60. Tapestry 13
Hollywood gossip rumoured that Brit Patt could be gay. Other so called insider information states he’d gone cuckoo.
Since his announcement to join the brotherhood, headlines have been abuzz. As vowed, he’d told all. Females were surprised; but more delighted. Some offered to cure him of gymnophobia (the fear of nudity), whilst others hoped to devirginize his stalk. Love letters poured in, promising the best night of his life, asking him to elope rather than to take his vows; girls dispensing adulation, begging for his pure hand in marriage, assuring they are virgins themselves.
Reprimands came in, too; said if it is isolation he wants, isolation they can give - they can lock him in the basement and feed him bread and water; perhaps Brit Patt will consider being a sex slave? Feminists commented on the merits of clothed-female naked-male femdom, and Brit would make an excellent mascot, promoting female empowerment and the domestication of male sexuality. He can be a male stripper anytime.
Prostitutes joined the bandwagon, saying the star truly needed a professional for his first time; all vying to be the one, the woman who stole Brit Patt’s cock, and even possibly, heart. Movie studios wanted in, porno cos., they offered huge contracts in exchange for exclusive rights to film the hottest guy fucking for the very first time.
Shrinks and hypnotists proclaim they can diagnose and cure this insanity; they can make him normal, reverse his phobias and eccentricities so that he continues with Hollywood and forgets about the monastery.
The female schoolmates who teased him in youth were tracked down; also, his one-and-only, whose chastity was mulched by ‘mashed potatoes.’ They became minor celebrities, milking fame, even co-authored a book titled I Made Brit. Hate mail surfaced from an opposing group that empathized with the superstar. Another book was published, called Give Brit a Break. A few of the ladies of the first title were shot execution style. The hype died down.
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But in contrast, Roanna’s hype is going up and up and up; ballooning and soaring high the popularity charts. The world loves her, she can unite the nations, bring back the glory days before the War; except that the globe will now be united under one flag, hers.
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Bearing high Roanna’s banner is Divalicious. Bearing high, dumbbells too; everyday in the gym without fail for a strict workout and a stricter diet is the transvestite with the dream come true. Work that body, baby!
The man she used to be is gone. In place, a svelte figure that would fool any hot-blooded idiot. Divalicious is taking up vocal and pole-dancing classes to honour that divine pledge. Once she has graduated, and is a qualified entertainer, she will warm the stage before Roanna’s godlike presence descends upon the crowd.
An elaborate production, the hermaphrodite goddess floats down on a cloud, lowered by invisible wires to the Vote for Fausi’s theme song of dramatic music. The backdrop is sky, and her hands and ego are raised to absorb and drink of the champagne sprays of praise offered by noisy supporters drunk with her aura.
Hair in bun, revealing a delicate nape, the horn-rimed bespectacled publicist cum campaign manager with minute breasts in white silk-shirt and grey pantsuit, the brain behind this entire operation, saw in Divalicious the final key to global domination. On their side, they’d gotten the fairer sex, both flat and fully-endowed, homosexuals, and the in-betweens. What’s left is the average bloke.
To get this demographics’ attention, you need a sublime creature to appeal to their masculinity. A Marilyn Monroe type; never mind that she used to be a guy (that fact they can easily hide). The campaign manager ensured Divalicious’ image and routine was sexy, but not slutty; that her voice was trained by a speech coach to sound like a damsel in distress - stopping short of the needy mark...or of a squeaky demarcation – just enough to tug gently at the spermatic cord; and her black Indian skin bleached white and demure, radiant, soft and sweet-smelling - exactly the way regular guys fantasize.
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In another part of town, Wong Boom Bong is delighted his little experiment is paying dividends. By a push of a simple switch he can manipulate the souls of canines. The animal spirits burn bright in myriad flames, and are projected by the dogs’ brain onto the canvas of spacetime; a three-dimensional manifestation of the ethereal.
In this amplified state, the physical frame of the creature morphs to its immortal substance; the stuff stars are made of. Just a fraction of this universal gas suffices.
How on earth did the boy get his hands on such potent vapour? From a computer game, where else!? Bought it off the developers using a prepaid card. From another programme, encoded in the skeletons of the first fully-interactive 3D novel - which words jump out to grab at you - he modified the elements of the first, converting it from virtual reality, only potent in the MMORPG, to an actual power usable in real life.
