‘Sandhya told me about him,’ said Raja Rao, thinking about how he almost lost Roopa to him.

‘I don’t know what Roopa told Sandhya about him, but that’s beside the point,’ said Sathyam, gulping all that there was in his glass, as a prelude to emptying his heart. ‘We were quite thick during our childhood days. When I met him this January, that too after fifteen years, I believed we could pick up the threads of our friendship all again. But, as I came to know later, in the guise of our friendship, he wanted to get closer to my wife. Oh, while I was a first ranker at school, he used to just scrape through, that too with my help. Well, when the topic was about studies, he never looked at me straight. Imagine such a fellow eyeing my woman now!’

Finding Raja Rao’s demeanor empathic, Sathyam continued after he ordered a fresh round of drinks for them, ‘Do you know what had brought about this change in him? What else man, money, plentiful money. Why, he was lucky to marry a rich dame, and so he thought it fit to lure the wives of the not so rich too into his life. What is worse, he seems to think that wives of the middle-class are but whores in their own homes. All the same, gullible that they are, how these silly women lose their heads when wooed by the moneyed. But I’m proud of my wife, for she proved her worth, though that rascal tried his best.’

‘I’m happy for you,’ said Raja Rao, hiding his mixed feelings, ‘and her as well.’

‘As you know, earlier a man’s worth went by his talent,’ Sathyam continued spiritedly. ‘That was all there was to it. Let’s take a potter for example. If he made a pot right, he got the price, and if it were misshapen, then he was in for a discount sale. But were it to leak altogether, oh, he had nowhere to go. And these days, money is the only resource needed to make more of it, isn’t it? If only you have money, no one is going to ask you how you got it and where from. That’s for sure. With that as capital, you can get into the business of making money. Can’t you hire the best of talent, never mind, your own capacity may be of questionable quality. But then, won’t the guys pool their skills to fill your kitty. And you bask in false glory as a whiz kid of sorts, don’t you?’




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