For some reason you believe that adultery happens to others amidst clinking crystal and behind crinkling chintzes. A cover-up for the sin it is considered to be. The most you are willing to accept any part of the deal is as victim; the aggrieved spouse is sanctified by loud, choking sobs all because of that tart/cad round the corner.

The Other Woman is a floozy. The Other Man is a slimeball.

No. In fact, it could be you.

Adultery is conducted in a polished boudoir manner, with gift-wrapped solitaires and expensive cruises.

No, it is not. Very likely that an adulterous couple has to walk miles to share moments, and draw the dark curtains and lie on dirty sheets. After the clock has struck the designated time, they have to say a goodbye filled with guilt. Followed by lies. By snatched conversations feeling like a thief. By being faced with emptiness. By phone calls made on the sly, a whisper that is less endearing and more a cry. By knowing that life there is ‘normal’ – kitchen smells, TV sounds, and a king-size bed that is legitimate. Besides a few offbeat films, no one tells you about this. It is not a pretty picture.

It is not even vicariously ugly. It is not the crow pecking at your window pane that you can shoo away and forget about.

I am not taking up a brief for them, but let me tell you that not every Other Wo/Man has designed to be where they are. They haven’t spent hours plotting on how to get your spouse. It is assumed that every adulterous relationship is a fling and hardly something to shake the sturdy marriage.

Is it all about a temporary deception, then? Most people use the morality bait. There are more moral arguments against adultery than practical ones. Many marital relationships drift apart; they lose their very purpose of togetherness. Marriage in most societies is not what people do but what happens to them. When a third person enters the picture, all hell breaks loose. Even those who take the fashionable position of announcing, “There was nothing left of the marriage, anyway”, do not fail to refer to the second relationship as an adulterous one with all its negative connotations.

And the worst thing is that many people do use an outside relationship only to add sparkle to their own limp egos and stagnant lives. And when they return home recharged with new vigour, the spouse believes s/he is victorious. Living off another’s fantasies is not victory; it is merely about beggars not being choosers.

And the man is always ready with his ‘eik hi bhool’ excuse, of how he slipped on the soap suds and the wily wench went for him. What I do not understand is why no wife asks how the wily wench ended up near his soap suds in the first place.

Where the woman is concerned, things can get more complex.

It was a letter that simply spoke of love. On a ruled page of a notebook, no flourishes of language, just an admission: “Why must one always confess to love as though it were a crime?” he asked, exasperated.

“The most wonderful girl in the world” was a married woman. He was so buoyed up with his dream that this fact did not bring him down to earth. Besides, how could he stop loving her only for this reason when he had loved her for others?

His life and feelings were uncomplicated. But she became all but obsessed with the idea of making him fall out of love with her. It was like a schoolgirl trying to erase a red mark from her report card. Perhaps she felt the very attempt at trying to put off someone would imbue her with some nobility – she was saving him. And herself.

Somewhere along there may have been guilt that she had left herself open to such attention – why did she not wear a placard saying, “I am married?” Why was she so concealed that even her wounds did not bleed? Did she have special skills that with just a twitch of her mouth, a quiver in the voice, she made herself vulnerable? Why did she feel persecuted only because someone found her worthy of his attention?

What had happened to all the independence that even the assurance of her merits made her quake with fright? As a career woman committed to her particular field, would she have been similarly shocked had there been appreciation for her work and even feelers from rival quarters? No. She would have been flattered.

What was so sacrosanct about marriage that made her ultimately buckle under the sense of belonging? Or was she afraid of the patented possession anyway that she thought by exposing her fear of the dark she might see the light and get blinded by it?

Did she not feel honoured that instead of a cheap pass there was someone who wanted to make her life “happier” (“and it does not mean you are unhappy”)? Why did she not allow herself the luxury of believing that she deserved the extras, whether or not she took them?

Was marriage such a watertight compartment that even Nature’s bestowed rain showers and dewdrops were a travesty against it?

I know of a woman artist who had no such rigid ideas. She is not tormented. She has taken a few steps outside her door secure in the knowledge that the house is hers and the latchkey is in her hands. Therefore, this story that could have dwindled into the muck of adultery has turned out to be the flowering of a marriage in an unusual way. She does not have to water the plant everyday, change the soil, add organic manure; she merely gives it enough sunshine by keeping the window open.

It takes a strong woman not to let the world get to her and an equally strong man to share her need for freedom, for in doing so he gets it himself.

Of course, one is tempted to ask: if two people can share such a comfortable relationship, why would they need to look outside. Because nothing is static. Emotions are fluid. And there are different kinds of love. How many married couples reinvent?

These are intellectual longings. But there are primal considerations too. One might dismiss such arrangements as debauchery. I think men who force themselves upon their wives are debauched. I think wives who let other women titillate their husbands (“Hah, he is going to return to me!”) and then beat them for it are sick.

Each couple wants a formula that works. Most go through this status quo even when it does not suit them. Some try and look for alternatives. It is not always to demean the partner. A person is also a thinker, a doer, a social being, a romantic, besides being somebody’s spouse. The woman I am speaking about told her husband after 14 years of being the ideal wife that even a convicted murderer is let off after 12 or 13 years. “So, now it is time you let me off.” It wasn’t just to jump into another man’s bed. She had fallen in love.

There must be moments of anguish, some uncomfortable or embarrassing situations. I am not sure if this is the best solution; to get out of the rut mere adventure trips are not enough.

Yet this is also one face of an emerging society where people can make choices, lead unconventional lives and not hide behind pillars to hold up a ceiling that’s cracking. A new unpaved path is not what everyone needs but it helps to know that if you care or dare to walk on it, there will be other travellers, not merely spectators ready to hurl stones.

I am not here to applaud this woman, for she is not looking for it. Neither will I applaud the man for being so understanding because he too is not looking for it. No storms, no marriage on the rocks. Just two people learning a new way in which to swim.