“One cuppa coffee, white,” she said. He stared blankly at her and so did I. “With milk,” she rephrased.

“That’s recondite, just like you,” I remarked. She just smiled and turned away. It’s her smile that probably had me hooked to her. We’ve been happily married for two years. She worked as a project lead at a software firm while I worked at an automobile company.

“Black coffee for you?” she looked at me. “Why do you even ask? Don’t you know” I replied promptly. I’ve hated black coffee throughout my life.

“So how’s your darling, Steyn?” I winked at her. The very name of Steyn turned her red with anger. She banged the table with her palm, expressing extreme dissent.

“Do you need to show such vehemence when I talk about Steyn?”

“Cos you would never understand. Cos you think I am cheating on you.”

There was a lot of hustle-bustle at all the tables. I could hear an indistinct chattering at a nearby table, a bevy of ladies have just walked in, a guy teasing a girl at another. Everything’s pretty normal, sans ours.

This isn’t the first time we’ve been quarrelling over Steyn. He was her project coordinator, many years older than her though. I never suspected her of infidelity like what she’d always thought.

Nisha’s just not my wife. She’s my best friend. I never hid anything from her. When it comes to the crunch, I always bank on her. I was never so intimate with any other girl in my life. But what she was, at the start of our married life is totally different from what she’s now.

Humans are an emotionally challenged race. There has to be vent to dissipate those piled up emotions. And hence we show our emotions. If there is no purge of anger, jealousy or hatred, it would accumulate and finally erupt into a volcano, turning lives topsy-turvy.

I hated her silence. I knew that if I hid my jealousy, it would erupt into something unprecedented. I always tried to douse the latent fire by being more affectionate. Though my heart favoured the same, my mind wouldn’t allow me to. I’d to add in that flavour of jealousy every time I spoke to her.

“Don’t you love me as much as I do?” I broke the silence. She nodded still sipping her coffee. “I am trying to save our marriage. I may not be wrong in my eyes, but if something were to tear our lives apart, I would do anything to prevent that. Cos, you are important to me,” I clasped her hand.

“Are you doing me some favour? Or does it have anything to do with Steyn again?” she retorted.

Why did she frame a wrong picture of me in her mind? Why does she think that I always suspect her? Haven’t I given her all the space she wanted? The only problem I ever had, ‘when she could treat some other person as her best friend, why not me?’

“That’s the constraint. I can’t treat you as my best friend. I love you. Isn’t that sufficient?” she added.

“But you weren’t like this before Steyn…”

“Just go bury your jealousy, Sanjeev. And then we’ll talk,” she never allowed me to complete my sentence.

“And just because you do it, I don’t have to do it in a similar manner.”

Joseph Addison once said, ‘Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.’

I couldn’t see where I’d gone wrong that she drew herself close to another man. That feeling burnt me down from inside. I’ve stopped talking to her, at a party I moved unassumingly close with her friends; I wanted her to feel the same pain. But the aftermaths were unexpected.

A month later, she initiated a decree nisi. She left a gaping void and a shattered me. I never knew if it was my mistake or hers. All I knew was that either of us never understood each other properly. I only wished she knew how much I loved her and she too reciprocated equally well.

Oh well, c'est la vie.

“How are the proceedings going?” Anahita, a colleague of mine asked as we walked to the coffee shop. She’d just returned after her six month long sabbatical. “The court will pass the decree absolute in a week or two,” I replied.

“Love and jealousy are two inseparable things, like coffee and milk. Some proportions make it taste real good,” she said. “Let us assume that your wife is incapable of reading your emotions and so she doesn’t change herself. Have you tried to? Has there been a day when you spoke about everything but Steyn?”

“Think about it from her point of view, how she would’ve swung between justification and self-blame cos of your accusations. Above all, you turned to me for advice, not your wife. There are certain things which are out of purview of any relationship. We’ve to depend on others.”

“Probably, your jealousy was the trigger that drew her close to Steyn, or even more probable that she developed an aversive emotion.”

Her words seemed to have made a clear impact on my mind. I may not be in full compliance with what she said but in a broader perspective, yes.

Months later, we, I and Nisha were at the same coffee shop. I held her hand with ‘I am sorry for all this’ look in my eyes. She reciprocated with that beautiful smile of hers.

“One cuppa coffee, white,” she said, “make it two,” immediately correcting herself.

“Without milk please,” I added.

“But you’ve never liked black coffee,” she looked surprised.

I’ve learnt to, I smiled back at her.