Translated fiction: Why does Ranjan look on uncomplainingly as his lover goes out with a colleague?

The first day she couldn’t meet me on account of Ranjan, she had apologised profusely. “Not like I had a great time with Ranjan,” she had said. “I kept thinking you were sitting at this corner table, looking up every time the restaurant door opened.”

“Not to worry, it was obvious why you couldn’t make it,” I said. “It’s never a problem when things are obvious, trouble crops up when they aren’t obvious.”

Shelly has begun spending time with Ranjan, the young engineer from her office. It has been only six months or so. But things have already got to a point where any day now she will tell me, “Ranjan and I are getting married” – and I will have to accept this at once with a “fantastic, what could be better”. She may not even tell me face to face, she may well hold out a white envelope, largish. Turn it over, and there it will be – om prajapataye namah – the giveaway Sanskrit phrase signalling a wedding. That’s the deal between us.

The first day she couldn’t make it, though, it was for a different reason. I waited an hour or so before I could be sure she wouldn’t turn up, although Shelly had...

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