I nodded and left through the main door.
Chapter 13.5
Right then, yes, I walked out of the den. Damn it, I had to bear a cost of twelve thousand bucks. I mean, really? Had I been out of my mind or what? What did I pay so much for? It wasn’t my dad who ran the whorehouse. Even if he had, shelling out that kind of money would still have been a crappy idea.
All I made her do was strip.To tell you the truth, fifteen minutes down the line, fifteen minutes after I’d walked out of that place, I was regretting the charity.Yeah, fine, I was trying to be a gentleman in front of her. It’d seemed as though it was a good thing to do then. But gentleman in front of whom? A bloody whore?
I’d made big plans for the day.And now, nothing. I’d lost my money; I couldn’t fuck. It was a depressing feeling. I was a born loser.
Chapter 14.0
I crossed the road to wait for a bus that would may be drop me somewhere in the centre of the town, from where I could take another bus or hire an auto home. I wanted to avoid the auto though. I didn’t want to add to my remorse over the loss, to torture myself anymore in any way, biting on the dust and all.
I was standing there, waiting, when a little girl walked past me. She must have been about four years old. She was cute, fair and had the makings of a beautiful young woman. She was wearing a white and purple, butterfly-sleeved dress, scattered with random floral embroidery just above the bottom white lace trimming. Tiny matching purple shoes and white stockings, with a rhinestone headband, completed the look.
Oh, she looked cute. ‘Damn, what a piece of beauty she’ll be when she grows up,’ I mused.
But wait! I was not supposed to think like that. She was just a little girl, that’s all.Why was I trying to imagine how she’d look in the future? Was I trying to visualise the physical assets she’d develop in the course of time? Perhaps, it was about the skin-tight clothes and the stockings. Could be, you never know! But isn’t that how all little girls’ dresses are? Did I ogle her? I don’t know! Was I fantasizing about her, then?
I felt mutilated within, something had been cut off from me. I was a stranger to myself. I didn’t know the new me. I didn’t know if I was at the endpoint of a process I had undergone, or whether I’d been like that all along.Was my mind being infected, I wondered? If so, was there no coming back? Was I a lost cause … beyond redemption? Where was I headed to …?
Moments later, a woman passed by me. She seemed to be in a hurry to catch up with the child. I reckoned she was the mother of the little girl, as once she caught up, she scolded her a little, and then lifted her up in her arms, hugging her warmly. She turned back, now wending her way to the mall, perhaps where her husband was waiting for them both.
I pondered if I would’ve done something to that little girl, had her mom not come for her on time. I worried, if I had wanted to take her somewhere unawares, somewhere away from there, somewhere deserted, and would’ve done something unhallowed, something sinful, like savouring the feminine flesh of that defenceless child.
‘No!’ I silently screamed to myself, but the sound of my mind’s voice didn’t echo within me for too long. Soon, it faded. But I couldn’t ever be a child sex-offender! God, I used to love children once!
I couldn’t be too sure if I was actually transforming or whether it was only the disoriented part of my mind making its rounds. Even though, deep within, I think I knew I could never actually do such things to a child, such had been the magnitude of my triple humiliations, I could almost see the cracks in any integrity I’d been left with.
Clearly, I didn’t know the second thing about myself. I was scared. Hell, I couldn’t handle it anymore, not on my own. I had to seek help.
Immediately, right away, I called up someone I trusted.
Chapter 15.0
‘Hey, big man! People with new jobs don’t care about their retired old grandfathers anymore?’ said Daadu, heaving a chuckle down the line. ‘I’m joking. How have you been?’
All these years and Daadu hadn’t changed a bit. He was still the high-spirited eighteen-year-old octogenarian.
‘Daadu, I’m scared…’
‘What’s wrong? Where are you right now?’ his concern for me manifested in his voice.
‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, but I’m really scared. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’
‘Okay, son, calm down and tell me what it is.’
I opened my life’s diary; I unveiled the details to him page by page… every single line. I started from the beginning. I told him briefly how it all started in my formative years, how I liked Malvika in my school days. I told him about the scene she’d created and how her rebuff had made me think later that everyone thought of me as a degenerate, a loser, and a lowly person. After years of loneliness and self-loathing post the Malvika incident, I told him how I met Geetika. The developing of our relationship from the first trip, to my visits to her place, about how we’d come really close, about her fucking the other guy literally and then fucking me all over figuratively. I spoke to him about my depression, about my decision to visit the brothel and—the final nail in the coffin—about the little girl that’d occurred just a while ago, and how it had shattered me. I ended on a note of defeat about how I couldn’t understand what was happening to me and how I was scared to death.
‘Suraj, you’re not a child anymore, though I still happen to be the same old man. Now I’ll tell you what’s happening. You’ve been through a lot—first your mother, and then these young women. But son, it happens with the best of us. It’s just that some men think about it, while some don’t. Some men panic, while some choose to dump it behind. But trust me, it’s nothing. Stop exaggerating the lows of your story, and beating yourself up about it.’
‘Uh…okay,’ was all I could whisper weakly.
