It’s only fair that on my blogsite, the first story that I ever publish, is the one I’ve been most scared about, the one that still haunts my dream and my reality, growing less frightening with each day, but haunting, nonetheless.
I thought I was being crazy, ridiculous, or rather absurd in inferring that – that criminal thought – to be his ultimate intention behind asking that question. How swiftly and cunningly he had steered the conversation which had started from me confiding in him about my reservations towards physical aspects of (romantic) relationships to his (manipulatively direct) indirect suggestion that I should let a man, preferably much older than me, and hence experienced, somebody I trust and am able to open up to, but, most importantly, without any emotional strings, guide me through the world of sexuality. I shuddered; I remember. My throat went dry. The gate of that personal cabin of his and that small office was closed. There was nobody else on that floor in that small, compact, dilapidating building, situated in one of the lanes of just another crowded, moving, and noisy areas of Delhi.
In those three seconds, before I mentioned a name – name of a man, whom I trusted, trusted to open up to, to not get judged, but most importantly, who was older to me – I sat there questioning my existence, the situations and the choices that had led me to that moment. At that moment, I recalled being nicknamed ‘nightingale’ by a friend for he said that much like the nightingale in the poem ‘The Frog and the Nightingale’, I am gullible and blind to such crass, cacophonous frogs. That G word is the reason why I was willingly sitting in that hemmed in room, while the unyoung frog smoked one cigarette after another in front of a 17-year-old anxious, girl.
In those three seconds, as I was thinking what name to take, because the obvious answer, that he wished to hear, I wouldn’t have taken even if he was the last man on this Earth. However slowly (over a year), he may have taken, to bring me to that point – where the master had made sure that the girl would name him, however embarrassingly, but he would have made sure the responsibility of the choice would rest on the girl, and he would be just, only just, obliging, as a ‘mentor’ he would often quote. But, surprisingly, to his and to my own, my instinct wasn’t as much down in the dumps as my mind had been. I could see the repressed smirk through the cig smoke, because being a subject of prey, I had the sense of recognizing the conversion in his eyes from that of a master(manipulator) to that of a predator. His jaw knew it was inches away from taking hold of me for good. So, I blurted out the name of a brother, a brother that I had through family friends, whom I had met only two years ago. And I laughed..I laughed at his utter shock at my audacity. I laughed because I had hurt his ego, his assurance that he would be the most trustworthy person for me. I laughed because I knew I knew I would never again fall for his kindness (read tricks) ever again. I laughed because I knew at that moment, that even though I was struggling and was in a pit darker than Kohl, I would be okay as long as I had myself.
