My Chakkar* With SC Ch. 01

Author's Notes:

*"Chakkar" is a multipurpose colloquial Hindi word, in the present context meaning "affair".

My chakkar with SC started almost 25 years ago. While the intensity of our passions has long since abated, the affair has not ended. Some of the memorable times we spent together are recorded here in a roughly chronological order.

I counsel patience to readers who are keen to quickly get to the juicy, "action packed" parts of my story. While I will eventually get there, my main purpose is to tell what I hope is an interesting story.

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I was a dashing young executive in my early thirties, rising rapidly in the company. I had been married for about 4 years. My wife was bright, beautiful and sexy, and we had two gorgeous little kids. I was totally immersed in my career and my family. Dalliance with another female was the last thing on my mind.

SC had just joined as an office assistant along with a few other girls. She had recently arrived in Mumbai, soon after marriage. Her husband worked in a large factory. She had grown up in a small town in a remote district of the southern state of Karnataka. She had done some training in typing & stenography before marriage (there were no personal computers in existence those days) responded to a job ad for a lark and was surprised when she got a job in our prestigious company.

She was of medium height, healthily plump and had a well-scrubbed, glowing, unblemished deep brown complexion. She had regular features, a nice nose and deep dimples when she smiled. She was always conservatively dressed (long hair oiled, braided and worn in a tight bun, saris with large, bright floral prints, conservatively cut three quarter sleeved blouses with sari pallu neatly pinned at the shoulder). She wore big glasses that made her look older than her age. She wore hardly any makeup other than a bindi on her forehead. She liked to wear ornaments (mangalsutra**, lots of glass bangles interspersed with a few gold kangans on her forearms, big earrings and a nose stud). In other words, she dressed like a typical, conservative middle-class Kannadiga lady.

Her command of the English language was just so-so when she joined. However, she was quick to learn and soon became passably fluent. In the cosmopolitan ambience of our office, she also acquired a becoming polish and poise. However, her manner and accent continued to testify to her mofussil upbringing and vernacular education. Somewhat surprisingly for a person of her background, she was very self-assured and knew her mind. She was a dignified person, rather formal and occasionally brusque in her interactions with male colleagues, modestly averting her gaze while talking to them. Soon, she acquired a perhaps well-deserved reputation for being a bit snooty and standoffish.

Those days, SC's attitude to her work was typical of a junior office worker basking in the protection of a powerful Union. She was rather casual and laid back, doing just enough work so as to avoid drawing unfavorable attention to herself, while devoting a good amount of her time to socialize and gossip. While she was by no means a shirker, she was in no danger of dying of overwork either. The colloquial Hindi word bindaas exactly summed up her attitude. Her job clearly came way down in her list of priorities. It was only much later that the career bug bit her, but then I am getting a bit ahead of my story.

I did not really notice her for many months after she joined. After all, ours was a large office, and I was a busy executive. In any case she was not an obviously attractive woman, just nice looking in a plain, sisterly way. We were on polite, formal good terms, nodding and smiling whenever we happened to pass by each other.

One day, my boss gave me an important assignment – I had to prepare a presentation about our department that our boss had to make to the company's board of directors. SC was assigned to work with me, to provide secretarial support. I spared no efforts to do a really good job of the assignment.

As I worked my way through the special assignment there were several occasions when I found grammatical and spelling errors in SC's English and a less than acceptable level of neatness and presentability in her typing. Those were the pre-PC days and use of masking fluid for correction of mistakes was not an option, since the report was to be presented to the directors. So, very often there was no other way but to carefully retype entire pages on account of a few careless mistakes. This naturally led to delays and frazzled nerves.

Finally, one day I decided to take the bull by the horns. I called SC to my cabin and ticked her off, politely and without raising my voice. I concluded my pep talk by appealing to her pride, pointing out how awful it would be if I were to ask the boss for another person in her place and expressing my confidence that she had it in her to do the job if she really put her heart into it.

After trying to argue a bit, she lapsed into silence, listening to me impassively, her eyes downcast. There was a long silence after I finished. Then she took a deep breath, looked up and whispered that she would not give me any cause for complaint from then on. Was it a flash of anger, a glint of determination or a hint of tears that I saw in her eyes? Anyway, after that there was a dramatic improvement in her attitude as well as the quality of her work. Soon, the tension between us evaporated and the assignment was back on track.

I often worked late on that assignment, after attending to my normal work. Sometimes, although I did not want to inconvenience her, I had no option but to ask SC to stay late too. Like other junior employees, she was normally reluctant to stay late. However, after my recent run-in with her, she had become respectful towards me. Moreover, she had also come to realize the importance of the assignment. So, she would agree to stay back without cribbing whenever I asked. To save her some time and hassles, I would drop her off close to her residence in my car whenever we worked late, since I anyway drove past it on my way home.

