Aphrodite

“Possessiveness was not felt when it all began.She was obsessive and possessiveness gradually engulfed every sinew in her .Expressively she began to resent my absence. And imperceptibly it became no different with me. The annoyance that followed me transformed into a reciprocal feeling ” He said.

We had discussed on this phase of his life before. And I was privy to a considerable extent of  what I can term only as, “la affaire amour”. I suggested may be by his genial attitude to her preludes and subsequent displays of frantic passion, he encouraged and fanned her infatuation.                                  “May be yes, maybe not”, he said.                                                                          
“It was so, you even continue to retain the feelings that infected you”, I put in. He was silent for a while and drove looking ahead on the seemingly never ending stretch of the road through the plains, before it would hit the first bend towards the hills.

“Yes indeed, it was extravagant advance and I felt many a time towards the plateau of the ‘affaire’, the relationship, she was slipping into insanity. I was afraid that she was fast becoming psychotic. Gosh how one could infer otherwise, how one could explain her wailing moods, her uncontrolled passion, and her foolishly incongruous statements and intends?" "But...” He muttered eyes still transfixed on the road ahead. Again, a relapse of doubt, I wondered?

“Without knowing, you imparted your feelings for her. You pitied her mental state, her tenderness tripped you. Your affability, understanding and consideration to her, made her hold on to you like a limpet. And you flew around her like a mayfly oblivious of the enflamed amber that she was. Her physical nature that was the knell of  men who knew her, aroused you too, made you excited and servile. And she decided that she will have you, possess you and no one else should. You let her be the conductress. You danced to the calling of her intimate needs, you towed behind her. It was mad infatuation”. I added, once he stopped.

“And, you did slip, you were washed away  by the deluge. The twigs you clasped were tiny little drift woods, nay you clasped on her to be saved from the deluge that she was – she and her lonesome, selfish aim to arrogate you, your life. It was her selfishness”. I paused a bit and glanced to my right to see his expression. He displayed a asinine appearance - driving without exhibiting any other reaction to what I said. I continued, “And now you thirst for her and in your moments of solitude you want to hold her, possess her again. The roulette has turned a full circle. My friend that was a Russian roulette she played. Don’t you see? She needed you emotionally and physically, she masticated you, her purchase over you was emphatic, she won! It was nothing but amorous dance drama, a ballet that she conducted and you it was  bêtise of you to fall for it".

He swerved the car to the left to steer clear of a small flock of sheep that crossed the road as if from nowhere.                                                                                                                                            “Mad infatuation, that was what you said”. He began in a hushed tone and he cleared his throat to continue, “You call the passion that engulfed her, me, thus! Adults, grownups, people who have known the world, felt life in their palms .And like dimwitted teenagers take extreme steps, willing to go beyond what  that would gorge out life, ruin it forever, for us both. You trivalise it,call it Russian roulette? You do not understand. There are moments when sensibilities desert the sensible and the senses are numb, indifferent to conventions."

I was not quite prepared for his outburst. There was resentment and the longing, for “Aphrodite” has not exited him, I understood then. He was quietly ravaged within and he was disturbed by moments when he disagrees to believe that it was all over. The temptress refuses to fade away, beckoning him to her lair, often come calling in his dreams. Mercifully it is all over, but he longs....! Man, man has this inexplicable itch to take the extreme tread- to serenade with peril, to flirt with peril, socially, emotionally and physically. Trade like traders who cannot trade! Like horse men who straddle the stallion but cannot ride!

“But, yes that was so. It was illusion, illusion of paradise before tempest and destruction”. I said.

He smiled- a wry smile and with rictus. He recounted from his tale, moments when she was overwhelming, blistering like a volcano, fiery, and unrelenting. At times she was like a nestling, a loner within. And then she needed him more. When she could not have him she glared like a feline, was filed with jealousy .  On one plane she knew that she was fanning a mirage, running after one, pleading. But something sometimes told her that she will grasp the mirage and clasp it close, like a child. And like a child warily looks at her clenched fist shut tight, hoping the clutched fingers are impervious, afraid to relax the muscles around the fingers, lest the glow worm fly away! She beckoned him, flagellated, cried piteously to take her away- unperturbed at his aghast, protestation, regardless of the social status and  life they have, She willed in earnest to elude the trappings that constricted her  and let her be in abandon. Go wherever, do whatever he wills, she affirmed, but she cannot be different. She will not sit and wait to see the clock inexorably move back.        Electrocuting! She exclaimed once and she longed for that, more of it, a life of it. Defiant, she desired to begin afresh. She did not hide the adoration for him and that was much to his discomfiture. And in a moment of desperate candour confided and beseeched him if he would accept her so that she willingly would confine to the status of paramour and even a recluse. In her unrestrained expressions of affection, chided him for forsaking her all these years.  She cursed the Gods in the pantheon for not bringing him to her, let him see her and run forth into her, but rather consign her to waste and live a woeful life all this while; let her languish her youth in wilderness of ennui and of uneventful marital confinement. Hang her, decapitate her, ostracise her, brand her whorish, she cannot be different, she is what she is.  

I felt, she was- because the wolf eats the lamb, will you hang the wolf, if that will make the wolf different so be it, hang her.

Many a monsoon has passed by since. I mused, as we drove on, turned the bend on the road and on to the mountains.