There are softly moaning sounds in the dark, dingy room. The screen light of a smartphone is the hallowed sun in the dark. But instead of light, it seems in connivance with the dark. Sunny Leone is doing what almost every Indian man dreams about.
The porn clip is sucking the damp air
into the funnel of lust and greed. His hands are moving faster and faster. He
is visualising himself as an active player in the game. His very soul is on the
boil. He finds himself hungrier, more aggressive and better endowed than the
male in the porn movie.
He wants her. Or for that matter
anyone looking as beautiful as her. He tries to hold but soon surrenders to the
climax. Even the feeble light from the screen shifts its shade. He lets it out
on the screen, trying to reach her body. It’s a strange demented pleasure.
Long before we see the flower, the
process starts at the roots. Fruits as well as thorns are the result of a long
process which begins with the seeds. The deeds or misdeeds are not sudden
sprouts; they also carry their seeds, their incubation period, their structural
building and growth before the final appearance.
The idea of woman and sex has
mutated so strangely over the years in his mind that he wonders how can anyone
just love a woman, especially when there are better uses like lust and sadistic
violence. He has been masturbating for a decade now. He started the experiment
while in the fifth grade. Now at the age of 20 he has come a long way. His
father once caught him and gave him a severe thrashing. He had committed a
crime, he realised. He hated his father, so did it with more rampancy, even
willing to be caught again to show him that he didn’t care.
Sex is the nemesis of Indian society
and carries such a taboo, the quintessential gandi baat. It exists everywhere, basically in the minds. The more
they try to deny it, the bottled genie keeps on growing. He liked this defiance
of his. He loved the sensation of doing it right under their noses.
While playing with girls he pinched
them. They cried, not understanding, taking it just a hurtful prank among the
children. He but felt a strange excitement. He hated this sweet-faced little girl.
She was so friendly with a well-behaved boy. But after the last pinch she
started to avoid him. He was thus looking out to pinch her once more. He tried.
The well-behaved boy saw it and intervened. There was a fight. The good one
proved stronger than his appearance and threw him down. He carried a big bluish
dark bump on his forehead. The children laughed at him. He seethed with anger.
The studies didn’t mean anything at
all. He belonged to a lower middle class family. His parents were entangled in
the struggle for bread and butter. The school was co-ed till fifth when he had
just started masturbating, visualising the girl who had got him a bump. The
trigger had been the elder boys’ experiment. The group of elder brats had rented
a CD player one night and played it in the scandalously moaning secrecy of a
room. As they moaned with masturbation, he, peeping from a window, carried out
his initiation. After that there was no looking back.
After the fifth standard, it was the
boys’ only class. With months and then years, invisible walls crept in between
him and the opposite sex. Driven by the way elders spoke, or the manner
everybody pretended, the way his father thrashed him that day, sex, women and
girl started to acquire the exciting shapes of huge taboos. And inevitably it
became the favourite haunt of his mind.
It was eating his mind, taking big
chunks of fantasies with each passing day. The society appeared to ordain that
sex was to be avoided at all cost. It appeared the worst thing a person could
even think about. If somebody was explicitly or implicitly found to have
something to do with sex, the society would condemn him as a person without any
character. It was the hallmark of a good person to have nothing to do with sex.
It was such an evil act, to be shunned and avoided at all costs. He even
wondered how people gave birth if it was so bad. And continuously thought about
whether a married couple had sex or not. Why would they, if it was so bad? The
idea kept on bouncing from all corners of his mind. He suppressed it outside
but inside it was an ever-haunting mirage.
One more crime against women in India. It happens so many times that it doesn’t sound
like news anymore. Harassment, molestation, eve-teasing, domestic violence,
rape and murder, the evil deeds which have become part and parcel of the
modern-day life. These don’t occur just randomly, rather take long and winding roots
over an individual’s soul.
These are but the news items he runs
after. He scans the newspapers for rape and murder cases. He hears people
around expressing disgust, but somehow he doesn’t agree to the vehemence of
their anger. He keeps silent. It gives him a strange excitement to visualise
the incident given in the news item. Invariably he ends up getting
excited.
They have their poisonous seeds.
Their building processes. Long before they sprout with thorny branches, the
soil is generated and the seed is sown. It is a common social soil, a
cumulative shit that piles over generations. It takes a long time, this process
of soil formation. Tradition and patriarchy rake it up over the ages.
