When It Was Not Happily Ever After – Unfortunate Agony
I met Gaily Ruhan through my classmate Saras Mangotra while he was working at the front office of the HRM Shaurya when HRM Shaurya was still a Kreation property.
Gaily at that time was the front office manager’s executive secretary and had an almost easygoing, convenient though powerful organisational position cutting through the hotel’s hierarchy.
In the first instance, Gaily comes across as a timid but attractive woman with pronounced and enamouring features on a seductive body. She used to dress revealingly too and allow people to savour her body visually.
Interestingly and unexpectedly people she met even for the first time, realised that coupled with her visible sexuality, she also had an uncouth tongue that added to her power over her colleagues without any empathy.
Being colleagues at HRM Shaurya, Gaily & Saras had professional interactions daily. As time passed, these interactions gradually blossomed into a relationship for life happily ever after.
Though, Saras didn’t confide about this even to his closest friends. However, after meeting Gaily with Saras a few times, it was quite clear to everyone that the twosome was having a steamy, torrid, and audibly rocking affair.
But, her reality was unknown to lustful Saras who was enamoured by his infatuation for her. He had conveniently overlooked the fact that she was a petty thief and very unfaithful to him.
This eventually dawned on him after several months that he spent with her had passed.
While dating Saras, Gaily was also involved with another man who was not a part of the Shaurya ecosystem. This man or Gaily’s paramour was Qarag whose connivance was instrumental in her thieving exploits.
At the same time, being a control freak Saras was also looking for someone who he could command.
Qarag lovingly & dutifully used to pick her up from home and drop her at the hotel every day. This was his life’s routine that he was doing for a life happily ever after.
But his use to Gaily was much more than just being a rider escort. He also used to dispose of her wares stolen from the office through his network. She had a novel process of making money like this and had no guilt at all about it.
Her being responsible for requisitioning office stationery and consumables for the entire department & colleagues used to make this into a very convenient enterprise for her.
She used to indent the needed supplies in excess, for the sub-departments in the office and passed them on to Qarag upon receiving them on a selective basis so that a shortfall was never detected or even suspected.
Qarag used to take them to the reseller in his theft disposal network and sell them. The proceeds from this antic were handed over to Gaily.
Saras was in love & didn’t know or want to understand that he was often being used as a clandestine conduit to smoothen theft of these illicitly obtained wares.
While this was brewing, I used to hang out at Saras’ place quite much since I was unoccupied at that time.
At the same time to economise on house rent, Saras used to share his apartment with Ghekhar who used to work at the famous Panderabad House. Three of us were batch mates from college and closer than what friends usually are.
Gaily after her work, used to get Qarag to drop her at Saras’ accommodation in Poti Garden as well to have a rollicking time with Saras. This good time used to be an explicit and explosive bout of fairly rough-sounding coitus in the house.
I could never understand how could she exploit Qarag so blatantly, however, since I didn’t ask this question, I never got an answer.
Ghekhar and I usually used to go out to fetch or eat our dinner at that time giving the noisy lovebirds their privacy. Gaily’s arrival at home was a kind of reminder doorbell for us to exit from the apartment.
Albeit much later, Saras somehow figured out what Gaily was up to and promptly dumped her after smashing her black and blue one night. Ghekhar and I were there when this started to happen. We broke down the door when the eruptions happened,
But there was no stopping Saras when he was in the process despite us trying sympathetically.
When I saw her later, her face was stark black and broken after the beating. She was indeed hammered very badly with injuries to her stomach and spine. This was the first instance of her Karma coming full circle in my presence.
I don’t know about the previous ones.
However, as the history went on and what she confided in me trustfully, Gaily started experimenting with alcohol and marijuana and became sexually active when she was 14 years of age.
During the ages 15 -20, Gaily remained difficult and unstable but was able to complete high school which was a high point. She further abandoned the possibility of going to the university and started applying for jobs.
This she managed to do since she obtained a diploma in assistantship from YGAA after school.
She was medically labelled as a bipolar, schizophrenic, suffering schizoaffective disorder and drug addict. Her family has given up on her and showered their attention on her elder and younger siblings after the doctor pronounced her issues.
