The slum in which he lived was just outside Mahim Junction railway station, from where the main line went to the upscale Churchgate in South Bombay, while another, known as Harbour line, branched off towards Victoria Terminus, since renamed after the revered Maratha warrior king, Shivaji. Someone had written ‘Mayhem’ just below Mahim on the station’s signboard. As rivers merge with seas, the cluster of homes that made up the slum eventually merged with one of the world’s largest shanty towns—Dharavi.
Darshan, in his mid-twenties, had recently found work with the food delivery app, Jiffy. All he needed was a motorbike and a smart phone, both of which he had, though neither of them was his.
The middle-class idea of sex-only-after-marriage made no sense to the people of the slum. It was all about opportunity. Everyone made out, whenever, wherever they had the chance, be it in a dark corner by a garbage dump, or even at a railway siding. Darshan had no trouble finding women. He was fairish where most other boys in the neighborhood were dark. He dressed well—hoody and ripped jeans were his favorite. He had a receding hairline, but his hair, brown from poor nourishment, gave him the appearance of a foreigner. And nothing in his facial features, eyes, nose, ears, lips were out of place. They were all evenly spaced out. Although he wasn’t tall, his wafer-thin body gave the impression of height. He wore a fake diamond stud on his left ear.
Then something happened. Darshan loved married women. Married women were so adept in the art of lovemaking it seemed they knew the Kamasutra backwards. But one such woman, whom Darshan dragged to an abandoned shed, chuckled at the smallness of his male organ as he took off his underwear. Perhaps, she compared him to her husband who was a stallion? Darshan couldn’t get it up after that, and abruptly put on his jeans and walked away. But the episode had far-reaching consequences. He was certain he would be body-shamed by any woman he slept with. They would think he was a juvenile. He grew anxious. He went online to search for penis-enlargement oils and pills that were widely advertised on the internet. But they were prohibitively expensive, and their mixed reviews only confused him. He toyed with the idea of asking his buddies for advice, but was afraid they too would make fun of him.
Darshan stopped having sex with women. He masturbated in the public toilet built for slum-dwellers whenever he was horny.
Darshan’s deliveries took him to various parts of the city in a five- or six-kilometer radius. Pizzas, burgers, dumplings, biryani, pulao, he transported them all in a square box mounted at the back of his bike. Often, he was stuck in traffic and had to answer the irate calls of ravenous customers. “Coming,” is all he tersely said to them. “There’s traffic.” At other times he couldn’t locate their addresses on his GPS and had to call them. Occasionally, his customers gave him tips and five-star ratings. Once or twice his bike broke down midway, and he had to eat up the food he was carrying, for which he had to pay from his salary.
The bottles of water that Darshan gulped as he rode through Bombay’s hot humid streets made him want to pee. The BMC had built public urinals at every intersection, and he stepped into them to empty his bladder. In some of them, he saw men masturbating each other, giving one another blowjobs, even having anal intercourse, all in broad daylight. They didn’t seem to be afraid of the police. Nor did anyone object to what they were doing and gay-bash them. Darshan lingered. He voyeuristically watched the men, though he never intended to be a part of the action. The toilets were filthy, with human excrement in some of the bowls. There were flies all around. Darshan’s phone kept buzzing till he switched it off.
But then came a day when he allowed a man in a blazer and a tie urinating next to him to fondle him. The man spoke to him in whispers and gestures. He wanted Darshan to fondle him in turn, which he flatly refused. When the man left, Darshan masturbated and got out of the toilet. There was no water in the urinal to wash his hands. He thought of how his customers would have to accept their food from his sticky fingers, smelling of semen.
Back in the slum, some girls with whom Darshan had had sex hinted that they wanted more. He was tempted, but then he remembered the woman who sniggered at him. “Not feeling well,” he said to the girls and sent them packing.
In the days that followed, Darshan found himself gravitating towards the public urinals even if he did not want to pee. He deliberately stood next to men who were aroused and played with themselves under the pretext of taking a leak. He cast sly glances at them and waited expectantly for them to caress his genitals. It happened quickly enough, and now he was being wanked three or four times a day. But he violently pulled himself away when they took his hand and brought it to their own dicks. “Sorry, I’m no chakka,” he said.
A young man more or less of Darshan’s age struck up a conversation with him as they got out of the urinal. “Heard of Grindr?” the young man asked. He went on to tell him all about the dating app and said if homosex was what he wanted he would have a wide choice of chikna men on Grindr.
Darshan did not download Grindr. The young man he met in the urinal had used words like gay and homosex. Darshan did not regard himself as gay. He was strongly attracted to women, but unless he did something about the size of his equipment there was no question of sleeping with women. Though he was sure he was straight, his visits to the public urinals continued. Other men he met told him about Grindr, and he came to the conclusion there was no harm in downloading it.
No sooner did Darshan post a picture of his erect penis with shaved pubic hair on Grindr than he was flooded with calls. Men asked him if he was top or bottom or versatile, and it took him a while to figure out what the words meant. Once he understood their meaning, he made it a point to repost his profile with the word TOP in bold letters. A man who responded told Darshan that, actually, since he had posted a picture of his dick, and not a picture of his arse, it was clear he was top.
