The truth? Girls love brute strength.
That’s why Rahul began working out at the school gym, in order to beef up his biceps like Salman Khan’s. A core like a cheetah and upper body like a leopard. Rahul wanted to mold himself into a sleek, savage, fleet-footed wild animal. And then? Dark Ray-Bans, a pair of Wranglers or Levis, a T-shirt, and Nike socks to go with a winning pair of Woodland shoes.
He wondered why he didn’t feel the same way gazing at Lara Datta, Manpreet Brar, or Gul Panag as he did looking at Madhuri. After all, Madhuri was quite a bit older than Rahul. He’d just seen a film with Miss World, Aishwarya Rai. Sure, she shook her bare backside and pranced around just like Madhuri, tilting her head from side to side, all the while staring at Rahul with her light brown eyes. But fuck, it was useless. Aishwarya didn’t even come close. The gulf between Madhuri’s back and all the others was the difference between the sun and moon. There was something about that back of Madhuri, its texture, build, and hue, that Aishwarya and the others just couldn’t touch.
Rahul conducted a comparative study. The bodies of Gul Panag, Sushmita, Lara, and the rest of the newcomer starlets struck him as awfully artificial. Dieting, exercise, and everything else needed to maintain a model’s figure had combined to produce bodies like plastic. On top of that, the hair waxing, expensive facials, spa treatments, and god knows what else. These creatures struck Rahul as nonhuman, synthetic dolls. From head to toe their hair didn’t look quite reaclass="underline" even the light patch of underarm stubble seemed to him like artificial coloring. But it wouldn’t take much — two weeks max. Feed them as humans, allow them to live as normal girls, and presto, their bellies would flab right out. You wouldn’t even recognize them! But Madhuri? She was a species unto her self. Drop her into a slum, make her live in this hostel, feed her the fare of dal, rice, and oily vegetables we get in our mess hall, and even then, she wouldn’t change a whit. She’d maintain the same miraculous radiance and the same dazzling beauty.
Madhuri’s back was natural and authentic and, inexplicably, a swadeshi one. Made in India. The others were unnatural foreign imports and, Rahul deduced, that was the reason they held no charm. But far more momentous was his other conclusion, that girls took pleasure from pain, violence, and others’ raw strength. And: girls preferred their sensual pleasure with a dash of humiliation, subjugation, and abuse. How times had changed. No one paid attention anymore to the ’50s and ’60s romantic film idol types like Shammi Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Vishwajeet, and Jitendra. Today’s girls were crazy for the macho, sadistic sort like Salman Khan, Sunny Deol, and Ajay Devgan. How violent and menacing Shahrukh Khan had been in Darr, calling Juhi Chawla on the phone at all hours, stalking her, trying to rape her, finally stunning her into blood-soaked submission. She was so strangled with fear she could no longer speak. Yet it was this half-schizophrenic madman, Shahrukh Khan, who all the college girls went gaga over.
A Shahrukh: that’s what the girls craved, not some kowtowing Krishnaesque pansy-brand husband. Rahul had unlocked the mystery, and since then Madhuri Dixit has been living in the window of Room 252. It’s been four months.
TWO
Rahul had followed a peculiar career path. First he’d completed an MSc in organic chemistry. Afterward he suddenly became possessed with the idea of doing an MA in anthropology. The exact reasons for this are a bit fuzzy, but it might have had something to do with encouragement given to Rahul by a certain cousin of his, an internationally known anthropologist who nowadays was the director general of the Archaeological Survey of India. He used to visit Rahul’s village, sometimes staying at his family house for a few weeks at a time. Rahul’s father was his favorite uncle, and the two of them got along extremely well. The responsibility of looking after this cousin, Kinnu Da, fell to Rahul.
Rahul had heard that his book, published by Penguin, was about adivasis, tribals, and had caused a worldwide stir. Before the book came out, people assumed that it was only the usual cast of Brahmins, feudal landlords, business traders, Hindus, and Muslims that had been active in the fight against the British. Even contemporary historians selected their national heroes only among figures who came from these kinds of backgrounds. You could hardly find an adivasi or a Dalit untouchable in these historians’ accounts, dominated by the likes of Laxmibai, Tatya Tope, another raja here, Nana Sahib, another landowner there, Kunwar Singh, Fadnavis, Azimullah, Mangal Pandey, or some nawab. Same backgrounds, different names, when it came to twentieth-century leaders: Nehru, Gandhi, Tilak, Jinnah, Suhrawardy, Patel. Most of them were of high caste and came from rich families. Once in a blue moon Dr. Ambedkar’s name might pop up. Although he came from a Dalit caste, the man who would be called an untouchable had been handed the task of framing the constitution of independent India as recognition of his singular genius. But now he’s been made the target of a smear campaign: sometimes accused of being an agent of the English, other times portrayed as someone who wanted to wipe out Hinduism in India in favor of establishing Buddhism. In other words, more the story’s villain than its hero.
Kinnu Da’s book made such waves because, for the first time, the story was told of the role of tribal adivasi leaders in the struggle. Kinnu Da’s book contained well-documented accounts from regions like Singhbhum and Jharkhand, including Chota Nagpur, of leadership beset by great tragedy — accounts that had, until then, existed only as living folklore in the underdeveloped regions of Bihar, Bengal, and Orissa.
The more Kinnu Da spoke to Rahul, the more Rahul began to suspect organic chemistry was a waste. What would he do with this degree? He’d become a chemist in a brewery or in a food-processing plant owned by some multinational company. Or he’d get a teaching position at a college or university. When he thought about his future, Rahul saw the image of a certain type of man take shape: fat, whiny, gobbling pizza slices like a pig, gnawing on morsels of scrumptious fish marinated in yogurt and vinegar, drinking and partying with a teenage girl he was paying by the hour, enticing her with a little dance of his by shaking his pot belly and gyrating his pumpkin-sized saggy ass.
This type of man — a bottomless pit of lust and greed, a decadent cheat, gluttonous, licentious, corrupt — that’s who this country and system were set up to serve. All the shiny stores and legions of police and battalions of soldiers all exist to feed pleasure and stimulation to that man. If I work as an organic chemist, Rahul thought, I’ll spend my whole life churning out yummy, lip-smacking, good-for-you consumables for him. This life, which the compassionate creator of the universe, acting with great kindness, has given, once and only once, to most negligible me.
Holy shit! The bastard is huffing and puffing, one foot dangling in the grave, he can’t even walk right anymore he’s so fat. But he keeps on chowing down. He needs a steady stream of edible items. His taste buds long for one new flavor after the next. Scientists the world over have conscripted lab after lab in order to research how to best please the man’s palate. Each of the five senses that provide for his disgustingly doughy body require cutting-edge pleasures and never-ending kicks. His hippo-like snout eagerly sniffs for new fragrances and scents. The entire perfume industry exists in order to neutralize all malodors before they can reach his nose. If I work as an organic chemist, Rahul thought, the sum total of my creativity, talent, and knowledge will be pressed into service of satisfying the ever-growing appetite of this man’s senses, and fulfilling the sensual desires of that libertine tub.