I Committed a Sin - Chapter 2

I Committed a Sin

Chapter 2

At an Unexpected turn

I had a mild anticipation the next day for Suji to turn up. It had become habitual of me to come online everyday now, so it was she who should be absent if someone was missing at all. I had left home as early as possible and made my way to Friends as soon. I was lucky this time; I was given a cabin. Today, though, my enthusiasm for chatting was less intense than it usually was. Many things were going on in my mind. One of them was Suji, but today the impact the chat had created yesterday had worn off, consequently rendering Suji no more than a passing thought in my head.

     My thoughts were about Madhu. She was the girl of whom I spoke with Suji the day before. Madhumitha. A girl I would never forget in my life. At that point of my life, I honestly believed it would not be possible for me to give a greater pain to anyone else after that. But life always had its surprises.

      I was recalling the incidents those befell after I left for Arun's home the night before. It was a part of my routine to go to his home and have a chat in those evenings. The night before had been no different except for the bizarre news he had had for me. That Madhumitha came to his home.

      I had no idea if my feelings showed up on my face once he told me that. He was all smiling, like he always was, when he told that to me after a terse preamble regarding something strange having happened. I did not believe it at first. Later when I did, I could not place my reaction myself. There was a sudden rush of curiosity, followed closely by deep envy in no time. I thought myself a very good friend of her, though I was well aware of the lines she had drawn between her and men, me included. There had been scores of times when I turned up at her door, yet she had never appeared within shouting distance of my home. Not even once. Arun became friends with her through me, and to my knowledge, he was not too close with her, let alone any girl. I felt disappointed that she should come to his home even if it happened purely out of chance. He told about her appearance for collecting some assignment, how his mother invited her in with too much of concern that encompassed pulling in a seemingly diffident girl into the house by hand, and how coyly Madhumitha sat in there answering his mother's tender queries.

      I did not love her. As I had told Suji before, I hated many things about her.If we made a couple it would be a dreadful life together. She had too much of discretion, gossip and a hidden arrogance, all of which I disliked. She took elaborate care not to be too intimate with me or confide in me her feelings. I appreciated it all the same, passing it for prudence from a girl toward any man. Yet, at times when she spoke something, or did something, that reflected her traits it had echoed in my head that I would never want to be in the company of such a girl in the name of a relationship.

      It crossed my mind that she had been at Arun's home just about an hour earlier, when I was chatting with one of the most trivial, yet strange, occurrences of my life, called Suji. I could not help thinking that if Suji had not consented with that single 'Yes', I would have bumped into Madhu at Arun's home. My presence would have been uncomfortable for both of us, besides being exciting for Arun. He was still pestering me continually to reveal what transpired between us for this sudden freeze in the relationship. He never approved of being kept in the dark regarding my affairs. If I had been there while she arrived, he would not have bothered to stifle his amusement on seeing the looks on our faces.

      To my surprise, I was mildly disappointed for not being there to meet her. I wanted her to speak with me, after all that had happened between us. I wanted to see how she reacted in a close encounter, unlike in college where we could avert our faces, pretending interest in something else when one had to be in the other's presence. She had the right to be angry, even furious. Yet, I wanted her to sympathize. I did not want her to acknowledge me as the deviant I was, but to have a soft corner for the man I had been.

      These days I got too melancholic when I thought of her. I pushed her briefly out of my mind and turned back to the screen. The memory of Suji returned. I started scouring the list of online chatters in the right hand side of the window screen. There was no Suji. I grimaced and turned my attention to the other girls in the heap.

      The very first female name I found was Ammu. My thoughts reeled back to the past by a month. I recalled an Ammu, one of the first in my chatting experience to succumb to my libido all too enthusiastically. I talked with her like a perfect gentleman would, and she spat on me moments later. She wanted to chat dirty. I had no objections. I knew perfectly well that to do this inside the college laboratory was a transgression of moral ethics but that did not help. I remembered the day perfectly well since it was the day when we conducted symposium in our college and all the girls wore sari for the occasion. The day, as I had mentioned to Ammu, my peace of mind had started to come to an end.

      We had exchanged our yahoo email addresses. I went as far as sending her three more mails even after nothing more than my first one had been replied for. Then the brittle bond had vanished without a trace.

      This could be the same Ammu, I guessed. That will be exciting, I thought. I decided to chance it.

      "Hi Ammu, How are you?" I typed in. If it were her, I would stumble upon a needle in a haystack.

      "Hey, how are you?"

      My heart skipped a beat. Is it the same girl? How the hell?

      "Ammu, from Chennai?" I asked quickly.

      "Hey, no. Remember Suji?"

      I could not suppress the smile. It was Suji, after all. I was searching for her but she had come today in a different name. Perhaps she, like me, was not someone too sensitive about sticking with the same nickname. However, I noticed myself using the same name today as yesterday: Modern guy. It was coincidental, of course. It had served well. Ammu from Chennai retreated to the dark corners of my memory again. I started to type.

      "Yeah, sure. Fine, how do you do?"

      "Fine." I dreaded if the conversation was once again going to be that with only answers from her part. If it were, would the replies cross a word at least?

      "Good. I'm glad that we meet again."

      "Hmm." Doesn't she have the basic courtesy to return the comment? Did I try to be considerate with a bitch?

      This was a different day and a different time from when we talked previously, I reflected. And she was a girl who told yes for an invitation to talk dirty. And I was not new to talking dirty with her. It would not be bad if I talked sex with her. After all, she was a bitch and wanted erotic chat. I would not care the least if she dumped me for misbehavior, what with she having been immoral herself.