Men complimented Darshan on the color, shape and size of his penis. True, it looked larger on their phone screens than it really was, but none of them asked for its exact length, something that many of the profiles on Grindr made it a point to emphasize. A caller told Darshan that he was insanely turned on by his rolled-back foreskin.
A housewife to whom Darshan delivered a spicy chicken curry and naan invited him inside for a glass of water. “You must be thirsty,” she said to him. “Would you like a Thums Up? A beer?” Though the housewife was sexy, Darshan politely refused, saying he had orders. He knew what the housewife was up to this afternoon hour when her husband and children were away. Delivery boys spoke of such things all the time.
Darshan had no qualms, however, in going to the flat of a man he met on Grindr. They got to business without fuss. The man got down on his knees, which no woman had ever done. And though his backside wasn’t a patch on a woman’s cunt, it was pleasurable all the same. At the time of parting, Darshan and he made sure they had each other’s mobile numbers.
Darshan started to visit more flats. Many of them were in redeveloped high rises in the vicinity of his slum. The repertoire of his lovers amazed him. No woman he fucked had told him about cunnilingus and rimming. He learned that one size didn’t fit all. Some men were married, others single. Some did it with condoms, others did not. Some wanted him to spend the night in their flat, others asked him to leave as soon as they came. Some men liked to smoke after sex, others were non-smokers. Some offered him money, others did not. (To the ones that did not, he asked for money to top up his bike).
The most rewarding of Darshan’s sexcapades, however, was at a duplex in Bandra, overlooking the Sea Link, where his host, an NRI, gave him a cream that promised to increase penis size by a good inch and a half. “It’s from Spain,” the host said, “And I know men who used it.”
“Aur unka bada hua?” Darshan asked, as they lay in bed, smoking.
“Of course, hua,” his host replied.
That night, Darshan got home with the cream in his pocket, dreaming of a consummate future.
Things were satisfactory, till the day Darshan was deceived by a man whose profile on Grindr said he was bottom. When he got to the man’s flat in Wadala and rang the doorbell, the man opened the door naked. Darshan was shocked, but did not allow it to show on his face. The man motioned him to follow him to the bedroom. “Nanga ho jao,” the man said to him in the bedroom. “Jaldi.” It seemed he only had time for a quickie. Darshan complied.
The man humped himself on the bed and asked Darshan to penetrate him. But he howled in pain as soon as Darshan began, shoving him off himself, not allowing him to climax. Darshan was put off. “I have fucked dozens of men,” he said, “but no one was as fussy as you.” He advised the man to lubricate his arse to make it easy. “Easy for me, or for you?” the man asked. Then, before Darshan knew it, the man attempted to sodomize him.
Darshan was livid. “Hey mister, what do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “I’m TOP. You’re supposed to be bottom. That’s what your profile said. And that’s why I’m here.”
“I’m actually versatile,” the man replied. “You fuck me, I fuck you.”
Losing no time, the man forced himself on Darshan. This was easy, considering he was stronger than Darshan, heavily built with muscular arms and large buttocks. Then he hit below the belt.
“Look at my dick compared to yours,” he said to Darshan. “It’s eight inches long. Yours is an elchi kela. I’m the one who’s masculine, not you.”
Darshan did not know what masculine meant. He barely knew a few English words that enabled him to get by on Grindr and his food delivery app. The man’s use of elchi kela rankled in his mind. There was a scuffle. In a fit, Darshan took a pillow and held it with all his might to the man’s face. Muffled sounds came from the man’s throat as he tried to dislodge the pillow with his hands. But in a minute or so, he was smothered.
Darshan did not know if the man was dead or had merely fainted. An uncanny thought struck him. He would fuck the man till he climaxed, before the man regained consciousness. In his unconscious state, the man would offer no resistance. He wouldn’t be able to bawl curses.
Darshan rose and lit a cigarette. He put two fingers to the man’s nose and figured he was dead, for he wasn’t breathing. Then he brought his fingers two paces down to the man’s warm lips. The man kissed Darshan’s fingers, or so he imagined. He was turned on. He took off his trousers and began fucking the man. Fucking a dead body was the most thrilling experience he’d had in his life.
On getting home Darshan began worrying about the police. The murder would soon be discovered and the hunt for the culprit would begin. On entering the victim’s building, he hadn’t bothered to check if there were CCTV cameras in the lobby. But even if there were, how did it make him culpable? Delivery boys entered and exited buildings all day, for these days, not just food, but everything that people needed were available online. All one had to do was download apps. Darshan convinced himself that it wouldn’t be easy for the cops to get to him, more so because he had no criminal record and his name wasn’t in the police files.
At the same time, he did not want his macabre encounter to be his last. He decided it would be safe to cast his net far and wide, not restrict himself to Bombay but operate in its outskirts, where the police were less vigilant. After all, homos were everywhere, and so was Grindr. Cities like Vapi, Valsad, Panvel and Nasik were close enough to Bombay. He could ride there on his bike and return in a day.
