Free Karna's Wife by Kavita Kane Page B

other softly one afternoon. He was the person she loved most wildly in the world, yet she hated him now as he listened to what his older wife had to say. As if sensing her eyes on them, they turned to look at her.
    Abashed, she stepped out of the room, ashamed of her own angry feelings. Anger was not a novel experience for her, but this flaming, searing jealousy was. She painfully reminded herself she was the interloper, not Vrushali. To her jealous eyes, they seemed much too comfortable with each other. Ururvi had not known a more devoted couple, but she could see that they had no dreams, no goal-driven desires. They were happy with each other, with their sons and the family and did not crave for the wealth and status they did not have. But with her, the equation took a turbulent swing because Karna never let her forget that she was a kshatriya princess, part of the elite.
    Off and on, Karna’s moods swung between being volatile or merely dutiful, but nothing he did ever upset Vrushali’s amazing placidity. Vrushali could calm him with just a look or a word. They never disagreed, which seemed to be in keeping with an unspoken pact. Once Uruvi had asked her husband if he ever quarrelled with Vrushali. ‘No,’ he shrugged. ‘We do not seem to have anything to squabble about. Vrushali has the temper of an angel.’
    ‘Possibly,’ Uruvi retorted, bristling a little. ‘But you don’t. You are at times arrogant, aggressive and moody.’
    ‘Am I? You are the first person to say so. If I am all that and worse, it means that she suffers me…as you do.’
    ‘I had quite made up my mind never to fall in love with an insensitive boor,’ she dimpled.
    ‘Are you sorry you did?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling.
    ‘I was a perfect fool that I did. That bit of luck, or chance or fate or whatever poked in and took the matter out of my hands!’ she frowned at him. Her dark eyes had that look again, somewhat teasing, sometimes tender, that made his heart lurch. Her lips were slightly parted in a sigh.
    ‘You are irresistible!’ he breathed softly, and kissed her parted lips.

     
    It was with his sons—Vrasasena, Shatrunjaya, Dvipata, Sushena, Satyasena, Chitrasena and Susharma—that Karna shrugged off his armour of polite reserve. Uruvi often watched them scrambling down the steep path in front of the palace in the mornings, racing their way to the grove of trees on the banks of the stream flowing by. As they splashed in the warm, shallow water, Karna was in his most elated spirits. She observed them with a small smile, the girl in her surfacing momentarily, longing to jump in and join them as well. She saw Karna laughing, shouting and singing boisterously. He might have been thirteen—as old as Susharma—and at no other time had Uruvi seen him so happy and vulnerable. There was such an appealing breeziness in him that Uruvi was amazed. These were such beautiful moments that it was like experiencing heaven.
    ‘You seem to have enjoyed yourself enormously,’ she said one morning when he returned to the room.
    ‘I always do. They are my best moments,’ he smiled, and Uruvi felt he had allowed her to enter his secret space. She smiled back at him, her eyes shining.
    When she was alone, Uruvi longed to express her wonder about her new relationship with her husband, to pour out her restlessness, but there was no one to confide in. She was surprised to find herself missing her mother acutely. She had always assumed she would miss her father intolerably but, instead, she found herself wishing that she could rush to her mother and vent her emotion of the moment, whether it was anger, frustration or happiness, or just engage in idle talk.
    Though she longed for her parents and her opulent palace at Pukeya, Uruvi found herself fascinated and considerably charmed by her husband’s loving family and the frugality that was practised in the household. She took some time getting accustomed to both. Uruvi toned down her lavish ways,