Ok, so I buy this insanely expensive, bleed your pockets out type expensive smart phone.

You
can call it peer pressure if you will. Personally, I was pretty happy with those unassuming
little phones that happily let you call or text anyone without any fuss and without any
charade to dazzle you to the point of tech worship. But then when you live with people who
swear by these insanely rich pieces of circuit boards, one relents, you know. You then seek
recourse in firebrand hypocrisy by buying the device one fine day. So anyway, I have a smart
phone, is the point. I am goofing around and checking out all functionality and I get this
watsapp thingy everyone is going gaga over. Again, Rome, Romans, you see. So I sync this
thingummy with my contacts from my phone, and about 2 hours later this phone beeps. Its a
message. Watsapp. I first think its some stupid promo nonsense but then it aint that. It said
hi... From some female whose name brought some vague recollection. Like those tingling
sensations you get when your brain tries to desperately tell you that you have come across
that thing/person/sound/taste/smell/whatthef**kever it is once before. But its too vain to
tell you what. So here I am with a message from a femme who I have no clue of but for a
stupid tingling sensation. Well that normally happens. You see, my contacts is this roll call
sort of thing that would give those guys who study people (anthropologists?) a hard on. I
have the contact details of every single person I have ever met. And I never delete. I talk to a
guy in the bus about how Obamas financial ministrations are driving us off the fiscal cliff, I
get his number. I help a female with her shopping baggage, I get hers. Sounds total psycho,
but then people say I have great people skills. Again, not my point. Without thinking much, I
Hi.. back. And then she says Remember me?. The male ego doesnt bow out just like that.
I say of course!! How r u?. And she says You dont do you? Want to meet up tomorrow and
refresh that memory of yours??. Now I am completely curious. Wary, yes, but then, its a
femme for godssakes. I might get me a nice time. And I say, sure. Where n when?. Looking
back, I would kill myself twice over for saying that.
****
Counselling is bullsh**. My Post- traumatic stress disorder, or whatever they call it is my
Post- traumatic stress disorder. No shrink through any degree of soft passionate
conversation and hypnotherapy and CBT or any of those things can do anything to help me.
Heck, he cannot understand me, let alone breaking into soliloquies on how to cope with it.
That hurts. Feigning conviction and telling me in that sickening murmur that he understands
completely. That day was another of those days when I walked into that fraud place and
pretended to have cottonplugs on while he proceeded with his customary drivel. I had just
left the place when I got this watsapp notification saying that someone had added me. That
was when all the latent hatred and revenge I had forgotten somewhere rose again. And that
was how it all began.
****
This female should have been really rich. This place she had chosen for our little rendezvous
was crme-de-la-f**king-crme. So anyway, I see her and now that tingling sensation has
become like a 1000 spiders crawling all over me. But I still cant resolve the long standing
issue of just who she is. We greet each other like long lost twins and give each other a bone
crushing bear hug. Her dress left nothing to the imagination, by the way. This suit clad fellow
gets us a table in one corner, set slightly apart from the rest of the pack and lights this big ass
candle bang in the middle of the table. You still drink dont you? she asks, and I nod
promptly, feeling slightly fishy about this whole business. She orders sparkling wine, and he
excuses himself with a servile bow. So tell me about what you are upto these days man, its
been so long!. She has one of the most sinfully disarming smiles I have ever seen. A perfect
blend of coyness and mischief. The perfect seductress. My point is, even if I wanted to
desperately man up and tell her I dont for f**ks sake know her, I was in it way too deep to
tell her. Too far along. Thats how the male brain rationalizes. So I get on with it and chew
the cud liberally, again, like long lost friends. Apart from being the seductress, she is also
quite the talker. And before you know it, we are like a house on fire. Alcohol has progressed
from wine to vodka,neat. And we are still talking, speech is beginning to slur and I am seeing
double, but I keep going. The last thing I remember, to this date, is looking at her cleavage,
in the light thrown by that candle, which was close to burning out ,by the way.
