CHAPTER 31 - The Villain of the Piece

The Devil Had Her Way

Despite the fact that Savitha had committed – what my friend Satish Eloor had clowned about: "a titanic flounder of sorts” - whispering into Una’s trusting ears all kinds of preachy baneful drivel that could be worked up against Arinvan’s person, what was more vital for Arinvan was that he never knew how to cope with this defecting howler of a co-worker who worked at their roaming division, and where they were supposed to work together as...chew this...a ‘team’ by assuming the roles of office co-workers! 

At any rate, Savitha as one of our office colleagues was always found to be very flimsy in her approach to work and this 'reality' went on to be a lot of unnecessary bother for Arinvan when he came to know that she happens to be Una’s so-called ‘best friend’!

In Arinvan’s eyes, Savitha will always be a turn-coat individual – an all-time-ever Goof up Queen! or Queen of Goof Ups! Big time Goof Ups! – who was also a seriously jealous-monger. Indeed, even that definition seems tame notwithstanding the historic blunders she’d kept committing at the workplace and psychological failures she’d set forth against the two blameless individuals, whom she knew from close quarters and interacted with almost on a daily basis.

Does Savitha then become a hurtful-vengeful person in this respect? Guaranteed, she was. Nothing that I make of her indicates otherwise though. It never did. It never will. Everything points to the fact that she in her own self-centered mistaken way thought she could be goody-two-shoes to Una while being clandestinely wicked to her fellow office colleague Arinvan. That was the dirty game she liked to play. For Savitha Tandavi, Una was a ‘bachpan-ka-dost’ (or some such funda!) – a far better personal sensation (or feeling – take your pick!) of comradeship compared to a, euphemistically, team-playing office co-worker like me; so why not wear smarty-pants and ruin their happiness of coming together in love-shuv. Arinvan had nurtured nothing but plain old-fashioned love for Una and a backstabbing double-crosser like Savitha knew how to knife it...to death.

It was enticing for Arinvan to feel the way he was feeling about Savitha’s behaviour, meaning to be able to drive a little Sense and Sensibility into her toady head should have been worth the trouble, yet he could not bring himself up to tackle such an apparently difficult task. To set right an erring adult individual like her is a task best suited for her own fate to wrestle with.

A hurt Arinvan didn’t consciously let known his feelings to Savitha, but he was certain she must have surmised as much, and continued to feel ecstatic about the way that she had successfully figured out how to lit the fire of lurid suspicion between him and her ‘best friend’ Una Artoran. Maybe it was not worth talking to such a highly acerbic individual hell-bent on bringing his relationship with Una to an end either by hook or by crook or by snare or by hoodlum, lest think about telling Savitha his true feelings about Una. It was not worth it on the grounds that Arinvan felt that the onus really falls on the individuals concerned to just be themselves in their loving togetherness, without letting anyone – not even anyone’s so-called ‘best friend’ like Savitha –harm their relationship. Some people take pride in opening their foul mouths and have their say, even interfere personally and blatantly speak ill of others and get away with it. In this case, the devil had her way.

The Villain of the Piece

Savitha had figured out how to stage-manage Una’s truthfulness and her inner conscience about her romantic relationship with Arinvan Maliek. The problem was Una fell for her fabricated story hook, line, and sinker! She believed every word of hers. The onus again was on Una to check first, smartly verify the things for truth and deceit, and catch her close companion’s (Savitha’s) lie then and there. Savitha’s obvious angling for open deceit, misrepresentation of facts, and falsehood was well-neigh ominous, but tragically, Una had preferred to acknowledge it as the kind cruelty of her lousy friend’s stab-knife of instant jealousy!

What beats me is the fact that Una never did let her hair loose on this one. It seems that she laid her trust in her closest companion Savitha more than she ever did in anybody else, including Arinvan. Maybe she liked to quickly wash her hands off Arinvan, make herself distant and uninvolved, and go live someplace else, without any looming botheration for her to cope with: maybe in the city of Bangalore as she prefers saying that she’s from that hallowed place, whereas she knows very well that she isn’t at all from that city at least not originally, for she is from up north in H.P.

