Benign Flame: Saga of Love by BS Murthy (inspirational books for students TXT) 📕

Benign Flame: Saga of Love

BS Murthy

ISBN 81-901911-3-6

Enriched edition © 2020 BS Murthy

Originally published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata,

Second, third and fourth editions by Self Imprint in 1997, 2004,

and improved E-book edition is of 2013.

Based on the oil on canvas by E. Rohini Kumar,

cover designed for 2004 edition by KB Bhaskar,

GDC creative advertising (p) ltd., Hyderabad - 500 080.

F-9, Nandini Mansion,

1-10-234, Ashok Nagar,

 Hyderabad – 500 020

Other books by BS Murthy –

Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life

Crossing the Mirage – Passing through youth

Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel

Prey on the Prowl – A Crime Novel

Stories Varied – A Book of Short Stories

Onto the Stage - Slighted Souls and other stage and plays

Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (Non-fiction)

Bhagvad-Gita: Treatise of self – help (A translation in verse)

Sundara Kãnda - Hanuman’s Odyssey (A translation in verse)           

Chapter of the Saga

Chapter 1: Ramaiah’s Family

Chapter 2: Realities of Life

Chapter 3: Hapless Hope

Chapter 4: Turn at the Tether

Chapter 5: Moorings of Marriage

Chapter 6: World within the World 

Chapter 7: Roopa’s En Passant 

Chapter 8: Threshold of Temptation

Chapter 9: Sathyam’s Surrender

Chapter 10: Sandhya’s Sojourn

Chapter 11: Match in the Making

Chapter 12: Poignant Moment

Chapter 13: Wedding Season

Chapter 14: Veil of Fate

Chapter 15: Naughty Nuptials

Chapter 16: Tidings of Love

Chapter 17: Tentative Moves

Chapter 18: Fetishes of Fantasy

Chapter 19: Curtain of Courtesy

Chapter 20: Blueprint in the Offing

Chapter 21: Enduring Longing

Chapter 22: Villainy of Life

Chapter 23: Playboy at Play

Chapter 24: Scheming the Theme

Chapter 25: Device of Deceit

Chapter 26: Software of Detour

Chapter27: Tara’s Theory

Chapter28: Night of the Mates

Chapter29: A Brimming Romance 

Chapter30: Euphoric Forays

Chapter31: Living the Dream

Chapter32: Chat at the Bar

Chapter33: Amour on Rein

Chapter34: Surge of a Merge 

Chapter35: Date with Destiny

Chapter36: Threesome Sail

Chapter37: End of an Innings

Chapter38: Subdued Beginning

Dedicated to Naagamani, my better half,

who still leaves no stone unturned for my fulfillment.

Chapter 1

Ramaiah’s Family

That winter night in the mid-seventies, the Janata Express was racing rhythmically on its tracks towards the coast of Andhra Pradesh. As its headlight pierced the darkness of the fertile plains, the driver honked the horn as though to awake the sleepy environs to the spectacle of the speeding train. On that, in the S-3, were the Ramaiahs with their nine year-old daughter Roopa.

Earlier, from Ramavaram, it was in the nick of time that Ramaiah took Janaki to Vellore for the doctors to extricate her from the jaws of death. Now, having been to Tirupati for thanksgiving, he was returning home with his wife and Roopa they took along for the sojourn. While her parents were fast asleep, Roopa sat still on a side berth, reminiscing her times at the hospital where Janaki took one month to recuperate under Dr. Yasoda’s care.

Soon the train stopped at a village station, as though to disrupt Roopa’s daydreams of modeling herself on the lady doctor at the Christian Medical College Hospital, and as she peeped out, the ill-lit platform seemed to suggest that the chances of her being
Dr. Roopa could be but dim. Ramaiah too woke up to the commotion caused by the incoming passengers, and was surprised to see his daughter still awake, lost in her thoughts.

“What are you scheming my darling?” he said in jest.

“Naanna, won’t you make me a doctor?” she said as though in a trance.

“Haven’t the nurses already made you a junior doctor?” he said affectionately, bringing her escapades at the hospital back into her mental focus, and pleased with her idea, he patted her to sleep, even as he recalled his anxieties associated with her birth.

Ramaiah was jolted from his reverie as someone in the compartment switched on the light, to prepare himself to alight at the coming station.

‘Surely she would shape up into a dusky beauty. Won’t she be bright as well?’ he thought, looking at Roopa in her deep sleep, and recalled her escapade when she was hardly three.

“You know how clever our Roopa is?” said Janaki, at bedtime. “She wanted the timepiece to fiddle with and when I refused to give in, she cried no end. When she forgot what she was crying for, she cried to know why she cried at all! What a unique girl our Roopa is!”

As the train moved into a major junction, Ramaiah got down, looking for a coffee vendor. Unable to find even a tea vendor, he lit his Berkeley without a beverage. When the guard whistled the start, a half-naked urchin jostled past Ramaiah into the bogie to crouch in the vestibule. While the train was on the move, Ramaiah wondered whether the urchin had crouched to draw warmth from his heart to ward off the chillness, and pitying him, as he gave him some money the lad took as a matter of right.