His next step is to try it on humans. Fact, he’s been operating on his parents every night while they sleep. The adults wake up feeling different, this they admit over breakfast table, though what exactly, they’re not sure. Good or bad, they don’t know. Their son just shrugs and grins, and continues masticating cereals.
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Master Wan, stroking in glee his silky hair with a comb carved from an angel’s carcass, is satisfied with the progress of his plan. That kid, no doubt, is in possession of incredible talent; only a prodigy could decode and enter the innards of his book. But the child is clueless of the prominent role he is to play in the end of the Earth; the last act, the final scene.
So what the Master feared initially was just a hoax, a boy cry wolf. Rather, this early discovery of Wong Boom Bong’s faculty is a gift of providence, the divine machine chugging out tragedies and comedies, and a vital page of god’s script for an upcoming movie on mankind’s demise had inadvertently flew in the wind and landed onto his lap. Destiny introduces a main character to the unfolding of events, and now Master Wan has the opportunity to twirl that little bugger around his pearly-pink-painted-pointed-pinkie, and perchance, rewrite the climax of history. Give what we like to call a twist, nowadays, to the story. Soon it would be time to make his presence felt.
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To sell a new product, you need a great story. That’s the advice forwarded by advertisers and marketing gurus. Pomelo Anderson started a business. She just launched a fast-food chain selling affordable, nutritious and healthy value meals and snacks under the brand name Pomelo Pie.
Just as a clown is the face of burgers and an old colonel the face of fried chicken, Pomelo is the face of her Pie.
She swears by her sexy physique.
“Ya’ll wanna be like me?” she shrills for the ad in fake Southern accent, “then c’mon an’ eat at da Pie!”
Inside the outlets, the decor is Texan cowboy. There is a near naked mannequin of her at the door, riding and gripping the bull horns of an animated rodeo, concurrently greeting and welcoming guests with galloping pre-programmed phrases.
Bestseller is the chocolate milkshake, curling out thick and soft from pressurized kegs the shape of Pomelo’s curvaceous rear. Meat between two buns is another popular dish amongst customers, and so are the dumplings the size of her breasts. Every item on the menu is presented and served either in the form of one of her gorgeous and desirable body parts, or male alien genitalia.
“Eat all ya wan, it’s fat free,” she promotes, sounding spastic rather than an all-American belle, “Tuesday is aur buffet for only nine ninety-nine. So c’mon down, everybody, to da Pie!”
According to the website, Pomelo Pie serves organic vegetarian cuisine which tastes a hundred percent like sugar, fat and meat. It’s a wholesome secret recipe of Ms. Anderson’s grandma, who just recently passed away peacefully in her sleep at a hundred and two without suffering any major diseases, bored merely of this world and aspiring for heaven and her Maker. It’s the only thing the centrefold hottie swears she consumes.
“Ya dun hav ta feel guilty like aw ancestors did, `cos ma granny’s got da secret. She did no share bac then, bu’ now I’rm sharin it wi yu!” she ends the commercial, losing the slang entirely, and replaced instead by another more comically Asian than anything else.
That’s right, before the War, our grandparents were a vain bunch: going under the knife, always dieting, watching what they ate to mimic celebrity matchstick figures; and after the War, food and plastic surgery became obscenely expensive, and mostly unpalatable, thus resulting in many starving and ugly souls.
Pomelo, in her venture, so she claims, will succeed in abolishing world hunger by introducing healthy meals which has the flavour of comfort food; and on the plus side, her patrons could end up looking hot like her (or in possession of bulging ET organs, if they are guys) even as they partake of this symbolic consumption of her flesh and fluids which the Pie provides.
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According to Manny Masculine, Rex shuns Pomelo Pie. “Well, the packaging states it is all veg made to taste like meat,” Manny gesticulates, “and as far as I know, dogs don’t like greens.” The hobbit pats his pet, “Good dog,” he praises, “you know what’s junk, don’t you?” He rubs the Rottweiler on the head, and the large animal lolls its tongue in response.
Honestly, Rex has been a bit moody ever since returning from its disappearance, Manny notes. He’ll never know what happened; if only the dog could talk, it would tell of its ordeal. “Probably nothing, just letting my imagination run riot,” Manny consoles himself, “that boy just went off on an exploratory track. He came back on his own, didn’t he?”
