12

Here’s something I wrote earlier about Karishma Jalan: ‘How people will clutch at anything to avoid facing their share of the blame.’

And this is what I did over the next hour, calling no one, planning nothing, not even keeping up with the reactions on Twitter. Instead, I filled a folder with emails for Dyuti and forwarded her the DropBox link, after which I again messaged my editor Chaitali to inform her, in case she hadn’t already noticed, that the angry parent I had told her about had just outed me, and the newspaper too could expect some blowback. Then I went to bed.

I slept impressively soundly and woke at my usual time of six, ready to bid goodbye to my main job. This was yesterday morning.

I was thirty-three, single, living alone, with no other source of income (who takes history tuitions??), publicly accused of serial deception as well as of standing by and letting a suicide happen (one true, the other contestable), and closely associated with another woman suspected of selling her baby. Yesterday I had relinquished my (dangerous) passion; this morning I would certainly lose my job. Ending the week, or even the day, under arrest for abetment to suicide was also not off the cards, and litigation might or might not follow from one or more of my correspondents.

This moment, as I sipped coffee and considered my current balance sheet, marked the acme of my powerlessness.