Chapter 24

It took the city's beautiful people a solid 18 hours to recover from the Sin City launch party. And many never recovered at all. Across the length and breadth of the island city, marriages teetered on the brink of destruction, divorces long contemplated finally came to a head, relationships fissured and split wide open.

Husbands woke to find themselves in bed with other men's wives, wives woke to find themselves in bed with other women's husbands.

Singles who slept alone woke to find themselves single no longer -- and quite happy not to be.

One expat pair woke up feeling maha khush -- they had been searching for years through classified columns, family contacts, the Internet -- and they had finally met by purest chance while ordering fresh lime sodas at the bar in CyberSingles. They were married less than two months later back in Salem, Oregon.

A conservative couple woke to find themselves in bed with another, equally conservative couple (or so they'd thought).

One confirmed gay bachelor woke to find himself in bed with a woman -- and was forced to accept that he wasn't as gay as he had thought. And that despite his hardbitten Bombay cynicism, he was a romantic at heart after all.

Bosses woke up with secretaries, rich daughters woke up with drivers, older women woke up with younger men (and vice versa), and in one memorable case, one happily married man woke up with another happily married man, and two marriages collapsed at once.

Almost everybody had a really great time.

In a bungalow on Napean Sea Road, Shireen Patalia, industrialist wife, socialite and queen of haute couture shows, woke to find her life shattered beyond repair.

She had been raped, battered and disfigured beyond recognition. And what was worse, she had personally invited the man -- and his wife, don't forget the wife -- into her house, into the sound-proofed sanctity of her private parlour, where he had turned abruptly violent while his wife locked the door and watched.

That was the most terrible part of it: the wife watching it all. Shireen had screamed out, had pleaded to the woman to come to her aid, but Madhavi Gurjani had simply stood by and watched while her husband first violated Shireen, then brutalized her, and finally destroyed her face with a horrifying chrome-plated blade which resembled a surgeon's scalpel.

The worst thing was: She could never tell her husband. Manish Patalia was not the sort of man who could learn to live with such knowledge. His wife, raped? Battered? Her face, slashed and scarred? Impossible! She was his third wife. He wouldn't think twice before marrying a fourth time. Of course, he would provide for her financially. And that was what made her even consider telling him the truth.

But then she thought about her social standing, about the endless parties she attended, about how people would forever whisper behind her back, point at her in passing, and say: "That's her. That's Shireen Patalia, the woman who got raped."

In a society where beauty, power and dignity are paramount, the stigma of being a rape victim is an unbearable burden to some. This was why Shireen Patalia finally decided that she would not report the fact that she had been raped and assaulted to anyone. Not for the time being. Perhaps not ever.

And with that decision, she picked up the phone and dialled the number of her older brother, a corporate CEO and head of the Young Presidents Club. He had always been her closest confidant and guide in times of trouble. He would know what to do.

"Shiamak," she sobbed into the cellphone, smearing partially dried blood on the antenna. "Come over quickly. I need you."