But the changes could not have been more peculiar. For one, it’s lost its zest for human cadaver, and subsequently, of course, the police found no use for it any longer. All of which means less income for Manny.
By right this should not be a problem, he is Madam Medusa’s man, arguably the most powerful woman on Earth; but Manny Masculine is a proud male of Italian stock. He may only be 1.2192 meters in height, but he is not going to ask any woman for help, not even if she sits on the advisory board to NUN, the New United Nations, and is head of an international conglomerate.
As far as he is concerned, she is the needy one in love with his enchanted tongue of pleasure.
Wet, bright-pink and elongated, that slippery thing can swim in any position, and she is well aware that it is even more dexterous than Rex’s panting piece. It is the lover’s favourite organ. Not even his muscles garner such attentions and affections.
Suffice to say, Manny Masculine has got no use for the phallus. It’s just an accessory to pee. All that weight lifting and body building had rendered it exhausted and completely useless. As for the balls, they are merely testosterone factories for his iron pumping career.
She does not mind that. And neither does he. The short Italian considers himself a ladies’ man, a romantic. It is the passionate welfare of his woman which is paramount. He satisfies her with his mouth, and by the way she groans it is evidence of his prowess, a testimony.
Now back to this manly pride of not soliciting women for assistance. Madam Medusa is the perfect girlfriend. She may be rich and influential, but she had never ever once offered him money. He would have been insulted if she did, and would have instantaneously demanded a breakup. She’d not bought him gifts either, and most of the time, she comes over to his tiny abode for sex. His partner enjoys a tight squeeze; it turns her commanding frame on for she has a specific thing for restrictive clothing and coitus in cramped spaces.
Only a few times they’d romped in her penthouse overlooking the crowded city and the dry desert in the west beyond, and the ocean yonder in the east; and yes, Manny had thought that her mansion of an apartment is posh and nice; but no, he would never call or consider that home.
Home is where his blood, sweat and tears were shed, and his neighbourhood in the ghetto, lush with heritage before the War, a township that saw many scars of machinegunfire, buildings still riddled with holes, and barren lands crater bombed. A grey zone he witnessed all his family tortured first, and then snuffed; such memories, such recollections, such tearful pain; if ever they got married, he would be adamant Madam Medusa moved in with him, making into a matrimonial home his bachelor pad fronting the sewerage in the slums.
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Madam Medusa is chairing a video-conference heads of division meeting of the Medusa Group. She’d just terminated the marketing director of coffee distributions in mid-sentence justifying the reasons for poor sales. She did not buy any of his excuses, and ordered for him to be shipped to beautify her garden of statues, ferns and flowers, proving her powers do work over mega computer screens.
Now the gentleman in charge of Far East real estate is speaking. He should not be that anxious as market share has increased consistently over the quarters, but he is staring at his shoes, just to be safe. The Madame only hires men, `cos her charms don’t work over women. But she is not listening. She knows she can read the report later to gather details. Instead, her thoughts are masturbating over a dwarf. In it, she’s sitting on Manny Masculine’s bald head, grinding her shaven cunt over his rough stubbly top, occasionally sliding down to the sides to allow his pointed ears entry. She’s wet, and the juices mixed with sweat are charging down like a liquid army shooting watery arrows all over Manny’s face, blinding his eyes with a crying sting.
Medusa looks up, accidentally freezing the COO of finance. Damn, her lace panties are soaked. She hopes it’d not stained through her skirt for subordinates to notice; otherwise, more people would have to die. The hard consolation is that they go off with an exhilarating angel’s lust, or priapism in other words, (Muhammad ‘Tongkat’ Ali’s condition). It is only fair that should you shock a man to a perpetual cramp that you include his main muscle as well.
Overall, business is up two point nine percent. Some subsidiaries are in the red, which is expected, but most are growing despite the torrential economic crisis crippling the world twenty-odd-years after the War. Madam Medusa attributes this to her iron will and visionary leadership, and her innate motivational skills, which are sure to fire up the workforce to strive for their jobs if they don’t want their careers to stay put like a dead rock.
Final on the agenda, Madame says she wants a casual meeting with Pomelo Anderson and Roanna Fausi, three of the most dominant women on Earth in one room. For what to be discussed she would not say. “Oh, just a chat,” she waved and glanced across the room and the cinema-sized monitor. Everybody averted her eyes, which were yellow and black vortexes going to the Underworld.
