The feeling that the woman tried to wash her own guilt with a profusion of her crocodile tears seemed to wipe out his own sense of humiliation brought about by his mother’s misconduct. Thus, while the subjugation of an unwilling woman satisfied his sense of revenge on his mother, the humiliation he could heap on the hapless dame addressed the hurt of his troubled mind. The warning he delivered in the end to the vanquished ‘to keep shut or else’ seemed to seal her shame while signaling his own triumph.
Having enjoyed the fruits of his first trespass, he set himself on the hazardous course of violating the fair sex. Nevertheless, owing to his victims’ fear of scandal, he came out unscathed in umpteen violations. And, for the lack of repercussions, he came to see the lane of rape as but his thoroughfare of vindication. It was with impunity that he began to satiate his lust, raping the women he fancied. Insensibly thus he turned out to be a habitual rapist ever on the prowl.
That fateful evening, he happened to see Shanti who resembled Sneha in every manner. Taking her as Godsend, he felt excited at the prospect of what was in the offing. Raving about her thus, he lost no time in tricking her into his car. Driving her in the top gear to his father’s Mehrauli House, he raped her with all his pent-up fury, as though she were his mother herself. In the end, as was his wont, while he sought to see his ultimate triumph in her humiliation, Shanti, besides calling him SOB, scorned him with all her contempt. As her remark pushed his dichotomic psyche to its edge, he tripped the line. As though to snuff out the very source of his humiliation, he strangled her with all the hate he had been nursing for his mother.
As she lay motionless, he was gripped by a sense of revulsion for having hurt the woman he enjoyed. Confounded by his own hurt, he made love to her body as though to bring her back to life. Yet, as the guilt of his ingratitude gave him no respite, he cursed his mother for the crime he had committed. And having looked at her body for long with
self-remorse, so as not to shame her soul further, he wrapped it in her sari. Though he gathered his wits to shift the body into the car, yet he had no idea what to do with it. However, as he started driving slowly, survival instinct made him look out for an ideal locale to dump the corpse. Before he could act, he sighted the police on patrol from some distance and so tried to speed past them.