Don’t judge a book by its cover. That is the first thing that comes to mind, after you’ve put the book down. You may lick your lips as you succumb to the passionate display of wild sensual experience on the cover, inside is a story of a concoction of scarlet passion left behind, in all the characters of the book, to fit into marriages which might be only called love less. Yet, not quite, as will be revealed over the two hundred eighty eight pages with readable large typeset, that go easy on the eyes.

Rizwan Narayan Murthy, the central male protagonist is the only child of Lata and Narayan Murthy. He is an Engineer and Consultant in Petrochemicals. His wife, Rudaya, better known as Daya, is that quiet docile woman, who has been forced and hoodwinked into marrying Rizwan, as planned by both parents on either side to avoid a catastrophe. Both were in love with men/women belonging to other castes which neither of the parents would have. Thus, in an act of extreme cunning, the two protagonists have been cast together, that too, while Rizwan is in bed recoving from the second failed attempt to end his own life.

Rizwan is a naturally angry man with a foul mouth and a loud voice. The couple is engaged in constant loud fighting, which have a disastrous affect on their child Siddharth. Rizwan blames, shames, ridicules and reproaches Daya constantly while she uses her single weapon against him – the power his mother has over him and how she has been the main culprit of their so called marriage together. Naturally, Siddharth, is an attention grabber and gets into pranks that often require their Malaysian neighbour, Roslan to come to his rescue. In Roslan, Daya finds a friend and one fine day, when the skies thundered, “….It was someone who floated into the tranquil surroundings of her life with the breeze of the wind. It was someone who glided through the door to the inside of their household, bringing along with him all the fury of the outside world – the demented passion of the thunder, the crazed fire of the lightening, and the wild ecstasy of the rain. And the deadly combination of all its earthy sensuality!”

But this might have been a one off, but it was not. Three months later, she finds herself pregnant with her second son, Gautam. Although to shrink from the feeling of guilt, both Roslan and Daya, had hidden this act of passion, nature would not have it so. And just as luck would have it, Rizwan had tried to put the past away and so had Daya, gone on a second honeymoon to bring the romance into their marriage, and were partly successful, this news break from Daya, shattered the last hope to salvage this marriage.

However, Rizwan was magnanimous, in fact, to the point of the reader’s annoyance, to see a self sacrificing man, quite unreal as it were in real life. Rizwan has accepted his lot albeit with a bitterness and loss of faith and trust in his wife.

But only till they are back in India. In Hyderabad, again, Daya is visited by her past. The young Sardar, Deep Inder Singh Chawla, DISC for short, she so loved, and from whom her father snatched her away to marry her off to Rizwan. They meet a couple of times and she allows DISC to visit her home and meet the kids. And of course, Rizwan comes to know about this as well and his bitterness towards his wife grows further. Until he does what most humans will do – he goes ahead and has an affair with his Stenographer in the office, Lily, much to his wife’s dislike.

And in the background of this mishmash of emotions, Daya for the first time gets close to her mother-in-law who discloses her own foibles in her youth and how, Rizwan is not after all, her husband, Narayan Moorthy’s son, but the son of her ex-lover, Dr Rizwan Zakaria.

But, life is not going to be all smooth, as each has made friends with the past, by opening up the truth. At long last the marriage comes to an end but fate is evil and Daya must go through the fire of anguish and pain, as if to pay for her evil acts of the past. Her first son, on whom she dotes, goes out swimming and is caught in the current which takes his life away. It is a cruel blow, as Daya, unable to bear the shock slips into oblivion mentally, living in a world of make belief that her son is not dead. But only wet from the waters in the sea.

Rizwan has left for the US after this and returns after two years, and enters by chance into a conversation with DISC, who visits Daya quite often, and comes to know that Daya is partially lost her mind with the grief of her dead son. But what is the turning point of the story is he learns that Daya and DISC, as Rizwas suspected, had never got physical with each other after her marriage to Rizwan. She was a devoted wife and even that which happened in Malaysia, on that stormy night, was not acts performed by Roslan but someone else. In that she was not to be blamed for the act.

Set in Hyderabad and Malaysia, the book gives the readers a generous dose of the picturesque country and its customs and culture which are so like India. It also brings up a number of issues around marriage, arranged or love.

Apart from the several twists and turns in the book, what comes to light are a few things I would like to highlight.

One, the present can never be lived fully and wholly, until the past is done away with. The frequent reoccurrence of the past in their lives either mentally, or in real life, constantly interferes with the present or never allows it to blossom. This is a fact that the author has brought out very well, over and over again. And this forms the crux of the Virgin adulterers who are locked in the institution of marriage, and are constantly elsewhere.

Violence, in words, actions, deeds, has their own dangerous consequences in a marriage. Anger, which is what fuels the marriage between, Rizwan and Daya, or Rizwan’s parents erodes into the minds of the people and kills it from ever finding love. Anger blocks out love in every which way. In the words of the author herself, I have read somewhere that she always wanted to know what happens to couples and their families when there is constant fights in the house.

It has a damaging role to play in the lives and growth of children in an environment where angry outbursts are frequently.

But what has really interested me in the book, is why, Daya, is unable to give up her past? Why does it keep coming up, again and again? And why, does she give in to it every time? Why also, must Rizwan constantly repose in the love that is lost, in fact, his Hina, is dead, and yet, he is constantly with her in his mind. Is this not adultery too? And must only acts of love, which have found their shore in the arms and the depth of the body of the lovers, be considered to be adultery? This brings forth all these questions aptly, although, it ends on a ray of hope as Rizwan and Gautam, their second son, born out of the acts of passion in Malaysia, are walking Daya out of her room of darkness. Slowly, Rizwan and she will walk again in the light of love albeit after a long struggle with destiny.

And you too, dear reader can put your kerchief away, after having wiped the torrential rain of tears that will flow as you read the last few pages of the book and you too can say again, behind every cloud there is a silver lining or in the words of the author herself – “Tough times never last. But tough people do.” 

Name: The Virgin Adulteress
Author: Nargis Natrajan
Publisher: Depot Self Publishing

Pantaloon Retail India Ltd

Knowledge House, Shyam Nagar

Josheshwari-Andheri Link Road

Jogeshwari(East)

Mumbai 400 060

Tel 022-66442200 Fax 022- 66442201
Price: INR 345

I am grateful to maddss123  for sending me the book and allowing me to keep it. The book is autographed by the author herself! Thus, proving dane dane pe likha hai, khanewale 
ka naam, lah



To read interview with Nargis Natarajan: 
Nargis Natarajan's The Virgin Adultress...