Suddenly, she recalled and enquired about the status of the murder investigation on the slaying in their flagship fashion store. How is the police progressing? Everyone looked around, no one had an answer. The head of fashion, though gay, was wheel-barrowed away. Medusa considered giving him as a present to a dignitary of State whose birthday was just around the corner. Carved from her own eyes, she would state. Then she banged the table in indignation, cursing the authorities. All present stiffened, but were relieved when their muscles could relax.
That night, as she put on her Gorgon mask to probe - which incidentally does not look too dissimilar from a black Great Dane, and in turn quite resembles Batman - she got to think of Manny. Does he love her? Does she love him? What is the nature of their relationship? Is she capable of love in the first place?
Medusa’s mother was a goddess. She had no father, or at least that was what she was told. She was an immaculate conception in a lab; mum fucked herself, some asexual reverie. But that was yesterday’s news. Mum and her could not get along, quarrelled often; at sixteen, she was supposed to be a virgin sacrifice to her own mother, a toast to her parent’s everlasting life. When conceived, mother had already injected a curse in her DNA. Should she lose her virginity, she would have perpetual bad-hair days so terrible all men who cast themselves upon her face would be turned to stone instantaneously. Medusa did not know. As a rebellious fifteen-year-old, she snuck away with a handsome intern, or lab assistant, she cannot remember; and after he’d taken her, he gazed longingly for a sequel, but in place, gawped forever through dilated granite pupils.
Youthful Medusa screamed; she was of no use to mummy anymore, and with hundred dollars and a tiny suitcase that was her life, she was put out in the rain to fight or die.
Not bad, how far she’d gotten in approximately thirty years, though Medusa, as she harboured reminiscences, realizes she is but a barren woman, empty and angry, a restless spirit which knows of nothing but revenge. A creature absent of remorse, and to the brim with hellfire; this was she who loved doomed Manny.
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Rex is possessed and on the run again. This time he joins with a pack wrecking havoc across the lands. In their spectral states, these dogs can teleport and devour on every continent. More gulped down souls and conflagrated vestiges; the man in a London phone booth, fried; the couple making love in their car in a secluded Central Park spot, melted onto the seats and dashboard; the Chinese youth on his Walkman, blackened on the Shanghai-Pudong Maglev as he makes his way back home after a study stint overseas, pushing his parents to suicide, unable to cope with the loss of their only son of the one-child policy regime; the in-group of Japanese schoolgirls harassing a nerd during recess in a Tokyo public school toilet, altogether microwaved; quite similarly, in Busan, South Korea, popular cheerleaders embarking on a rocket ship to superstardom after their dance choreography went viral and attracted the attention of K-pop manufacturers had their budding careers permanently shortened when all five young female lip-synchers were electrocuted during the filming of their first video clip which had them prancing skimpily to the resurgent Oppa Gangnam style; rock stars on stage in Berlin, fused to their instruments during the guitar solo of their megahit, sending fans off in a stampede, killing hundreds and injuring thousands more at the Brandenburg Gate; the lone pornographer in a Singapore government flat, burnt unrecognizable on the couch with his hand still stroking his cock as the TV moaned a faux orgasm; the stripper and her from-out-of-country client in Las Vegas during a lap dance, singed, the lingerie-tease lingering on her expression, and a primate’s mug is plastered all over his East-European facade; a loathsome housewife contemplating divorce in a Perth suburb is cooked at the kitchen stove, with latex gloves wilting, as if her fingers were chewing-gum stretched from her wrists, whilst her estranged husband with his buddies in a barbeque cook-out are charred more than the fowls they have on skewers; tourists at the O Christo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro, also becoming statues themselves, though totally undignified, and foul smelling with smoke puffing off their skins; summer sunbathers at Cape Town got hotter than the sun they worshiped, as if solar flares lapped them with tongues of fire and heat waves; in Spain during an El Classico, the footballer of the year, together with his closest rival in an eye-to-eye, chest-to-chest face-off after a hard tackle, also kissed mouth-to-mouth in a soldering smooch of death when a stray incandescent mutt trespassed the stadium green and came between their rivalry and eighty-five-thousand cheers and jeers, leaving zigzagged, smouldering patterns that vaguely resembled the famous Nazca lines drawn from turf to stands amidst wailings and cacophony and the mass panic of burning men running helter-skelter; a terrorist mastermind hiding in a cave in the Middle East was cremated alive against his will and belief; and in more or less the same region, one of the richest men in the world was found dead in a scorched sanctum carved from pure gold, liquefying the precious metal together with his harem of one thousand and one virgins (some will say sexpots), of which only one survived; nearer the Arctic, an old Eskimo out of his igloo admiring an aurora was seared beyond identification in what local tribes described as the dance of the spirits ferrying his consciousness away; and in downtown Kuala Lumpur, shoppers ran amok when flames of wild wolves suddenly appeared on a public holiday and randomly ate panic stricken persons in proximity.