      "Today I'm in a very romantic mood." I hung out the bait.

      "You started again?" She seemed not to bite.

      "What's wrong? We had a sex chat yesterday..."

      "You apologized profusely later for bringing that up."

      "Well, yes.. but you are game, aren't you?"

      "Not today." Damn.

      "That's bad."

      "If it is your intention to talk dirty, I'm not the girl now." She made it only too explicit that no subtlety could help monkey business with her today.

      "Very well then. Let's chat something else."

      "That'd be better."

      "I'm glad that you listened to my blabber yesterday."

      "Hmm. How's that girl?"

     As if she cared. "She's fine."

      "Good." Good was not as infuriating as hmm.

      I waited. With vile thoughts already up on my head, I could not think of anything else to talk with her. I did not want to pretend a good guy with her. She knew what I was.

      "Well?" She asked.

      "Well.. you tell."

      "I'm afraid I don't think of anything to say."

      "You are still on your guard with me."

      "Pardon?"

      "You are still being too frivolous."

      "To be honest, you earned it."

      "It is unfair. I asked you if we could chat dirty, it was you who said yes. If anything was immoral, both of us have our share." I knew I was bluffing. She never wanted to chat dirty. It was me who did all the talking yesterday.

      "If you say so..."

      "For your kind information, I won't chat dirty with any girl at random. Even yesterday, I did not ask for sex chat before I invited every girl for a friendly chat first. You too. You, girls, turned it down."

      "But that is no reason for chatting dirty."

      "Maybe not. But you won't understand the logic, you being a girl."

      "Ok, I think it is time for me to leave. I need to have my dinner."

      My knuckles tightened into a fist. I was wrong, I was the fool. She had never been the innocent she purported she was. She knew all about sex, yet was feigning ignorance. She was just trying to pull strings with some guy for the passage of her time. There was no solid evidence for all that, but conversation always left traces. I held back the urge to abuse here with worst language.

      "Ok, off you go." To hell.

      There was no reply. Just the message saying that she had logged out.

      I called her names within my head. I should not have gone behind her. The gall in her to treat me like this just for the sake of me yearning for a sensual talk from her....

      I went about again to my routine of inviting girls to chat. As usual, none talked. I got frustrated, much because of Suji. I cursed myself for not having reproached her enough.

      The screen moved up with the scroll of the mouse to reveal a Malini. I remembered of having spoken with another Malini before, all too erotic. This might not be her, but I thought of giving it a go. I opened the conversation with one of the most offensive questions one could ask of a girl for a start.

      "Will you suck me?"

      I expected the response to be a refusal. I was squinting blithely for Malathi has closed your private chat window to appear. But there was a response. When those black words emerged, I straightened instantly and my shoulders squared. After a closer look, they sagged again.

      "Someone told me that they would not talk dirty with any girl at random."

      So it was her again. If she had not taken me off guard, or inflicted upon me a deep pang of shame for having been caught red-handed acting hypocrite, my replies would have been too impolite for her to contemplate chatting with anyone anymore, let alone me. Opening two windows simultaneously and appearing with two names was a ruse I used to practice almost every time I logged into the site. Today, though, the artifice was not called into play, for the mere lack of enthusiasm. It was startling, and nearly comical, to find myself being deceived by the same ploy from someone else upon whom, in hindsight, I should not have failed to play it. A sheepish smile escaped me. Why the hell is she bumping into me again for god's sake, I thought.

      "So it is you again."

      "You talked as though you were the most dignified guy in the lot. Now, what is this?"

      "You might not believe this, but I blurted it out thinking that it was a Malini I have talked with once, earlier."

      "Oh."

      Hell with you, Kanna, I thought, you are explaining her stuff. That is the cue for her to believe you are all but shamming. Cut it out. Yet, that I was trapped during a hoax could not be undone. There was only so much I could pretend. I resumed to standing my ground.

      "I stand by what I told you. I never talked bad, at least not awfully so, with any girl at random."

      "You might not have ruled out the possibility that it could be some other Malini..."

      "In my present situation, I'm not much into assuming possibilities."

      "Very well, I'm going to have dinner. I'll talk later. Bye."

      She was humiliating me again. Yet, I could not retort. This time, she had good reason to turn her back on me. I portrayed myself as a pervert, which these days I doubted if I was not. I was sure that she would not come again for a chat, at least not in the same name for me to pursue. All the same I did not seek a chat with her again.

      I believed earnestly that I had heard the last of her.

      For the next few days, Sujitha, or Ammu, or whoever the hell she was, was a nonentity in my life. Cozy, secure days of life were coming to an end, and I was making a terrible mistake of not realizing that. By the end of the previous year, 2010, I had bagged a job through campus placement arranged by my college, in a reputed company. A job, that had nothing to do with what I had been studying for four years now. I was well aware of it but all that time, from the moment I was announced as having been placed in the company, I had been pretending well enough that the switch in specialization was not going to make any difference. With a job secure in my hands, I had thrown perception to the winds. The days afterward, until April, were spent on dance practices,-first for college cultural activities and later for college day- sleepless nights of programming for the project I took up seriously by the end of college days, and leisurely chats with my buddies. A tidal wave of misjudgment was building up beyond the clear horizon I allowed myself to see, which looked serene and inviting. Sujitha resorted to being nothing more than an insignificant ripple in the current I was being carried in, and was not spared a second thought.