I think he was trying to make it look as if it was nothing. He definitely knew it wasn’t, but must’ve acted like that to pacify me, to restore the equanimity in me, to help me do the right things and even the balance.
‘And one more thing,’ he continued. ‘I think you are one good example of a witless man, who just happens to be literate. I wonder how they gave you that job. Come on, you don’t know what’s really serious and what is not.You’re just mixed up.You’re not a paedophile, for God’s sake. I know my grandson better than anyone else, better than your own father even. So stop thinking like that right now. It’s just a phase, it’ll pass. It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘So, I don’t need to do anything about it?’
‘Oh, well, there’s always something or the other you can do about everything.’
‘Is there is a specific solution then?’
‘Oh, there is, apparently, a permanent one.’
‘What is it?’
‘See, Suraj, I think most of this is because you’re lonely. You’ve been living on your own for a long time. Now you don’t have to worry about anything.You’ve completed your education; you’ve got a stable government job in hand and you are twenty-four years old already. How about we find a life partner for you?’
‘Marriage?’
‘Yeah,’ he said to me as though it were a routine affair. I could picture him strut as he spoke, ‘I mean, you have to get settled someday, you agree? Come home, I’ll find you a good girl.They say marrying young is always an advantage.
‘You see, it’s not just a medication, it’s a complete cure. Not only will it be a single-point solution to everything that has you made you so miserable, it’ll put an end to your loneliness and will relieve me and your father of the duty of looking after you. We are worried about you, you know?
‘We’ll finally have a bahu again, Suraj, finally someone to fill the gap in our lives your mother’s death had created. She’ll help us resume our lives from the point where your mother left off. Our family will once again be complete,beta. You’ll have a family to look after, real people in your lives to take care of. It’ll make you mature.And hey, I don’t want to die without feeling t
he pleasure of my great-grandson peeing on my pajamas.’
Oh, there it was: the same customary, old paradigm of emotional blackmail that parents and grandparents love to put to use.
I took a pause to think. Then I said, ‘I don’t know if it’s a good idea.’
‘Why?’ he questioned.
Well… since I didn’t have an answer to that question, I had to put my hands up.
Chapter 16.0
Within a month, Daadu, in consultation with Dad, found a girl for me. She was the daughter of a clerk, a friend of my Dad’s, who happened to work at the same bank as he.They had happily agreed to marry their daughter off to me. Perhaps, it was the market value of a government employee working its magic.Whatever, it worked.
At Daadu’s summon, I had to go to Kanpur. I was yet to join the office.There was still a couple of months’ time, so paying a visit to my hometown wasn’t a problem.There, I got to see Aarti, my wife-to-be.They gave us almost half an hour to talk to each another in private.
Our rendezvous, I would say, was positively ceremonial in nature, our conversation rather formal. We didn’t talk about anything too personal, only as much as was required: basic details, hobbies, long-term plans et cetera… et cetera...
She was an all-right girl, not too talkative but not too shy either.You couldn’t really call her a modern girl, but not a village girl either. She was a lot like Geetika, only a bit more reserved, a bit more diffident, at least by the way she presented herself that day. Her elementary schooling had been done at St Vincent School, Lucknow, a well-known institution, though not really grand. She had a degree in history, from a college in Lucknow, too.
And she was beautiful, in fact more beautiful than Malvika and Geetika put together, almost in the league of that whore in the brothel. She wore a salwar kameez paired with a navy-blue cardigan and she looked great. She was nearly as tall as Geetika. She had a cute face, fair skin, and a magnificent smile. It really didn’t matter much to me whatever she spoke about herself. I worried, instead, about how she would take to my virginity. I wonder if decent girls cared about the celibacy of their prospective husbands.
But the age of my worries was short. The news of approval to the marriage from the bride’s side had come rather soon, the next day itself, to be precise.The onus of finding the shubh muhurth had been on them. Post consultation with their family purohit, Aarti’s family had apprised us of the date, which was about a month from then. Neither family had felt it necessary to have a separate engagement ceremony.
I wondered if their purohit had been honest with them or had only endeavoured to give them the good news considerably faster for a tiny-bit more dakshina, or whether it was just her family that was rushing.Thinking the latter was more likely, I wondered what they saw in me that made them hurry.
I worried if Aarti had latent complications that necessitated her family to marry her off as early as possible, without allowing us time to find out. But the next second, I rubbished the thought.
She was too beautiful to have any of those complications. I felt lucky at the prospect of having her as my wife, for it needn’t be told—I would’ve never been able to impress a girl like that on my own. Secondly, my love for my country and its traditions swept over me: arranged marriages had to be better than the other kind. God bless the descendants of whoever propounded the practice of arranged marriage for the first time, with ninety children and zero taxes.
In about a month’s time, we were married. I remember that party, how can I not? How can I forget the pain I’d developed in my back after having to keep my buttocks nailed to that goddamn oversized chair, even though I’d had the luxury of sharing Aarti’s company? People had come with gifts, the value of which had often been strategically calculated to meet just less the value of the food they’d been estimated to be likely to eat. Quite a number of people had turned up, over five hundred.
I remember how full of delight Daadu had looked that night. Dad had looked no less happy himself, while I had to watch my father’s money being voraciously eaten off people’s plates.