Darshan’s second adventure followed closely on the lines of the first. Since sex invariably happened in bedrooms, pillows were always close at hand, and then came the smothering, the fucking, and the hurried departure. Darshan now made it a point to note the position of CCTV cameras in housing societies and skirt them. Subsequent forays took place in quick succession, and soon there came a time when Darshan could romance only the dead and not the living. He was certain his crimes would remain unsolved, or perhaps the wrong men would be held for them.
Meanwhile, Darshan’s parents insisted that he tie the nuptial knot. He was over twenty-five and it was about time he settled down. “What’s the hurry?” Darshan asked them. “I need to earn money first.” If he fucked living beings rather than corpses, Darshan thought to himself, he might have been able to trade his body. He might have worn his Linking Road T-shirt with the picture of a QR code at the back, and asked them to scan and pay. But now that door was firmly shut. Not even the lure of money could wean him away from the compliant surrender of dead bodies as he violated them, sometimes with their eyes still open. It was orgasmic. So much so, he began staying back in the empty flats to rape his lifeless victims twice, thrice, even four times. Risking arrest, should someone suddenly unlatch the front door with a spare key and walk in. If Darshan were smart, he would know that dead bodies, unless embalmed, bloated quickly and rigor mortis set in. They were then no longer erotic, but repulsive and odorous.
Newspapers and local television channels reported Darshan’s crimes without knowing who the perpetrator was. They linked the murders to serial killings of homosexual men that had happened in the city in the past. There was speculation that the serial killer in question, who was never caught, had resurfaced, and the police were required to be on high alert. The modus operandi, of course, had changed. Whereas earlier it was pavement dwellers who were targets, it was now men who lived in flats. Homophobia, it was said, appeared to be the motivation for the killings. But the matter was serious, as forensic tests showed that the killer had had sex with the killed after they were dead. The word for it was necrophilia. Unwittingly, the news reports outed closeted gay men who had wives and children. Their mobile phones revealed that they were active on Grindr.
Darshan’s parents nagged him about his marriage with renewed zeal. They confronted him about his reluctance to get betrothed. Asked him point blank whether he was involved in lafdas with girls in the slum. Or had the company of taporis who were alcoholics and drug addicts, and had sex with Dharavi’s prostitutes. They cited the example of young men who had gone astray, and had eventually landed up in the Arthur Road Jail. “I won’t bail you out if you go to jail,” his father said to him, to which Darshan’s reply was, “Don’t.” His father slapped him for back-answering.
Tired of their haranguing, Darshan threatened to leave home. His parents were entirely clueless about his sexual activity with men and the murders he committed. Without informing him, they invited a close relative to their house to show Darshan their daughter. Since they were relatives, they belonged to the same Dalit sub-caste as the parents. Marriages, the parents believed, had to be consanguineous and endogamous. Darshan did not create a scene when the daughter was paraded before him. But after they left, and his parents asked him if he liked the girl, he said, “She’s too short.”
“As if you are Amitabh Bachchan,” his father sarcastically replied.
The turbulence in his life drove Darshan to neglect work. His mobile was switched off most of the time, which meant no deliveries and no money. He thought of the men who offered him rokda for pleasuring them. If only he could find their numbers and give them a call. He uninstalled Grindr for fear of being tracked. This abruptly brought his nefarious activities to a halt.
Unexpectedly, Darshan told his parents he was willing to get married, provided it was to a girl of his choice. “Love marriage?” they exclaimed. No one in their family had had a love marriage. It was always arranged marriages, mostly with blood relations. They equated a love marriage with elopement.
The woman who had body-shamed Darshan had been dumped by her husband. Did he think his wares were too good to be wasted on just one woman? Darshan stalked the woman and proposed to her. Told her he had used an imported cream to enlarge his penis.
Unbeknown to Darshan, the woman had pined for him ever since she’d body-shamed him. She was the sort who needed variety. It wasn’t as if every man she bedded was a steed. Darshan’s marriage proposal, though, flustered her, for she wasn’t sure she wanted to go through it all over again. Besides, she was older than him in age.
The woman called Darshan over to her kholi for sex. As soon as they undressed, the woman discovered Darshan had lied to her. His penis hadn’t grown in size by even a millimeter. The cream given to him by the NRI was a scam. Even as the woman called Darshan’s bluff, he strangled her. He was sure she would body-shame him once again. The woman tried to scream for help, but Darshan stuffed a rag into her mouth, as he had seen murderers do in Crime Patrol.
The woman was finally dead.
Darshan fucked the woman’s corpse many times. And as he did, he said to the woman, my dick may be small, but I am the winner. See, I’m fucking you, pouring my semen into your cunt. Making you pregnant. Why don’t you laugh at me now, you bitch? You aunty. Why don’t you make me feel I’m not man enough?
Outside, it was back to business in the slum. Children defecated in open drains. Stray dogs barked for no rhyme or reason. Trains rumbled past on both the harbor and main line. A local politician announced on loud speakers attached to the sides of an autorickshaw what he would do for residents if they voted for him in the upcoming elections.