interesting minor incidence too occurred during his marriage ceremony. It’s the fact that Manik was my elder brother and I too had to accompany him in his so called marriage procession, that too was in shape of a nominal gathering. Our financial position had always been miserable and at the time of valediction of the bride, when bridegroom takes the bride home, he is expected to arrange at least some cab.’
He took a little pause and continued, ” Manik had no ample money to afford the costly motor-car on rent, hence he opted an auto- rickshaw to get her home. Their too occurred a melodramatic scene. When the auto- rickshaw driver dropped the bride at the front of our house, he too came up? as an old paramour of the bride. At the moment he dropped her, he became intense emotionally and he could not contain his tender emotions and erupted in wordings, ” Rupa ! ( the name of bride, it was.) Seldom keep on remembering me too, last you forget me in your new life!” And again Ganak plunged in his same hard derisive laugh. His way of imitating the melodramatic dialogue of driver was so hilarious, even I couldn’t contain my laugh and joined with an open laugh.
The further details of the story, as given by Ganak, I am submitting in brief – –
The new bride was, no doubt beautiful and charming but also flickering in disposition. After all, she had been an experienced player of the game in her premarital status. Now often it occurred, sometimes Manik engaged in out side business and Ganak had no work in his hand, so he was but to stay back at the home. As it was evident, they had a joint family, secondly in our India, there prevails a custom of “jesting or joking around” between elder sister-in-law and younger brother-in-law in the family. Though, ethically it’s confined to vocal jesting only. But, the class of society Ganak belonged to, there they take more liberty in this custom and sometimes it crossed the barrier of prescribed ethical decency.
On the same, Mother had to be present in person almost in the house, this was enough to console Manik that mother was there to keep a vigilant eye upon the conduct of the bride. But nothing could be said of the calculation of time and its pace. Ganak here, he too was in his prime, potential youth and bride of Manik too was habitual to shift her stand about male partner. That was her premarital experience based habit and bad habit dies hard.
So neither Ganak nor his sister-in-law knew, when there germinated the “sapling of love” between them and it grew so fast to the maturity. Now, situation was weird. A vigilant, conservative mother was always present in the house and “love- birds” were flapping the wings in the confines of the same house. The only modus- operandi to make flourish their love now converted into exchange of love-letters. What an amazing situation it was! Every one can imagine. A lot of exchange of such sort of love letters took place. Ganak too had some fondness for book reading. This inspired him to pick a good deal of romantic poetry from different sources and jot that down into love letters.
There is a saying, whatever restriction you impose upon lovers, even after they cultivate some device to achieve their goal. Now, a woman as a wife of one brother, was providing the conjugal happiness to both the brothers. But there also goes another proverbial saying, ” Love and smoke cannot be concealed.” And, in this case, when elder brother Manik by himself was an experienced player, how could it be concealed from his eyes? He smelt a rat. He secretively began to keep a vigilant eyes upon both of them. Eventually he succeeded discovering some love-letters from the chest of his wife, sent by Ganak.
A deadly strife generated between couple. Both made aspersion upon each other. This strife continued for months, that not only spoiled the chemistry between couple but as an aftermath the relationship between brothers too got deteriorated. And one day, some unexpected and tragic incidence occurred. The wife of Manik committed suicide by hanging herself to the rafter of the roof of the house. All this occurred with in one year of solemnizing of the marriage.
Naturally, police had to arrive on the scene of the crime and initiated its investigation. A deep search of belongings of deceased was made by the police and a bundle of love-letters sent by Ganak got recovered. It was now the part of the criminal case material, besides,badly offended Manik too was. He too directly blamed Ganak to instigate his wife to commit the suicide, who was deeply moved by his love. This was an “open and shut case” for police. In hurry police booked him for instigating some one to commit the suicide and put him behind the bar. ( End of the part-6. Cont’d). Penned by — Vinay Pharai —–
