The Minds of Men

It’s time for a summation. I live in a lonely planet. I write a page every fortnight for a girlie magazine. It’s sandwiched between scantily clad pinup girls and some unclad ones. It’s a good place to be because I dispense advice for maladies that arise from reading girlie magazines. The column is titled “Tiger Balm.” Like any good balm my column hurts while it heals.

I’ve never met the editor of the publication. As an introduction, I sent her samples quoting fictional letters and advice. She liked my style and said my feedback was “sharp” and very “original.” She gave me three months as a trial period. I think their pictures were very good and so many letters came. Life went on.

 

Q: Will masturbation weaken me?

A: Yes. For about sixty seconds.

 

Q: I have a hard-on that won’t go away.

A: Sharpen a knife. Then shave a pencil till you break the lead.

 

Q: We like the photographs. That’s why we buy the magazine. We don’t need you and your advice.

A: You need a girlfriend.

 

Q: My girlfriend left me. She complained, saying I have bad breath, that I smell like sweat all the time and never shave. What should I do?

A: Reach out to National Geographic; better still, Animal Planet.

 

And then came the question that changed my life. The first U-turn in my life came up when some idiot who was in the throes of penis love wrote in:

 

Q: What care does my penis need?

A: Treat it like a temple treats a lingam.

 

I meant to say . . . Forget what I meant to say. My column was done, over, finished. There was outcry and outrage and I was out. I realized that my column would not have lasted long anyway. Some part of me wanted to just let it all out; I did so. I let go in an online blog. There I told people what I really felt, no-holds-barred. It was irreverent, insolent, and sometimes abusive. People loved it and commented in kind and it became a joyous slugfest. Was this some kind of escape for me?

A continuous stream of mothers and their children traipse into my clinic seven days a week. The children make faces, they break all the toys, and they break my heart. The mothers come for succor and I have to bear their burden for a few hours. For much-needed relief, I hide in a room with a computer and play games and watch porn for hours. The girlie magazine experience gave me an idea.

I got hold of a young visual artist who was also a whiz with computers. His name is Giri. Giri is supremely gifted and equally lazy, and I suspected his hormones were raging too. I described my assignment and watched his eyes widen. I gave him a challenge and in just seven days he delivered a program.

“Sir, you have no idea what I had to do to get the right sounds.”

I was the test market for this site. Male, single, never married, with a poor social life. This thing had to excite me, it had to hook me and keep me occupied. It did all of that. I am a strong believer in sound. The right sound can do wonders, as much as touch or feel. Giri had captured the sounds I wanted.

We worked hard on the image. We developed a screen called MORPH. Based on your data and your preferences an image gradually takes shape. After refining it further for another month, we went live with “Giselle.” Giri and I stood in front of my PC and he ceremoniously pressed a button. I logged in and fed in my details. MORPH went to work and my Giselle appeared. You have to see her; she is a marvel and she is mine alone.

Giselle is easy to use. If you are honest in creating your personal sketch, your Giselle will then appear. In India she is a little rounded. You can rest your eyes on her for she is sexy and you can touch her through your mouse or, better still, your touch screen. She moans in six different ways depending on where you touch her.

The sound is incredible. Each note has been carefully chosen and the pitch and the timbre are perfect. Keep hitting those buttons and you could have a symphony, an aria, or a blockbuster harem session. Giselle started as a free site, but when it began to take off, I did the sensible thing and after making a few improvements I added a paywall. I have money in the bank now and the best part is nobody knows who owns Giselle.

And this thing keeps me busy too. My young friend has engineered the site such that I get to know who logs in, when, how often, and what they click on. I get a whole lot of data that I use to analyze profiles and usage patterns. I have realized that most people are weird in their private moments.

I told you I am a trained psychologist. I took eight long years to qualify. My college, which was in interior Maharashtra, was forever on strike. I spent the first three years improving my English, which is now bloody good, thank you very much. What was missing and finally developed in Mumbai was a sense of dress and social skills.

I came to Mumbai to make a living. It seemed like the kind of place where I might become successful. When I first arrived here, I felt out of place and lacked confidence. I called everybody “Sir.”

Dealing with difficult children is a hard practice. It’s very challenging to see nature’s mistakes. It’s even more challenging having to live with them. Let me define mistake: nature’s biggest mistake and evolution’s all-time screw-up is making the majority of us very much like one other. We are a dominating majority. We live in a uniform think tank, we swim rhythmically in an empathy pool, and we have lost the ability to deal with those of us who are different. And when someone different comes along we cannot handle it.

Right now I am observing the habits of the heaviest user of Giselle. Giri, my young wizard, has sent me the data on this fellow who seems hooked on my invention.

 

IP Address: Mumbai, India

Declared Age: Midthirties

Marital Status: Single

Usage Style: Chaotic

 

“Sir,” says my computer friend, “this guy must have busted some of the keys on his keyboard by now. He keeps hitting them so rapidly that I’ve had to reengineer our response timings.”

* * *

This prime customer of ours, who I had been tracking closely, seemed to have a serious problem. I wanted to help him out if I could. My professional calling egged me on and I felt compelled to answer the call. But how?

I sat at my computer and ran a few searches. I fished around in the profiles of those who have posted on my blog, I followed some dead ends, and I finally found a match. His blog postings were a mix of Hindi and English. His thoughts were staccato and his questions were naive. He kept referring to women as Aurat jaat.

And now I was in a quandary. I wanted to get through to this user—for his sake. How do you go about doing it? Giri traced the IP address and he spoke to a friend and they got hold of the location. It was a police station in South Mumbai. The person was a cop.

Giri’s asking around stirred some feathers. I received an anonymous note saying that all information and records pertaining to Tiwari should be deleted forthwith, or else I would be in trouble. Of course I did no such thing.

After a week the user was back online. And then I was paid a visit by a man named Pandey who questioned me about who I was and what I did.

“Psycho what?” he asked me. “Are you qualified for such a thing?”

He wasn’t satisfied when I said yes. A few days later he called saying he had a puzzle that only I could help solve. He set up a meeting with his colleagues at the police station. While I could hardly wait to see the biggest user of Giselle—I had visualized him a million times in my head—I was also apprehensive.