‘Isn’t there something called gratitude?’ thought Ramaiah, feeling disregarded. ‘Is he so naive that he knows not civility? Or could he be an outcast, unfamiliar with the niceties of society?’ Ramaiah looked at him intently as though for a clue.

‘Is it possible that his exposure to the elements in his nakedness should’ve robbed his body of its sense of feeling?’ he thought, finding the wretched lad as cool as a cucumber. ‘Now, what he needs most is a piece of cloth to cover him with. After all, money wouldn’t provide warmth by itself, would it?’

Ramaiah went to his trunk to fetch a vest for the urchin. Seeing him wear it without even looking at him, Ramaiah wondered whether the lad was indifferent to the world in general.

‘Could life get worse than that?’ Ramaiah wondered, as he tried to go back to sleep on his allotted berth. How was he to know that one day, despairing for love, Roopa would personify the wretched side of life itself.

The outbreak of the day, which brought the sun on to the horizon, woke up Ramaiah. Realizing it would still take an hour to reach Ramavaram, he was inclined to inaction. The chillness of the wintry breeze and the warmth of the sunny dawn struck him for their contrast. Looking yonder, he saw the dew filled fields bejeweled by refraction and thought that they brought luster to the Master’s Creation.

When Janaki woke up, as Ramaiah folded up the berth, providing space for those in the aisle to rest their weary legs, there was enough room in the compartment for the assorted characters waiting in the vestibule.

Soon, the newspaper of the day was split into four that preoccupied as many. As its center page landed in the lap of the one opposite, Ramaiah couldn’t help but crane his neck to screen the bold print therein. However, all the pages came to him, though in a crumpled shape, enabling him to go through the copy before the vestiges of the paper were restored to whom it belonged, but not before the scandals in it were savored by those present.

Having finished with the newspaper in that intermittent reading, Ramaiah puffed away at his freshly lit Berkeley, and looking out from the window, he began to admire the scenery filled with greenery. When the landscape around looked familiar, he woke up Roopa and goaded Janaki to move towards the exit. Soon he too joined them with the bag and baggage.

Waiting near the wash-basin, Ramaiah remembered the lad and looked for him, and not finding him, he thought, ‘That is life. It has a destination even for the destitute.’

Soon Ramaiah leaned out of the slowing train to ascertain the platform.

-----

When the train screeched to the welcome chores of the waiting staff of the Ramavaram Station, alighting from it with the precaution associated with an occasional traveler, Ramaiah hurried his family towards the exit like a habitual commuter who catches the train on the move.

“The postmaster might’ve brought bagfuls of news,” the ticket collector at the gate greeted Ramaiah, alluding to the village postmasters’ penchant to peruse the post before delivery.

“The only news is that the Mails are running late,” was the Ramaiah repartee as he handed over the tickets.

Once out, he engaged two cycle rickshaws to take them home.

Ramavaram was a mini town as its residents loved to call it. With just five hundred houses, it was no more than a village in Ramaiah’s childhood but grew rapidly to house thirty thousand souls by the time Roopa was born. Well, the explosion in its population owed more to the migration than to procreation, and that represented the trend all over. While the natives lamented that the place was bursting at its seams, the settlers felt it was brimming with activity. However, all were proud to belong to it, not to speak of the Ramaiahs.

Life was running its routine course in Ramaiah’s household until fate ordained a tragedy, as though to ensure Roopa’s resolve to become a doctor was not dissolved in the myopic dreams of her imminent maidenhood, Rukmini, her elder sister, orphaned her son for want of postnatal care at the government maternity home that came up by then.

“Nature’s victim of procreation and man’s means of recreation, that’s what woman is,” bemoaned Janaki.

‘Only as a doctor can I help women,’ resolved Roopa to herself.

With Rukmini’s premature death causing consternation in the concerned households, the elders, in due course, went into a huddle, and decided it would be in the best interests of the motherless child if Suguna, the deceased’s sister, married the widower. So after a decent wait, while Suguna replicated her sibling in her brother-in-law’s life, Roopa too matured as though nature intended to synchronize her body with her mind.

While Roopa resembled a flower at dawn with its dew on, her complexion of tan was in consonance with the radiance of her velvet skin. Even as her vivacious features acquired softness as though to project the sweetness of her nature, her gaze gave way to glances as if to convey her innate inclinations. While her nascent bust was akin to a curious maiden peeping out from behind the curtain, the oni she wore strived to veil her maiden form. Her emerging figure and her diffident disposition lent tentativeness to her gait that seemed like the calibrated movements of a virtuoso danseuse on the way to the crescendo. Though in her interaction, she was modesty personified that strangely enhanced her sensual appeal, nevertheless, while watching the boys on the sly, she withdrew from them with inhibition. However, embellishing her unique persona, she came to have a mind of her own.

Once when she debunked the puranic tales of cock-pecked wives as perverse male stratagems to enslave women, Janaki was truly alarmed.

“These tales of female fidelity have a purpose of their own,” said Janaki to Roopa. “Since nature made men promiscuous, it’s the female loyalty that holds the marriage in the long run, for the benefit of the family and the society as well. These tales have a moral for men as well for they underscore the fact that it’s the wife who sticks through thick and thin with their man and