As we worked together, we became friendly and started to share tidbits about our families, hometowns, college days etc. Over the course of the next few weeks, almost imperceptibly, I became aware that she was taking a bit more than casual interest in me. I would some times look up from my work and catch her staring intently at me and she would quickly look away when she was caught out.

I also became aware that her eyes were rather extraordinary. There was a deep, sensual, smoldering look in her eyes that hinted at hot fires burning inside her. Even her glasses could not hide those fires. Those hot, mesmerizing eyes sent out quite a tantalizing signal, in complete contrast to the rest of her demeanor. It was as if her entire wardrobe, ornaments, glasses & so on were specifically intended to disguise her inner fires.

All of a sudden it struck me that under all the careful camouflage she was in fact one hell of a sexy woman. I would sometimes casually wonder what it would be like to have a fling with her… how her breasts would feel in my hands... I of course did not actually do anything, being too shy and in any case not wanting to take 'advantage' of a junior colleague. After all I was an executive and she was an office assistant!

I succeeded in finishing the assignment in time and my boss was very pleased since the presentation to the board of directors went off very well. The assignment finished, SC and I went back to our normal work and our interactions in the office once again were reduced to nods and smiles as we occasionally passed each other.

However, every once in a while, she would ask me to give her a lift in my car in the evening, continuing the practice we had started when we were working on the special assignment. Since it was no additional trouble for me, I would agree. But since I was sometimes held back because of a last minute errand or an important phone call, she would have to wait for a while till I was through with my work. She didn't seem to mind waiting and would casually flip through some gossip magazines to kill time until I was ready to leave.

In the car, she would chatter about herself, her hubby, kid (she had a small child at that time), her hobbies, movies & so on. She took a lot of interest in my family & me, digging information out of me in spite of my taciturn nature. She did it so deftly and in such a good spirit that I did not mind. In due course, it became a regular habit for me to give her a lift in the evenings – at least 3 or 4 times a week. She started to really look forward to the time she was able to spend in my company in the car on our way home. It was a pleasant diversion for me too, something to lighten the burden of driving through the evening traffic jams.

Then, one day I got my big break. It was announced that I had been transferred to a city in northern India on a promotion. I had to leave in a few weeks. I was happy and excited. My wife was very happy too – she was the first person to get the good news from me. She was also pleased that we would be moving closer to our hometown.

I was in my cabin late in the evening, fielding congratulatory phone calls. I had completely forgotten that I had promised to give SC a lift that day. There was a hesitant knock and she walked into my cabin. She looked nervous. I apologized for making her wait and asked her to sit down. She however gave me a strained smile and extended her hand. I stood up and shook her hand as she congratulated me.

She clutched my hand tightly with both of hers and continued to babble congratulatory inanities for a while until she suddenly burst into tears! I was completely taken aback. Fortunately, there was no one else in the office to observe her emotional outburst. I made her sit down and offered her a glass of water, which she refused. I waited till her sobs subsided and she dried her tears & composed herself.

"What's the matter, SC?" I asked her. "Is there anything wrong?"

She fidgeted for a while, staring at her hands resting in her lap. She seemed to be struggling with herself. She then appeared to make up her mind. Looking up straight at me she whispered,

"I'm going to miss you… I have become so used to working with you... I have learnt so many things from you… I so much enjoy your company when I am with you in the car… And now you will soon be gone!" She said, suppressing another sob.

Although she never put it in words, it was obvious that she was infatuated with me. I was floored! While I had noticed her interest in me earlier, I did not think her emotions for me ran so deep. In any case I never expected her to have enough courage to come right out and express her feelings so openly. I didn't quite know how to handle the situation.

"Well, I'm sure all of you will get used to working without me. After all, nobody is indispensable." I told her rather unconvincingly, deliberately ignoring her expression of emotions, as I drove her home. She was silent except for monosyllabic responses to my attempts to lighten up the atmosphere. Just as she was about to get off, she begged me,

"Will you please try to give me as much time as possible in the next few weeks before you leave? It will really help me a lot to get adjusted to your absence."

"Well, let's see." I responded noncommittally as she got off.

Throughout that evening and night, I was preoccupied with what had passed between SC and me. While I did not think that making time for her was a good idea, I found myself getting a bit turned on at the thought of her infatuation with me. In fact I woke up with a massive hard-on early in the morning – I had dreamt of having sex with SC! The dream was interrupted and I woke up just as I was about to penetrate her. I saw my wife sleeping peacefully by my side. Unlike on other such occasions, I did not wake her & make love to her.