*****
The clothes were intentional. Decency was a thing I had given up on since what happened,
but this was filthy even by those standards. This was moral degradation spawned by an
overwhelming desire for masochism for the soul, flagellating it in a fervent attempt to
exorcise the past. And I was almost there. Revenge is a dish best served cold, some fellow
said. And mine had reached frigid levels. He was this close to passing out. All he needed was
a prod in the right direction, and that came via a vial that I emptied into his 6
th
peg. It was
with some difficulty that I wrapped his hands around my shoulder and dragged him out to
my car. No questions asked. My breasts were showing all the while, but who cares?
*****
I wake up to a searing pain all over my body like I am laid on a 100 burning stoves. I am
totally out, ok? Totally disoriented, and i try to raise my hand and rub my eyes, which seem
to be gummed together, my eyes, I mean, but I cant move my hands, let alone raise them.
And then someone splashed water on my face and I open my eyes and find the same female
sitting cross legged, smoking. you cant move because you have been glued to the bathtub.
You are burning because I cut you a 100 times all over, superficially of course, else you would
bleed out, and I bathed all those wounds with Chardonnay.
******
How many glue tubes did it take? A lot. And I enjoyed every moment of it. The alcohol was
an inspired touch. I read somewhere that it does something to your burn receptors which
lowers its threshold, in short, he suffers more. I was still surprised that he didnt show any
signs of recognition. That stung more than those wounds would be stinging him. After all, he
had conquered me that day. I was his prized trophy in that pub. Admitting defeat, I asked
him, Dont you remember 31
st
December 2011? The Watering Hole?
*****
And then it all comes back to me, through all the pain. I had passed out in the pub that night.
And it was the next day when I came to that my friend says that I did some serious nonsense
bullsh** to this girl we met at the pub. Did I? He says that he aint playing me and that I
should get in touch with her immediately. I said I would and go back the next day and tell
him that we had met and that we had talked and we had made peace. He didnt buy it, but
then I always had great people skills. Well, I believe in Karma now.
*****
He is a smooth talker, that b*****d. look how he plays it down. Sonofa***ch. There was this
drinking game that night, and we were playing darts. Round of 3s. guy v/s girl. Person
making lesser points on a throw drinks a shot of vodka, neat, and should the girl lose, the guy
gets to kiss her. I lose, and he comes over to kiss me. Sportingly, I oblige, and before I know
it, he is kissing me awkwardly, aggressively, sloppily. I try to push him away at first, but then
the alcohol gets the better of me, and I give in. Everyone is egging him on, and before I
realize whats happening, he has turned me over, pulled down my pants, and begun thrusting.
I am in pain, but my weak protestations are drowned out by the loud techno music. Its all
over in a matter of 5 minutes. The last thing I remember is some girl coming over and asking
me whether I am alright.
*****
Such things happen all the time in pubs. I didnt know she was hurting.
*****
Purists might argue that this isnt rape per se. I would gladly do this same thing to all of
them.
*****
I should probably add that all this while, my mouth was neatly covered with masking tape,
which she had peeled off when we were talking. In that time, she jacked up the stereo system
volume somewhere in the next room. To drown out my screaming, I guess . All of a sudden,
she puts this tape back on and starts emptying bottles of alcohol into the bath tub like crazy.
The pains back on at full blast, and there I am, unable to writhe or move or do anything that
could lessen the pain. She had thought this through. And through all this noise I hear her say
you will have to go now. She lights a match and throws it into the tub. With a whoosh, all
the alcohol fuels the flame and I have one inferno playing all over me, numbing me with
pain. To hell and back would have been easier. That is when everything blacked out. I
probably died, I dont know.
*****
No matter what happens in your life, nothing prepares you for watching another human
being burn to his death. You simply cannot sit back and watch. I had not reached that stage
of malevolence. I knew this would happen and had kept an extinguisher handy. Without
thinking twice, I opened it on him. I put out the flame in under half a minute. He was still
breathing. Badly burnt, but still breathing. That is when I called for an ambulance, and fled.
*****
Thats love. Thats true love if you ask me. Nothing else can make a person intent on murder
do a 180. Its pure,intense love. That is the only conclusion I can make, 2
nd
degree burn
injuries and multiple skin graft surgeries later.
*****
I dont know what it was that made me do it. I am too busy trying to make good my escape to
be thinking of it.

PS: The rape incident is based on a first person account I read somewhere. Dont remember
where. Its unnerving, to think that such things happen. Also,everything else is fiction.