She was warned that she had become delusional, paranoid, depressed, worthless, unmotivated and lazy and that it would worsen if she didn’t straighten out. But all this didn’t matter to her and the life she was living and enjoying.
However, after the bludgeoning incident by Saras, a few days later, she surfaced, totally damaged and distraught, at my scene.
Witnessing the incident, I did have empathy for her and hence cared for her as well. And, I wrongly knew and believed that it was just Saras who had caused her misery.
I was wrong that I soon realised not being aware of her medical conditions.
Being a middle child of three sisters, she had become a very aggressive and frustrated woman who believed all she had got was a raw deal all through, without much love.
As a consequence, she made herself available to every man who’d cross her paths for her ulterior benefits, the least of these were drinks and dinner.
I succumbed to her charms in 1994 when I was employed with The Tuber Hotel. That’s when a new chapter started unfolding with her surfacing in my life space.
After that, I joined and was growing with ITV. This change of job scene changed my travel stars as well. I began travelling to Malaysia frequently and later on to Europe.
And, then isolated Gaily used to go out with other men, wanting to do her own thing which included self-abuse using alcohol, narcotics etc. She did not want to be a woman who anyone could stop from doing what she wanted to do.
She was able to do what she wanted to do and that too by not loosening the strings of her purse even a little.
During my business travel days, she used to actively & directly scout out newer men for her cons. Women may do actively & indirectly on digital dating apps in today’s world. Back then, The world was more direct.
She even accosted a brother of my colleague at the Tuber Hotel. Then, she would connect with me and declare her accomplishments without any remorse whenever I’d call her from wherever I was.
It was just for fun or a cheap thrill probably with no ill intentions, I never found out.
Since we were in a relationship, she was treated as a family at my end. She used to participate in my family functions just as a close member would. My parents were quite sure we would get married & readily made a family space for her.
But, her antics got very apparent and they distanced me from her slowly and gradually. I was unable to stop from continuously looking over my shoulder.
I tried to pull away. And, then came the last straw that broke my back. At my cousin’s wedding, she went off drinking with other men when she got to know that there was no alcohol being served at the event and never came back.
This left me disturbed & in total despair. The trust started diminishing.
She would be very loving normally despite all these acts. She knew I forgave her easily irrespective of whatever she had done. But then the memory doesn’t ignore the red areas easily.
She insisted on staying with me in the relationship and expressed the desire for us to get into matrimony. Upon being asked for this, I agreed and even met her father who summoned me for this engagement conversation.
This was in the year of 1995 and then the story turned dramatically like the Indian K soaps.
Around this time Gaily started to date, actually two times, with both Sajnish and me on the scene. As the story goes, Sajnish was a person who her eldest sister introduced to her perhaps after sleeping with him.
At least this is what Gaily told me.
Sajnish used to be full of money and supposedly also madly in love with her after her sister used and then rejected him. Gaily was a beautiful girl and could entice a loaded & depressed guy quite easily.
Soon enough, they got married and in due course of time, she gave birth to a cute little daughter. However, becoming a mother also didn’t change Gaily. She remained focused on her exploits and enjoyment as she called them.
She remained what she was and continued her abuse of life with smoking, excessive drinking, and other exploitation of available contrabands, with multiple men again.
As a result, Sajnish divorced her and didn’t allow her any custody or visitation rights to the newborn girl child.
However, Gaily continued her antics picking up men at random and using them to suit her convenience.
I met her a few years back and she was living alone close to my house. She was still as beautiful but depressed which she tried to hide with no success. She even wanted to come back to me and so she proposed. This conversation of ours never found a decision.
She wanted her old life in a better format but it was too late. No one wanted her. A lot of people, including her family, hated her. Her daughter didn’t even know that she existed, Sajnish ensured that.
She passed away one night, suffering, regretting and isolated – out of depression and because of a cerebral haemorrhage. Left alone without any family or anyone who loved her, or who may have wanted to be with her.
Unfortunately, it was too late to realise how devastating her descent into drug addiction can be.
It was just like an ocean with depth unfathomable and her singing “Ocean deep, I can wait forever, you’re the inspiration”.
On the other hand, Saras’ karma goes on, he just can’t hear well now.