He remembers how his father
mistreated his mother. In fact, he grew up wondering whether they had sex at
all. Sex then appeared as the instrument of his father’s dominance over his
mother, an apparatus of exploitation. Of
course, man is superior to woman at any moment. It’s the most verified fact
to him. He has grown up feeling so proud to be a man, the taker from the woman, the giver.
He has thought so much about sex
that now it has acquired a monstrous shape in the secret corridors of his mind.
You weed out something, it grows multiple times in the secret recesses. He has
been involved in orgies with paid women. But he returns hungrier than before.
The act itself no longer counts as sex. It’s cut down to some filthy bargain,
some moments in the grimy room, cold staring looks, corpse like impassive body,
some soiled notes changing hands and the lower garment going up with as much
ease as it had come down. To the sexual monster in his mind, it falls grossly
short of expectations. It feels like buying a pack of cigarette.
The sight of normal girls puts his
soul on boil. He considers himself to be sewage dirty and them as clean and
respectable beyond measure. They appear like getting repelled from him like
they would from dog shit on the pavement. He cannot even so much as muster up
courage to speak even a single word to a girl. The chasm between them and him
is increasing. He resents when he sees a good
girl going around with a so called good
boy. He feels cheated. He has no role to play in this socially clean set up.
His frustration is building up,
putting huge pressure on the check-dam. It is about to burst any time with
criminal consequences. The girl has overshadowed the stormy sea in his mind.
She laughs and enjoys so much in the company of this boy. They go on bike
rides, movies and restaurants. He is following them. Each spell of laughter and
the moments of holding hand put a knife of agony through his heart.
He has convinced himself that they
are having sex also. And still they are clean and he so mucky, just because he
visits prostitutes and no good girl would even look in his direction. The more
she smiles in her boyfriend’s company, the more he seethes with rage. Society
appears hypocritical. They pander it through such relationships and shun it in the
case of people like him. He is revengeful. The other day, he sees them coming
out of a cheap hotel, having been inside for a couple of hours and during which
time he wandered outside like a lunatic.
She is plum red, shaken and diffident
as they emerge from the hotel. The boy seems scared and insecure now in the
broad hubbub of life after sneaking into the cavernous vaults away from the
civilised society to steal a few golden moments. As she moves, her eyes hooked
onto the ground, walking carefully to somehow be away from the scene of the
taboo, his blood is boiling in anger. He spits in disgust and condemns her as a
slut. A cauldron of fervent emotions shakes him up. He is beyond himself and
follows her. The boy has taken a different direction, their conscience
dictating them to part ways after the union. It is weighing heavily on their sense
of right and wrong. They literally take themselves to be the condemned
culprits.
He is following her and is
completely beyond himself. He is bursting with erection and anger. How can she
just walk away after wallowing in the gutter and again merge into the cleanest
corridors of the society. He just cannot come to terms with this. It appears
like there is someone else inside him as he hears himself shouting randi after her.
He is blood red with excitement and beyond himself while splashing the
derogatory word. He is walking behind her while narrating his interpretation of
what had happened. She quickens her pace but it’s not possible to outpace him.
She is horrified. He is spilling over the scandal in broad daylight. It appears
like she will lose all her standing in the society. Like one clutches at a
straw to save life, she plucks at anything to save her ijjat. She just finds herself turning back and slapping him. He is
stunned. There is a crowd. A painless ennui. He is just vaguely aware of the kicks,
slaps and blood in his mouth.
Now he isn’t scared of any consequences, the worst the better. He is the
wronged person, and redemption his right. The society, generally, and she,
particularly, have to pay for it. All that pent up hunger of many years is
lolloping its fiery tongue to chuck out the moth of her honour. His face gets
flushed with excitement, lust, revenge and some gory illegality.
His tiny house is located in some poor locality of Bombay. Just across
the street, the scene shifts to a lower middle class neighbourhood. Her better house
is just across the street from his. Now he can very well relate to those snubs
she gave him even as little ones, in that forgiving and unknowing childhood
zone where the kids crossed class and social boundaries to play together. He
vividly recalls that fall of shame when her boyfriend, then just her playmate,
had held him with a hesitating grip around the neck, first scared himself, but then
finding that it was having some effect, pushed on with it, himself not sure
where it will land him. Recalling those moments he spits with disgust.