I mulled over the matter while I was driving to office, and finally decided to tell SC that what she expected was not possible. Since this was hardly something that could be discussed in the office or while driving her home, I thought of breaking it to her over a cup of coffee after office hours. So I called her over the intercom and asked her to meet me at the coffee shop of a large hotel at 7 PM. I explained that I would be coming there directly after a meeting in a customer's office and hence she would have to come there by herself. I had become suddenly conscious of how it might appear to other colleagues if SC & I were to drive to a hotel together.

She had already been waiting at the coffee shop for some time when I reached there. After ordering coffee and some snacks, I came straight to the point. I explained frankly that I felt attracted to her. Considering that both of us were already married, I did not see a future for our relationship. Hence it would be best for her as well as for me for us not to meet anymore. I chose my words carefully and took my time to get my message across. Her deep, hot, mesmerizing eyes kept gazing at me intently while I talked. She fidgeted with the cutlery on the table. Her breathing was shallow and fast. Every once in a while, her tongue darted out and ran over her lips. Her face was flushed. In other words, she showed every sign of being sexually aroused. I started getting a hard-on even as I spoke.

When she started to speak, her voice was husky with emotion. But the words that came out completely contradicted the message sent out by her body language. She denied any romantic angle to her feelings towards me, stressing that she merely looked at me as a senior colleague whom she looked up to and respected.

"You are almost like my elder brother." She said, unintentionally stressing on "almost". She declared how happy she felt, sitting there with me and again begged me to spare some time for her every once in a while, "Just like today, please?" so that she could get used to life without me. I did not have the heart to refuse. Besides, I was now getting strongly aroused by her. I made up my mind to try to seduce her and give her what she was begging for.

So started a long series of meetings ("dates" as she called them) in restaurants and coffee shops after office hours in the weeks before my departure to my new posting in another city and also months thereafter, whenever I visited the company headquarters in Mumbai every fortnight or so. In fact the meetings became more regular after my transfer, since I stayed at the company guesthouse on my visits to Mumbai and hence did not have to give explanations to my wife for coming home late. We of course took great care not to arrive or leave together so as not to arouse any suspicions (although nothing suspicious actually happened in those meetings).

The general pattern of the meetings was always the same – she would be very happy, animated, playful, chattering away like a teenager. She would share office gossip, tidbits about her family & kids and so on. She would flirt outrageously and soon start displaying all signs of being sexually aroused, giving me come-hither looks while continuing to restate her protestations that her interest in me was purely Platonic. This naturally left me totally confused and frustrated.

For example, once she told me that her father had died when she was very small and her eldest brother had raised her. She was spoilt and pampered (her own words), being the youngest and the only girl in a family of boys. She then told me how she looked up to me as she would to her elder brother.

"In fact, I once decided to tie a Rakhi*** on your wrist on Raksha Bandhan day, but then decided not to do it." She said, looking at me through her eyelashes.

"Why didn't you do it then?" I asked.

"Well, I only said you are like my brother, but you are not actually my brother. I don't want you to be my brother!" She responded.

"What do you want me to be then?" I asked, feeling far from brotherly.

"Ohh… Just a friend." She said coquettishly.

"Is that all?" I asked.

"Well… a very, verry goood friend…" She answered, blushing.

"Don't you know very well I don't look upon you as my sister? Maybe you can be my girlfriend and maybe something more." I told her. She blushed again and didn't reply.

And so it would go on. She would continue to pretend that she wanted us to be "just good friends" while her body language clearly showed that she was sexually aroused in my company. I would tell her in a roundabout way that I wanted us to be more than a mere "friends" but she would pretend not to understand.

I was getting more and more frustrated since this relationship was not going anywhere from my point of view. She was a complete enigma. Either she was a cock tease who got a kick out of stringing me along or she was completely confused about her real feelings for me. The seduction I hoped for never seemed to materialize. The tension continued to heighten with every meeting, until one day something snapped in me.

Author's Notes:

**"Mangalsutra" is a necklace made of small black glass beads interspersed with gold beads, threaded on to a gold chain. It is generally worn by married women in southern and western India as a visible symbol of their married status, rather like the wedding band worn on the ring finger in the West.

***"Rakhi" is a silken thread tied by sisters on the wrists of their brothers on Raksha Bandhan day once a year, as a symbolic reaffirmation of their sisterly love. By accepting the Rakhi, brothers reaffirm their commitment to protect their sisters' honor. It is not unusual for women to tie Rakhis on the wrists of unrelated male friends / acquaintances, establishing an adoptive sister / brother relationship with them. Occasionally, a girl might offer a Rakhi to an unwelcome suitor to discourage his amorous advances.