The Girl with the Golden Parasol

ONE

Here’s the bare backside of Madhuri Dixit, the same one Salman Khan had aimed at and hit with the pebble from his slingshot. Her back stiffened at the sting, she bent at the waist, and then turned around. Her gaze held no pain but rather a flirtatious excitement, inviting him toward her. The eyes didn’t belong to Madhuri Dixit, but to a startled doe — an intoxicated, mad, silly doe who lovingly served herself up to her hunter.

Rahul had taped the photo, the center spread in that month’s Stardust, on the window in his room. The blazing sun meant that afternoons on the second floor in Room 252 were hard to take. Madhuri Dixit’s wounded bare backside repelled the intense rays of afternoon sun from his hostel room. She turned her head and stared nonstop at Rahul with those silly, drunken eyes, as if it’d been Rahul himself who’d made her beautiful wounded derriere a target.

Apart from Rahul, no one knew that during a private moment of utter secrecy, he’d had Salman Khan quietly removed from Room 252 and had himself taken the movie star’s place. Rahul shivered with excitement as he realized that the man who had wounded Madhuri Dixit’s gorgeous voluptuous backside was none other than he himself. It was his own slingshot that launched the pebble with a crack that whizzed into Madhuri Dixit, who then let loose an “Oooooooh!”—just as the image in Stardust had been snapped.

Girls enjoy being roughed up. They aren’t chipmunks or kitty cats or small furry animals that purr and roll around when you pet them sweetly. A girl is a different kind of creature: the rougher it gets, the sharper the slap, the more she likes it.

The truth? Girls love brute strength.

That’s why Rahul began working out at the school gym, in order to beef up his biceps like Salman Khan’s. A core like a cheetah and upper body like a leopard. Rahul wanted to mold himself into a sleek, savage, fleet-footed wild animal. And then? Dark Ray-Bans, a pair of Wranglers or Levis, a T-shirt, and Nike socks to go with a winning pair of Woodland shoes.

He wondered why he didn’t feel the same way gazing at Lara Datta, Manpreet Brar, or Gul Panag as he did looking at Madhuri. After all, Madhuri was quite a bit older than Rahul. He’d just seen a film with Miss World, Aishwarya Rai. Sure, she shook her bare backside and pranced around just like Madhuri, tilting her head from side to side, all the while staring at Rahul with her light brown eyes. But fuck, it was useless. Aishwarya didn’t even come close. The gulf between Madhuri’s back and all the others was the difference between the sun and moon. There was something about that back of Madhuri, its texture, build, and hue, that Aishwarya and the others just couldn’t touch.

Rahul conducted a comparative study. The bodies of Gul Panag, Sushmita, Lara, and the rest of the newcomer starlets struck him as awfully artificial. Dieting, exercise, and everything else needed to maintain a model’s figure had combined to produce bodies like plastic. On top of that, the hair waxing, expensive facials, spa treatments, and god knows what else. These creatures struck Rahul as nonhuman, synthetic dolls. From head to toe their hair didn’t look quite real: even the light patch of underarm stubble seemed to him like artificial coloring. But it wouldn’t take much — two weeks max. Feed them as humans, allow them to live as normal girls, and presto, their bellies would flab right out. You wouldn’t even recognize them! But Madhuri? She was a species unto her self. Drop her into a slum, make her live in this hostel, feed her the fare of dal, rice, and oily vegetables we get in our mess hall, and even then, she wouldn’t change a whit. She’d maintain the same miraculous radiance and the same dazzling beauty.

Madhuri’s back was natural and authentic and, inexplicably, a swadeshi one. Made in India. The others were unnatural foreign imports and, Rahul deduced, that was the reason they held no charm. But far more momentous was his other conclusion, that girls took pleasure from pain, violence, and others’ raw strength. And: girls preferred their sensual pleasure with a dash of humiliation, subjugation, and abuse. How times had changed. No one paid attention anymore to the ’50s and ’60s romantic film idol types like Shammi Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Vishwajeet, and Jitendra. Today’s girls were crazy for the macho, sadistic sort like Salman Khan, Sunny Deol, and Ajay Devgan. How violent and menacing Shahrukh Khan had been in Darr, calling Juhi Chawla on the phone at all hours, stalking her, trying to rape her, finally stunning her into blood-soaked submission. She was so strangled with fear she could no longer speak. Yet it was this half-schizophrenic madman, Shahrukh Khan, who all the college girls went gaga over.

A Shahrukh: that’s what the girls craved, not some kowtowing Krishnaesque pansy-brand husband. Rahul had unlocked the mystery, and since then Madhuri Dixit has been living in the window of Room 252. It’s been four months.