That’s the spirit.

The flesh, though, responds to its body’s nervous system: the nervous system and its intricate, treacherous circuitry.

Which begins sending out signals the moment a man, or a woman, sexually abuses a child.

I had, and still have, to deal with my—I hate the use of the personal pronoun in this context—abuser. And it is only now, after the detailing for this book, that I realize—and recollect—why I have so many marks on my legs, between the knees and calves, where they could be seen when I wore dresses and skirts. Instead of going to a beauty parlour where hot wax could be poured over my legs and the hair yanked out by their root, I declared it to be a detestable process and instead would shave my legs. I began doing this early in age, as prominently as possible at home, and as I would shave I would cut my legs. Strips of skin would shave off too, one gash went rather neatly almost to the bone; blood, lots of it, on the floor. When I would be forced to wax instead, I would develop red skin rashes and allergies on my legs so that I could keep shaving. As I shaved, I nicked, wounded, profusely scarred. I was hurting myself because my pain was not being validated, that I could not bear to have that man around me.

In 1999, too, I childishly thought my spirit and will would be victorious again.

For my second book Once Was Bombay, it was decided that if I could literally rise to the idea, the presentation would be a previously untried one in faction (facts written in story-telling style). A blend of short stories and novellas which would be connected and yet be able to stand alone as individual pieces of oral history. David Davidar added that he was very keen that one of these novellas deal with the life of a middle-class man, born and brought up in what was then Bombay, preferably Muslim, who was attacked by the rioters after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The key element in this novella, he felt, would be the slow but obvious ‘falling down’ of the area in which this man lived: symbolic of what was happening to the middle class and their city.

‘What about your father?’ he asked.

‘Can’t write about me,’ I protested.

‘It is not about you,’ replied David Davidar, quite brutally I thought. ‘It is about your father, the changing times and city through his eyes.’

My father. Who has known about my sexual abuser and never once told this man off. My father. Who actually holds this man the way his mother did: in thrall.

But this was not about me, it was about my father and his feelings.

I spent several hours and days with my father, questioning and cross-questioning him. I went to his shop and sat there for what appeared like forever to understand his actions and reactions. We must have made for some sight in the middle of Mumbaii’s Bhendi Bazaar: the shopkeeper and his daughter.