She appears to be carrying on with life almost normally. It pricks him
even more. There is a corner on their roof where he can stand, unseen by the
neighbours on his side and most of the houses on the other side. If he stands
there, and with luck nobody being there on the roof of the two or three
neighbouring houses on her side, he can grab some moments to vent out his fury
from a distance if she happens to be there at the opportune time. He is
lingering on the roof, and makes lewd gestures when she happens to be on the
roof across the street. Even this seems to leave no effect on her at all. And
this offends him further. She appears like she doesn’t even know that he
exists.
He has turned purple. Seething with excitement, his soul has turned
sadistic. She is laying clothing on the wash-line. There is no one else on the
roofs across the street. His hands are shaking as he unzips himself. He makes a
grunt as if to clear his throat to draw her attention. She seems unbothered
about him. When she turns her head towards him to work on a tangled shirt, he
starts masturbating. He is sure that she is looking at his flashing from the
corner of her eyes. Disappointingly there isn’t the slightest change in her mannerism.
She stays normal. But he is sure that she has seen him doing that. He is
feeling proud of his swollen endowment, hoping out of hope that she will now
prefer him over that silly chickna.
The storm is over. She is gone. He stands spent. Now he is scared of the
consequences. What if she tells her parents about it? For the next few days,
fear nibs at his lecherous being with a dull intensity. And then the
apprehensions clear out. Nothing has changed. He is happier and bolder.
Through common acquaintances, he has a brief idea about what is
happening at her end. They are planning to go to Goa, he comes to know. He puts
in extra investigation, fuelled by hurtling desire and smashing hate, to find
out when and how of the trip. She has told her family that it’s a college trip
for three days. He shakes his head and chuckles with ill mischief within
himself, rubbing his hands in excitement. Now he has taken her for granted,
being sure that he can go to any extent and there won’t be any reprisals.
It’s four days to go for the trip. He is busy in planning a complete
makeover so that even his parents won’t recognise him.
Early in the morning of the day of the trip, he sneaks out to his
friend’s house and there the entire turnover in his appearance is brought into
effect. He gets his head shaven, puts on false beard and dons sunglasses. He
goes beyond this make up to wear clothes he had never worn in life, hippy type,
and changes his mannerism completely.
As a new day’s hustle and bustle starts he is ready there, lurking
around the counter for the buses to Goa, keeping a sharp eye over everybody
entering the bus stand. And there they are, coming with excited springs in
their walk. He boards the same bus as they do, they in the front part, and he
as a skilled follower at the back.
Now he follows them as a bug in the tail of their young, flagellant
love. He takes a room in a cheap run down hotel across the street from theirs
and peeks at the exit from his balcony smoking cigarettes. They don’t come out
for the rest of the day. Hungry dog and the bitch is in heat, he mutters.
The next day is more fruitful. He is following their autorickshaw on a
bike he has taken on rent. He maintains a safe distance. The further they move
from the bustle of the city, the more he gloats over the prospects, like he is
waiting with a snare for the fish and the poor thing is on the way.
The sea opens up with greyish blue murkiness, a shadowy, heaving horizon
very much in tally with the machinations of his strayed self. They are walking
along the shore to reach the farthest end where the coastline is mobbed by
greenery. He is walking at a distance through the palms inland. He moves
expertly like a hunter with slithery prowl, his heart berserk with criminal
anticipation. He feels bold enough to any extent. They are too far from home.
Nothing happened even when he flashed right there in front of her house.
They have come a bit too far from the last human seen around. The sea
splashes in desolation. Against the background of infinite spread of the sea,
his eyes peer like a wolf at the couple walking in majestic oblivion, holding
hands, moving to that corner where they will be just they with their budding love. Sea gulls screech. Waves crash
against the coast. There are only two things that matter: he with his hate, and
they with their love.
They are kissing very gently. He is very caring and considerate and
lifts her in his hands. She is giving him peck after peck on his cheek. They
titter and laugh in full freedom. Only the sea is the witness, they think. No
they are wrong, there is someone else too.