I accept that this little make-believe of belonging to a certain place of hers isn’t quite hunky-dory as it sounds, but I suppose this ‘invented reality’ that she had made-up for herself have in a different sort of way helped her make a fresh beginning; renew old ties in the city of her escape, and live joyfully (and happily!) without Arinvan throbbing in her morally white-washed heart!

I suppose she should thank her close pal Savitha Tandavi profusely (for all I know she did that I am sure) for this Grand Escape to her once-upon-a-time roots in Bangalore more than she should think it OK to thank anybody else, by the way.

That would be so very good for Una. Thanks to her close Secret Agent friend from Pudmeyro Nager Savitha’s express disapproval that Una had allowed herself to be pushed around, shoved frontwards and backwards, and pestered and heckled at in order to make her go on an entirely different direction as long as it is not in the direction that leads to Arinvan!

It was so unlike Una’s strong persona that I’d thought I once knew. But I think I never really knew Una well enough to be able to drive home a valid point or two as far as my own moral perception in this matter is concerned.

She simply read and perused Arinvan’s last “God Bless…” email as an irrevocable finality that should never have been in the first place! What could Arinvan do, he simply had to let his Fate run its course through this highly undesirable circumstance of a third person's intrusion. And that leaves my beloved Una…… she let her thoughtlessness act against her own heart even as she was hurled into this bloodless coup of her own best friend’s making. For all I know, Una was gone; far gone into the prospect of a new life, new job, new friends, back where she belonged.

Besides, I think it was my pride that got the better of me. No, I think that’s not exactly what I’d felt at the time, not really… I felt deeply hurt and left-out with Una being completely unresponsive at my desperate attempts to make amends with her. I had also felt an undeserving poor and bourgeois guilt even as I was stupidly aghast at finding her a completely different individual now. Ms. Stan-Chart, Una Artoran.

Anyhow, it was below my dignity even to put some sense into this wretched female called Savitha Tandavi, Una Artoran's heckler friend. I may have taken offense at her crackpot behaviour but couldn’t properly ‘react’, as would anyone considering the circumstances, to the kind of pathological animosity Savitha was clandestinely perpetrating against me. 'Reacting' would not un-break my heart. It'd surely damage. How wise I sound! If only I had... Well...!

I let Savitha get away, believing that if the basic human sense in her no longer exists then why’d there be any use to beat her down with my sense of moral outrage and conviction. That would be tantamount to flogging a dead horse, and Una, for reasons best known to her as far as her best-est friend Savitha was concerned, would never approve of my misplaced reaction on the entire issue. In that sense Savitha got away, totally scot-free; but, yes, with an unpardonably bad reputation that will never leave her side – instead it will haunt her all her remaining life for sure. 

I will not forgive Savitha, neither do I believe I can ever come close to that defeatist task.

Arinvan had no way of knowing what had really transpired between Una and Savitha and if Monami Roy was some way or another involved in this entrapping ploy of Savitha’s, apart from the fact that Savitha’s pig-headedness (her brainlessness) – she being highly cavalier of the feelings of others with insensitive comments thrown in without doubt – have contributed to damaging his new wonderful romantic involvement with Una beyond redemption. One cannot completely leave Monami, Una’s gushy old office co-worker at the Stan-Chart, out of the picture; she favoured chickening out of the situation, without so much as leaving a good word. 

Scratch below the facade of Monami Roy's ostentatious friendship and you might see a totally different individual who believes in throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

***

Of all that I have lost is nothing. I have her eyes in my eyes, her remembrances in my heart, her love in my soul, and we never held back anything from each other and that’s why our love will never lose its meaning. One day our love will find a way to return to us.

I have finally ceased to believe in such hollow promises of sweet nothings.

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.