Allow me the indulgence of cackling at this spectacle of sexual predators being dragged out in public by their undone pyjama strings. Like hyena caught in the headlights. All the while, I preen behind my cloak of invincibility. I know, you see, that no one will out me, hashtag me, accuse me of unwanted advances. I am quite untouchable; have carried on for years, and will for many more. Unchallenged. This is my story.
I first spotted her as an under-age student, dupatta coyly folded upon her bosom. I deliberately bumped into her in the college corridor. She lifted her eyes to mine, which was just the sign I needed. She wanted me. She turned and fled with her friends, their giggles filling the air. The game was on!
I trailed her from her house to the marketplace. There, behind the coconut-seller, I tore open my shirt, displaying my bare-chested heart, my offering. She blushed, and turned away. I circled her, thrusting out my groin. She could have said, “No.” She didn’t. She wanted me.
My next hunt led to the park. I singled her out and thrust her against a tree. I lunged at her, determined to kiss her. She ducked, my cloying fingers slipped off her waist and I ended up kissing the tree. She scampered off. Let her. It was sweet, naive, teasing. I would get her. I knew it. She knew it.
To part us, her parents sent her to an uncle in a suitably remote mountain town. Laughable! They underestimated my long groping arm. She started down the snowy slopes when like a flash, I overtook her, expertly slid around her in a figure of eight... She screamed and tumbled down the icy slopes, and broke her foot.
I sat beside her while she woke from surgery, and swore I would stick to her all her life. She whispered back. (The nurse told me she’d said she’d rather die.) I swooped her up from her hospital bed and brought her back to my one-room barsati , where I kept her captive, feeding her and dressing her. As she lay unconscious, I moved in for the kill. Would she be mine forever? One nod for no and no nod for yes. She didn’t nod. Finally, finally — lust always triumphs in the end.
That’s when she opened her eyes and threw the bedpan at me.
“Wait,” said the director. “This is a hit-film song. In fact, it’s every hit-film. You can’t change the script.”
Where Jane De Suza, the author of Happily Never After , talks about the week’s quirks, quacks and hacks.