Yes, I also remember my first night with Aarti, the night I lost my virginity—and hopefully, all signs of it off my face. I remember how beautiful she looked in her blood-red heavy lehenga and her gold jewellery, just before she had to take them all off…
I had a good time with her that night. Fact is, I’m just trying to suppress myself from saying I had a great time because I guess it appears weird to talk about your wife like that and I am not sure how great it was for her. She hadn’t been too loud, perhaps she was shy. After all, we were just two strangers sharing the same bed. I could only hear the sounds of her heightened breath. Strange, isn’t it? The word ‘marriage’ was the only thin line that separated our intimacy from falling within the definition of a night in a red-light area.
Chapter 16.5
A month after we were married, shortly before I had to join my office, we went for a three-night stay at Manali, at the recommendation of her cousins. In fact, it was a gift from them.That would be our official honeymoon.
She’d adored the idea. I’d readily agreed to the same as I didn’t have an aversion to hill-stations myself.
We did enjoy ourselves, I would say. But that didn’t necessarily include the plurality of conversations we didn’t have. Guess, I could pin it to the novelty of our relationship and to my impaired social skills.
A large chunk of our entire time was spent in the room. She kept herself busy doing mundane stuff like arranging the wardrobe and room, to fill the void of the awkwardness, or the lack of conversation, between us. She loved the pool, so another significant chunk was spent by the poolside. She loved to watch the still water, as most often no one used the unheated pool.What was weird was that we were not always the only people doing that.
The remaining time was kept aside for sightseeing and eating outside. I didn’t really mind travelling, as the sedan was included as a part of the honeymoon package. Oh, and she also let me have sex with her on two of the three nights.
That trip always carried a special meaning for both of us for the sole reason that we didn’t have many trips afterwards.
Aarti did great at mixing with Dad and Daadu for the few weeks she stayed with the family, after our return from our honeymoon. Although, she couldn’t be too frank with them, she didn’t give them any reason to complain. She even cooked some of their favourite recipes. Daadu had become fond of her kheer only in a matter of weeks. He even taught her some of my favourite dishes.
All in all, she was so home-loving, I wondered if she had a degree in history or in home science (with no prejudice to the latter).
After about three weeks however, Daadu and my father could have her home no longer, as she had to leave with me for Bangalore. (Or should I have said ‘Bengaluru’?)
Before I was a rapist, I would mull over the name that suited the city best. There was a major debate about the change in the official name of the city and I believe it was a unique one. This city had a brand value and accounted for a sizeable immigration from all over the world. There were, as a result, mixed opinions. While a mass of decent size worried that the change in the name would culminate in a diminished brand value of the city and argued that the name sounded uncool, the others were of the opinion that the Anglicization of the city’s name was a token of shame to the indigenous people.Well, in all honesty, I could never take sides.
I had opted to be located in Bangalore for the job, as after all those years that I’d spent in the city I had become somewhat habituated to it. I had developed a sort of penchant for it, without regard to the poisoned memories it held for me. I doubted how much Daadu missed Aarti, or if he missed her at all. I wondered how he compared her with Ma; how well he thought she was able to fill the gap…
***
We rented in, what you could call the outskirts of the city, a two-bedroom home, which ate away slightly more than a fourth of my total salary. I doubt if we would’ve been able to afford that ho
use had it been in any of the many posh neighbourhoods of the city. It was a sweet place to live in, a single-storey house with a beautiful porch and a miniature garden.The only drawback was that it was at quite a distance from my place of business, much over ten miles.
Usually, I commuted to work by the city AC bus service that would comfortably drop me close to my workplace each day; my office was at an hour’s distance from home. After a few days of formal training, I’d become used to the work. It was a 9-to-5 desk job that I carried out for the Indian Railways.To be honest, it wasn’t a bad place to work at.The people were nice and friendly. My supervisors were helpful and I didn’t have much to grumble about. The starting salary was a bit thin, but then the guarantee of timely promotions and the job security that a state-owned enterprise had to offer, compensated for everything. I was also looking forward to getting a Railway flat shortly.
So that’s it: I woke up at around seven every morning, went to office, came back home by six and gave my wife company.That was my routine.
My wife, Aarti, was a good-natured person. She was happy as a housewife and wasn’t very demanding either. Though we didn’t make the friendliest, or the most talkative, couple in the world, our chemistry was different in itself, in a good way. She religiously prepared my breakfast and packed my tiffin every morning. In the day, she might call old friends, family, or relatives and run her errands, and manage the home to while away the hours.
She would greet me with a smile as she open the door for me every day when I came home from office, and would occasionally ask me, ‘Aa gaye aap?’ as though she’d been waiting for me. Shortly put, she was everything that a good wife should be.
She let me do anything to her. I could never really figure out the true reason why she would never say no to me. Had she read things off my face like Geetika and did it only to make me happy, or did she get actually turned on every time I brought her to bed? I’d read somewhere that girls who seem sweet and shy like her have real wild sexual urges that are tough to satiate. I could never be sure if the things I did to her made her crazy each night, or if she was not exactly satisfied.
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