The deathly excursion always begins with the animal sensing something at its periphery. That thing jumps across, and the creature gives chase. In the design of the conduit, the corporeal is always behind the celestial. This sends the dog into a trance as it follows its own spirit. Once the two states of being are aligned, the canine attacks. And at that point, physical Rex is sucked into a wormhole and joined to its future self.
The escapade repeats, victim after victim, and Rex has no memory of each. Past midnight in Mumbai, after obliterating the cronies of a local gangster - setting them alight, whereof slum dwellers called a phenomenal spontaneous combustion, the breath of the fire god Agni incarnated as Kali, the name for one of his seven fiery tongues licking those evil men dry - Rex spots a weird monster, a black Great Dane’s face on an imposing figure. For a while they stared; then as the dog cocks its head to one side, as if remembering, as if confused, the phantom shape disappears.
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Here’s a puzzling metaphor: Agni, inferno deity of Hindu literature, has two heads, three legs and seven hands. Sergeant Siva and Detective Lingam, non-practising Hindus of post-world-war-three-pre-apocalypse, have two heads, three legs and two hands. What separates the two icons are five hands and seven fiery tongues, which are absent from the latter. Some representations of Agni only give him two hands; this makes the similarity even more acute. What more? At least one of the twins has a blazing temper.
The Detective thought of this, research for his book he wants no one to read, not even his brother. So he writes when the other sleeps. It’s a novel, but it’s more than that; Lingam traces the symbolism, their origin. What highly interest him are the seven fiery tongues; there must be some esoteric connection. As for the discrepancy of limbs, that’s probably an artistic misrepresentation, a perversion by the imaginative process of man through millennia.
He’s got to stop soon, Siva will be awake. Then he will prowl for men in clubs. Lingam, inevitably, has to follow. The writer frowns, he can barely tolerate his other. The Sergeant will bring guys home; most frequently, an obnoxious stud who goes by the moniker Jim Franko. There’s gonna be an orgy in the room, some of the gays will even try to hit on him. Lingam just ignores them. Stuffs in his headphones and tries to do some reading. But that sanctuary can only take him so far. When fuck-time arrives, he is yanked from the solace of his absorption. Sure, Detective Lingam and Sergeant Siva have their own genitals, but they share one asshole! And it’s all right as long as homo-bro is giving, but when he receives...that which is pleasure for the Sergeant is literally a fucking pain in the ass for the Detective.
This usually starts the fights. Lingam punches his brother, and a scuffle ensues. Those Village People lookalikes, they grab their accessories and leave in a rush, stating some embarrassing apology for initiating domestic violence. Siva, a burly moustachioed type, will scream with tears in his eyes, condemning his brother as the reason he can’t hold down a permanent boyfriend. Lingam, leaner, will retaliate, stating he’d not had a fuck himself for years; no woman would want to sleep with him. Siva says that’s not his fault; it’s just unfortunate they are freaks, and Lingam is targeting the wrong type of women...the normal ones.
“What’s normal in a time like this?” came the loud and final reply. Neither one had an answer. Staring silent, breathing heavy, sweating and in pain from the punches, the brothers acquiesced in their karmic prison of a bed to rest. After that, they go to work to pursue the lead they have on the enigmatic and malignant child rapist.
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Perspiration imprint on ‘Tongkat’ Ali’s t is in the shape of Disney’s Mickey; his man boobs and unceremonious tummy sweating. He’s just done with a kid. A boy. Wiping durian pulp off his sword, he kept it, (still hard, remember?); paying the child’s dad two notes. The little fella, he couldn’t be more than eleven, was in tears.
