In part one
‘He is a playboy’, he had said, shaking his head. ‘Such genius but such vice! Too many women. He lives his life on the edge’.
‘Poor Arjun’, Krishna observed. ‘He did not take that failed love affair lightly’.
Sympathy was like a weed. It could grow through the tiniest of cracks on the stone floor. [...]

 
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, in an excellent article entitled, “The story of Draupadi’s disrobing” quotes a female foreign tourist in India: “The cruelty is unimaginable… (you may have) become a modern consumer, part of the global market and so on, but your social attitudes have not progressed beyond the eighteenth century. Women are no more than [...]

 
There was that half-smile that lit up his face. She could not ignore it. It made him look over-confident, even arrogant. But she could not forget it.
 
She should never have gotten the door. He stood outside, his tall figure bent, as he removed his shoes and put it on the shoe rack. He was dark. [...]