SHAME

 

I first tasted deep shame in 10th standard, delivered personally by a girl’s mother who booted me out of her house like some neighbourhood pervert. The irony - I had never touched the girl. We were just friends. She, meanwhile, within months went Full Monty with another boy and got caught with him in the school toilet. She faced restrictions at school. I inherited the silent disgrace.

The second blow came when I confessed to a friend’s girlfriend that I had never had a girlfriend, never touched a girl, and was still inexperienced at 22. She had been sleeping with her tennis coach since school, followed by a relay race of men, eventually devirginized my friend, then when he left for college, also helped his best friend become a man. A few more bodies later, she married a gold digger from the back end of nowhere - decades before Instagram and OnlyFans normalized such behavior.

She tried to make a joke of my confession in front of a group of guys who all considered me an Alpha and a Biker. None understood the joke. But her betrayal burned cleaner than acid. Her defense - “I was only joking” and “you have an inferiority complex.”

It wasn’t just betrayal, it was mockery from someone whose résumé is still discussed by people of our generation in town. That same gold digger later became MD of her father’s organization until her sisters ganged up and threw him out over financial irregularities - which, given his seven cars including a Range Rover and a Harley Davidson, might not be fiction. Now they are locked in permanent legal warfare, a feminist Mahabharata. Her marriage is a sham, yet she chants “my husband, my husband” like a devotional mantra while he plays across town.

Incidentally, one of her sisters became my first girlfriend -  A reverse caveman romance that lasted two months. No sex, naturally.I bailed at the first chance due to family toxicity, constant condescension, and the refined Brahmin art of polite contempt. She is now divorced after being caught in a roaring affair with someone 14 years younger. Forgiven once, booted the second time. Even the children chose the father. The sisters now brand each other sluts and tear the other apart in court.

 Continuing the saga - or the telenovela - my only other female friend at that time asked about my angst. I told her everything. She laughed saying I hid behind “waiting for true love” when I simply couldn’t get laid. It stung, because it made me doubt myself, wondering if there was truth in her words.

 Subsequently, I rescued her from molestation at a rock concert, after thugs beat her boyfriend unconscious. I lifted her, threw her over my shoulder, and walked out. Not one local tough interfered. I only heard: “Abe Russianok jabo de” - let the Russian pass.

 Her life continued with a series of bad decisions - sleazy men, pregnancy, late abortion, breakup. Years later, she started calling me almost daily to cry about her life. One day, I was utterly frustrated and low for being unpaid for months as a journalist, when she called again. I invited her for coffee for a break and some friendly banter. She flatly refused - she was now a college lecturer and worried that her students might see her with a man and get the wrong idea. Besides, her family was hunting for grooms. 

I felt dirty, a sense of shame tingled again even though I did nothing wrong. 

It was imposed.

She is now married and well-off, her deeply religious man forbids her from interacting with any male. So she throws lavish parties for female peers. I am told she still asks about me. Nostalgia is cheaper than accountability.

Back to the woman who first mocked my inexperience. Years later her ex-boyfriend reminded me, “Have you forgotten how, despite not talking to her, you still dragged her out of a party when she was about to puke on the floor in front of everyone?”

I remembered. I shoved her into the toilet, where I first held her over the pot while she retched, but as she also wanted to pee, and couldn’t untie the knot. In order to stop her wetting herself, I had to cut her pyjama string with a razor. Later I tucked everything back and stapled her pajamas shut.

Rumours, flew right away. Her entire college knew how some “Crazy Russian” dragged her to the toilet and had his way for over an hour. My alter ego may have been a sex maniac, but reality was way stinkier. That night I also escorted two more girls to the bathroom as their boyfriends were sozzled or not bothered. One, reeking of vomit, tried to grab and kiss me, while I slithered away faster than any snake.

Later at the same party, a couple - one of the most beauty-deficient women I’ve ever known and her reasonably decent-looking boyfriend - got frisky in the garage, when the host’s half-insane Alsatian bit his arse. Thankfully, I had already left. Otherwise, I would have been drafted to bandage that too.

I swore never again to attend a party if even a single woman was present. A promise I kept for decades.

But it wasn’t over. Last year, while strolling through Chiang Mai on a much-needed solitary break, I got a LinkedIn request from the first woman whose mother had booted me out. Curious, I engaged. 

She claimed she missed our teenage conversations, said she hadn’t realized what a gentleman I was until life and multiple later lovers had educated her otherwise. Her marriage was arranged and loveless, and she yearned to be loved and understood. She sent a mugshot, totally unrecognizable, then a photo of her freshly painted toenails. Next she told me she had started writing and shared a web page link to a rambling monologue about how sex with her husband felt like molestation and how he refused to go down on her. 

I had all the closure I needed and blocked her everywhere.

Epilogue: The boy exploring her orifices in the school toilet, was a tea planter's son who never even finished school. His parents were later burned alive by an irate and inebriated mass of tea garden labourers fed up with years of brutality and sadism of the owner. In the only case of cannibalism ever recorded in the state, not content just murdering him, some ever took a bite of his flesh.

Lady Luck

The only thing feminine in “luck” is its fickle nature.

The down-on-his-luck (so he said) builder came to me through a mutual friend, clutching his tattered horoscope. My reputation as a seer was not built on the “says what you want to hear” charm of Asterix’s soothsayer, nor on the absurd serendipity of that old Persian tale where everything a false prophet uttered came true, a story recycled across countless Asian folklore. It exists only because of yarns spread by people like the friend who brought him, who once laughed that the builder had already consulted 5,000+ astrologers and tantrics.

“What’s your bloody problem?” I growled, looking at his smudged, dog-eared, cello-tape-stitched astro roadmap. “You have more than enough money, your family is healthy, your children are doing fine, and the only one straying is you.”

I knew him from college. Back then, he was the least likely man to end up driving a three-pointed-star car. Just a tall, fair chap who loved gossip.

“I’ve been racking up losses no matter what I do these past few years,” he complained miserably.

“You had an insane run of luck for eighteen years. Now that cycle is over. The old template won’t work any more,” I said, glancing at the app where I had entered his birth data, refusing to touch his grimy parchment. “And since you were spoiled by easy profits during the real estate boom, I’m sure you shut down every new venture within a year of not seeing returns.”

“How did you know that?” he asked, startled. It was psychology, not astrology, and it landed too close to home.

“Will things improve?” he still asked, hopefully.
“Hardly,” I replied. “You’ll remain well off. But the only area where you might succeed now is work connected to education, institutions, or public welfare.” Now fuck off and you owe me a drink.

The last I heard, he was still hunting for cheap land to make a quick buck, banking on endless “Vikas” projects. As for academics, whether due to my advice or not, he bought himself a PhD from a diploma mill, spending a few lakhs, and now styles himself as a Doctorate of Balls Bridge University. He even got our college alumni association to felicitate him for his doctorate, naturally footing the tea and snacks bill.

“Brother, you never know when luck favours you,” explained a young friend from Manipur. His family being the only sports archery equipment makers in the state. “We were just invited to an exhibition for Modiji’s birthday. The CM saw our range, was impressed, called us to his office, and personally offered a significant amount to help us build a proper factory and scale up production. He said we were making the state proud.”

I recalled my own brief encounter with my state’s Chief Minister at “Advantage Assam” who, upon spotting me, first exclaimed, “Oh, you…” then smoothly recovered and said, “I will personally come to your site and speak to you.” 

He sprinted away dodging the next four or five stalls, least I followed him...