It was lashing with rain outside. Sanjana, Karan, Vikas and Ajay were sitting in the room watching the closing scenes of a movie on the DVD. It was some Hollywood crime thriller.
Vikas had returned to India after spending 6 long years in America on his pet research project. Lot had changed back home. He was meeting his long lost friends Karan and Ajay after that many years and also Karan’s wife Sanjana. The very same Sanjana he had left behind all those years back. Sanjana was now married to his best friend Karan and was a mother of two.
They had met at Karan’s farmhouse on outskirts of the city with an aim to catch up over the weekend, all those lost years. After initial awkwardness with Sanjana, Vikas was okay bonding with his old pals and Sanjana too had joined in their conversations ranging from sports to politics to films and their good old college years.
After a lump sum dinner cooked expertly by Sanjana, they were all sitting over a round of drinks watching the movie. There had been many scenes of torrid lovemaking between the would-be murderer and the wife of the hero. Illicit love, stolen moments, tearing off of clothes as soon as doors were closed. The friends had watched the move through all that, and not without awkwardness. Vikas and Sanjana because they knew that quite often that was how they behaved with each other in past. Karan because he could feel the arousal and need for his wife Sanjana. And Ajay was just shy from being present in a situation where there was one couple and an ex-lover and he could not come to terms with his arousal at all the hot scenes.
The movie ended and Karan turned on the lights. “Ok, guys! Time to turn in,” he announced. His eyes were bloodshot from the drinking and his steps were just about steady. He had his arm around his wife Sanjana and was ready to walk away with her. His intentions seemed very clear from the way he was nuzzling her. Vikas turned red and Ajay just looked away.
Sanjana pulled herself away. “Let me settle these guys in,” she said. What she left unsaid was that she would be with Karan soon thereafter.
Her eyes met Vikas’s and there was a burning passion and the complexity and contradictions in feelings and relationships were all too apparent; at least to the two of them. She escorted both the guys to the guest room. She made sure there was drink of water and everyone knew where the lights were. Ajay too had had quite a few drinks and was ready to hit the sack. As always, the person who did not drink much was Vikas.
There was an air of helpless resignation in Sanjana as she left Vikas and headed off to her husband’s bedroom. She paused on her way at the children’s room to see if they were asleep. Vikas felt his cheeks burn as he watched her walk away, his eyes on her sexy ass- an ass which he had kissed, caressed and stroked several times in past but which now belonged to her husband Karan. She was gone. Somehow, he wished she would stay away and invite him back down after Karan was asleep. This was what he had dreamt all these years in America.
But he suspected that inside her was a slut who loved Karan as much as she lusted Vikas. She wouldn’t characterize it in those terms if you asked her. But Vikas could find no other way of characterizing her behavior. She seemed to want Vikas endlessly, and at the same time seemed to be endlessly patient in allowing her legal husband Karan to do what he wanted with her. It fell somewhere between a sense of duty and a need in her for that man too.