There are other names too. Edgar Allen Poe, Edith Wharton, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock. Two Indian authors have also briefly touched upon their own experiences in their fiction. I do not mean Raj Kamal Jha or Arundhati Roy.

The latter, who has written of brother-sister incest with almost tempting tenderness was asked by Anna M.M. Vetticad in the 26 July 1999 issue of India Today how discriminating she was in her choice of issues. Replies the Booker Award winner, ‘I am not shopping for causes. When my essay on the Narmada came out, I got a call saying, “That was a brilliant piece you wrote. Now I would like you to do one for me on child abuse.” And I am like, “For or against?” It is so ridiculous, the very idea that people think it is a mechanical business, writing well. It comes from thinking.’ Anna M.M. Vetticad says, ‘So when you are asked to write on child abuse . . .’ Arundhati Roy cuts in with, ‘Will you write about child abuse? Will you write the chairman’s speech at the underwear manufacturing company? This is an external view of it. Exactly the same way as every publisher in the world is asking me, “Will you write another book? Will you sign another contract before you have written a book?” Of course not.’

Point taken Ms Roy. But the next time you are asked a question on Child Sexual Abuse, please do us—the affected—a favour. Please don’t say anything. The way you—specially you—say it, the pseudo-intellectualization hurts. ‘For or against’?

This made me wonder though, suppose someone does want to write a book from the other point of view—that of the perpetrator’s—what are the facts they would work with?

What is a perpetrator like, does he only come from a paternally dysfunctional family like mine? Even then, can he have a reason for doing what he does?

I have been closely scrutinizing books, studies, surfing the internet, sending e-mails to mental health care professionals in countries where a substantial volume of work has been done on Child Sexual Abuse. I have also spoken with psychiatrists and counsellors in India and a few perpetrators myself. I cannot find a single thread which binds them all; which is why I have to underscore that this has everything to do with ‘sexualized sex’, otherwise called lust. Sexualized adults lust for little children and sexually assault them. Lust leads.

Patriarchy, power, penetration—these are all the factors that assist greatly in allowing a child to be sexually, and physically, abused; in a few cases they are reasons. However, they cannot be used as psychodynamic catch-alls which explain everything and nothing. The crux of it is that hectic adult activity described as sex, too much of it; in both, practice and the mind; and to the exclusion of a lot else which really should be what differentiates humans from animals. We do not want to admit this, for it would prove us as succumbing to the most basic of our instincts. To do so would mean accepting that we do not want to rise above it. We would much rather fuck: indiscriminately, repetitively.