For a while, the paedophile felt sorry; then he shrugged. “He’ll get over it,” Ali implored his conscience, “learn the harsh realities of life, the school of hard knocks; he’ll be fine, I didn’t beat him or anything, everyone goes through emotional scarring, but we all deal with it in the end. Some pain is unavoidable, everyone has to lose his or her virginity, and it’ll be easier for him the next time round. Damn, it’s a cruel world, and people just gotta survive. Find any way they can,” he justified.
As he exited the abandoned bungalow, another man entered. Picking up where I left off, Ali thought, and laughed. That second guy would have to cream semen off that young boy. He got him first, a virgin then, too. First come, first served.
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Well, justice is served, William Borg thought. Sirens flared out of the blue. Tyres screeched in front of a large derelict building and a guilty looking oldish dude in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt is shaking.
They got him, the kiddie-dream thief. The police have on psychic helmets to protect themselves from hypnosis just in case. If he possesses telekinesis and he can like chuck cars and debris, then it’s a different but no less dangerous scenario.
But that guy doesn’t look at all sinister, just a regular perv’s exterior. Strange, William had the image of someone fiercer in countenance, but from countless historical records, perpetrators often deceive their appearances. Inside that rundown abode with an unkempt compound is an epileptic kid and his dead father. The child is never going to awake. They’ll have to send him to Special Cases and let the experts deliberate.
As for the forty-nine-year-old predator, he’s swearing profusely to God his innocence. They all say that. William cuffs and hands him over to Detective Lingam and Sergeant Siva. They’re gonna have a party time interrogating him. In the same room with those two, you’re gonna confess, you’re gonna talk, you’re gonna agree with anything they say and sign your life away.
William Borg smiles a satisfying relief. Another bad guy confined. The cyborg is so proud he is a police officer, and he will be so long as his model is not replaced.
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Far away in a small but historical country in Europe, Kunty Kaur is on a permanent vacation. She’d not plan to initially, Kunty just hopped on a plane in an impulsive move. She needed change, she wanted to travel, and she loves Europe. All that culture and diversity, the rich human history, the world-renowned arts on display; just the notion of it makes her swoon in marvellous dismay.
No, she must live her dream, make it a reality, not allow anything or any thought hamper her. So, out of the hospital, she purchases a no-return airline ticket. Touchdown anywhere in that beautiful continent will do. Therefore she bought the cheapest; she is thrifty, intending to make her whoring bucks stretch the longest.
Her travels started near the western borders of Russia, and she made west, alone, hitchhiking most of the time to save money. Yah there were jerks asking for ‘one thing’ in return, but she handled them well, like the way she’d taken care of troublemakers in her former profession.
Guys, boys, are in general, harmless, and most of them are damn shy in front of girls, what more, shameful when soliciting prostitutes. Kunty Kaur had promised herself, no more cash for sex, but she still knew how to placate, and if need, humiliate men. Worse came to worst, she spread her legs and they fainted.
Initially, her solution when she ran out was to work, save, travel; but work was a scarcity, no one was hiring, and even if she did find an odd-job, the pay was meagre. So she reverted to the evergreen, and found perverted demand, providing her the means to continue her tour. But deep down, she was morose. She had broken her pledge. It seems she cannot run from her past, she cannot escape. Freedom is not a different continent; freedom is inside, and she has a prison within. She is a slave. But if she is going to be a slave, she might as well be a happy one.
Thus, country after country, absorbing the sights, the places, the tranquil towns and pristine villages - mostly impoverished - as well as the dreggier cities; she saw in them the landscapes of the War, the hideous vertebra under aesthetics. Proud though the lands are of their heritage, but after three world wars, they no longer have the will to live. She saw, in her roaming, the tired lines of young radioactive mothers nursing deformed babies, bitter men with more scars than face, the skeletons of famous buildings - for governments do not have the resources to restore; children born after the War, the next generation in which hope lie, but now they laugh and play with missing limbs and damaged spines.
Kids will be kids; no matter how harsh the environment, no matter how terrible their condition, they will play on. The innocent, blessed with an uncanny gift to forget, though to forgive may be another matter altogether. Kunty gazes down, to where her reproductive organs lie beneath her shorts; offspring is out of the equation, perhaps, so too is love, and to the person who did this to her, if she ever finds out, with tears dripping onto that spot of her crotch, Kunty prays she’ll possess the power to absolve.