The Unforgettable Desire

Being born in a family of book lovers, I was taught not to judge a book by its cover at an early stage. So I didn’t. Instead I judged the book by how its contents looked. For example, if the book does not have colorful pictures or large font, then it simply wasn’t my type. I held no fascination for novels, I was happy in my little world of Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha Comics, Pinky, Chacha Chaudhury etc. The first novel that I finally dared to read with its small font, at the age of 13, was One Night@ The Call Centre . Since then I have taken pride in saying that I did not have a good start into the world of novels and do not let anyone convince me otherwise. The journey then on must have been good enough because now I wait desperately to lay my hands on the tiny fonts of my Literature books without any prejudices.

What do you do, when your girl friend and you are walking down the street at 10.30PM and are approached by bikers who pretend to need directions? What do you do when an auto-wallah follows you for more than a kilometer despite your announcement of not wanting the ride? What do you do when the men suddenly speed their bike directly at you? What do you do when they shout “hey baby, chalti kya?” as they pass by? What do you do when men in their cars tend to go in the wrong direction while ogling you?