He is shaking with bursting excitement. He never felt this much jealous
in life. The all free-flowing love of a girl; doled out herself with full
heart. It seems unbelievable. The girl holding out her own heart, her whole
being, voluntarily, happily to the boy. No need to take it by force. No need to
pay for it. How could he be so unlucky and her boyfriend so lucky? He is
gasping for breath to keep pace with his racing heart.
He is taking her into the safety of coconut trees. There is healthy
undergrowth on the ground. Isolation undertoned by the sea waves welcomes the
lovers. Her lover stops in a clearing. Gripped by passion, they surrender to
the basic instinct and entwine their young bodies. They are rolling with
ecstasy. He looks on from behind a tree. He cannot make out whether he is
shaking with hate, jealousy or lust. Possibly all three have rattled his being.
Such an open-armed acceptance of the male passion by the female! He
stands as a deprived soul. She appears utterly promiscuous and shameless to
him, totally unlike how a girl is supposed to be in the society they belong to.
He condemns her as a fallen woman. He spits in disgust. She is putting her
reputation to pieces.
The foreplay is going into the seething depths of passion. His soul is
burning. Just before they start making love he strikes. He hits at the back of
his foe’s head. The guy rolls over in agony. The girl shrieks. Her voice is
eaten by the sea waves. They are too far from the nearest human ear to catch
the distress signal. He jumps over the injured boy and smothers him down. It
has been a painful strike and the boy’s head is spinning. Now he is venting out
the full fury of his fists on his face. There is blood. The boy whimpers with
pain and is unable to stand up. He is almost unconscious.
In the scuffle, the aides to his impostorship come off. She recognises
him. They are face to face. She is holding her clothes against her breasts and the
middle part. He carries the ugliest of a smile on his lips. She tries to run
but he easily overtakes her and grasps her like a wolf tames down a rabbit. She
tries to fight back, digs her nails into his skin, shouts obscenities but soon
realises the futility of it. She is crying now and has fallen at his feet,
pleading for mercy.
“Get up, be as much shameless with me as you were with him,” his voice
is frozen in coldness.
She is folding her hands and crying. He slaps her and she falls. He
repeats his order. Can you kiss a thorn with as much love and smile as you do a
flower? She is shivering terribly but still tries to kiss him on the cheek. Her
courage gives in. A violent sob misbalances her. Again she falls at his feet.
He kicks her and she groans with pain. Again she tries, this time on the lips.
It fails and ends up like she has spitted on his face. The poor girl just
cannot manage it. He is furious and whacks her down. He then gets all over her.
He is walking back carrying the scratches of her resistance on his skin.
A strange ennui has taken him in a mysterious grip. He doesn’t know what to
plan further to escape. He understands the futility of it. He knows he cannot escape
the law forever. Still by instinct he is planning some escape route.
Another rapist is born. He walks like any other criminal. Still another
rape victim lies there to get justice, carrying the stigma of ravaged modesty,
waiting for justice to take course which would ultimately put her on further
path of shame.
Only the rapist doesn’t carry the burden of culpability on his sick
head. The social system that breeds such thorny seeds shares the cumulative
crime. A poisonous seed doesn’t land from another planet. It has its supportive
forces. It has its environment.
The rules of conduct and tradition certify your sociality and civility
if you pander the taboo from a safe distance. Avoid women. Stay away. Only pour
out your frustration through passable, ignorable acts of minor mistreatments.
These are passable offenses.
Away from the skin-deep dilution of the taboos, the beast lies in the
mind, tied with the ropes of patriarchal conventions. The ropes are strong, it
takes some time to break and claim criminal freedom. Before that there is a
long drawn out phase of passing remarks, molestation, eve-teasing, staring, and
criminal visualisation in the mind. The beast is struggling against the ropes. The
ropes aren’t getting stronger. The beast is claiming power at a furious pace.
The beast of skewed ideas in deprived brains has unlimited potential to grow
strong and break the ropes. It is no longer satisfied with passing lewd remarks
and brushing against the taboo in crowded buses. It wants more. It’s an untamed
criminal now. It has got a helpless body to carry out its evil design.
A rape happens. And, of course, murder in the wake many times.
It’s not that a rapist’s scale of depravity can be gauzed by the act of
rape only. A person capable of raping can be worse in any other possible manner
for a demented mind. He can also harm humanity in any way imaginable or
unimaginable.
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