A smidgen of skin smoked on the hob, as well as a generous portion of a meatball. With a knife, I scraped off what I could. Like foie gras, I caked the buttery meatball on a crust of bread and delighted in it. The skin, I picked up by the hairs. It wanted more elaboration. A pinch of salt, pepper, and herbes de provence, and the earth spun under my feet.

CHAPTER 17

Professor Ranji did not come to class on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. He did not call, send flowers, or write. The first days, recalling what I’d eaten, I felt hungrier than ever and wished for more of the same. The French say, “L’appétit vient en mangeant,” and I hold this to be true.

I spent those afternoons marinating Professor Ranji in my mind, in lassi and rose petals. I rolled him in unleavened dough and sharp Indian spices before deep frying him, set his crispy carcass on the sheets of my bed like greasy French fries on paper towels. The very thought of him fed me intravenously with the sweetest nectar I’d ever tasted, that is what made the experience so unique, for I did not taste anything in my mouth, but feeling it in my veins, I knew it was sweet. I was tortured with another feeling, as new to me. It were as if I had left parts of myself behind in his possession, and could not long survive if he personally did not return them to me. I was living, more than knowing it, I felt it. How ironic that in the most heightened moment of my life, I was willing to give my life to him, allow it to be transformed into a food, ready if not begging to be eaten and discarded.

But deprivation curtails appetite and I found myself playing with the sheets of my bed, making turbans on my knees, mummies out of my limbs. I could not believe it; his flesh had been welcomed into mine, yet this meant nothing to him, not even enough for him to pick up a telephone. At first, I found excuses for him, but I had to face the facts at length. Professor Ranji simply passed his meat around to whomever would take it.

Within a week, I discovered that instead of offering me a caloric boost, what little I’d consumed of him was actually robbing me of my usual energies and happy disposition. Basically, it was a tapeworm eating away inside me.

A shiny red Christmas garland was taped around the name tag on Professor Ranji’s office door. We were still months away from that time of the year. I knocked vainly with that dull feeling one has when the door already feels abandoned, knowing no one is going to answer, but needing to alleviate the frustration on some object.

“He’s ill,” the department secretary informed me as she tacked a poster on the corridor wall with twenty-two pairs of dancing X’s, some long-legged, some short-legged, all joyous, though none had heads. This miraculous ballet is called “chromosomes”.