my first sudra lover was a servant, a naukar. I was just past 18 at the time. I was still a virgin which isn’t uncommon at all in Indian society. If anything, it’s the rest of my life that’s been unusual.

Mum had had an horrific accident five or six years earlier that left her pretty much in a vegetative state. Dad seemed devoted to her and to us — I mean he was always there for her, attended to her every need but I suspected he had his affairs. I didn’t resent him for that.

But it was a quiet and gentle life on the whole. We lived in a quiet neighbourhood in those days, me and my parents and younger sister. Home was a nice large ground floor flat with every convenience and gadget, separate bedrooms for my sister and me, and a lovely little garden that was my joy and passion. I’d worked at it since I was 12 and it looked really pretty. Over time I had put in a little rockery and garden lights hidden in the flower borders and lighting the big fragrant jasmine and frangipani trees, a little garden swing. We had a nice stoop or porch, too, where we’d sit in the evening, Dad with his magazines and newspapers, me with a book and Madhu humming to something on her Walkman. Most days we’d bring Mum out in her wheelchair, too, and converse normally with her. That’s what the doctors had advised, so we followed that, trying to include her in our daily lives.

There was very little to disturb us — our neighbours were friendly and kind, and the flat was in a lovely old ground-and-two-floor building with beautiful woodwork and lots of greenery around. It was a sort of private enclave of ten or twelve similar buildings and it felt very safe. It was a good place for a kid to grow up, given the state of the rest of the city.

We had a part-time gardener who came in to do the heavy and tedious work — laying out brick or stone-work, weeding, putting in the flower beds and so on. Raju — short for Rajesh — was lean and tall and dark and had those intense good looks of a Maratha: sharp features, dark eyes and hair, a square, strong jaw. Plus, he wasn’t skinny; he actually had a well-developed physique, broad across the shoulders, a wide, deep chest, muscular arms and thick forearms and the most amazing abs.

I knew because he went through this little ritual before he went to work. Our garden was like an inverted L, with a broad front area before the porch and long narrow stretch that ran along the side of the house all the way to the back where there was a little toolshed. Raju would come in through the wicket gate, latch it behind him, greet whoever was on the porch with a polite namaste with just a little duck of his head and a quick flip of both hands to his chest. He’d ask after Mum. Every single time. Then he’d kick off his battered yet sturdy open-toe sandals and put them neatly together by the steps leading up to the stoop and go around the corner of the house. I knew there was a small wooden strip with clothes pegs on it there — – I usually kept a smock or overalls for when I had to handle paints — – and a while later he’d return with his baggy trousers rolled up to his knees, his shirt off and wearing just a tight sleeveless vest or, sometimes, not even that.

All right, let me be completely honest. He excited me. He really did. I loved his body, smooth and strong and dark, the torso so sexily muscled and quite hairless, and I loved him for his gentleness with my flowers and buds and shrubs and herbs and garden, for his obvious distress when a sapling or cutting did poorly. The garden was as much his pride and joy as it was mine.

Whether it was the nature of his work, or the serenity of our home, or me or just his character I don’t know, but he was a truly gentle, kind and decent soul. I never once heard him raise his voice in anger. He was genuinely sorrowed when someone so much as plucked a flower. “It’s not right,” he’d mutter, shaking his head. “It is just not right.”

How could I not be drawn to him? At times like this, I felt my heart go out to him, for I shared his pain. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to rest my hand on his arm or my head on his chest, just be him and me and our little flowering world. I thought I loved him.

But there was something else too. One look from him and I just felt different, as if some searing heat had pierced me through. My pulse would quicken, there was a rush of blood to my head and, yes, to other parts as well. I suppose I was relatively innocent in those days and didn’t quite know what to make of this sensation. It felt good, yes, but it somehow also just felt right.

I wasn’t totally unaware of what sex involved. No girl is, I guess, in a city, even an Indian city. There are just too many reminders — film stars, models, public outcries, television, magazines. It’s a sexual carpet-bombing. I certainly knew what the relevant parts were meant for and what went where, but then every single girl in my class did, too.

Maybe I knew a little more than most.

Three or four years earlier — not long after Mum came home from several months in a hospital — I stumbled on Dad’s cache of illicitly obtained pornographic magazines. After the first few minutes of shock, I was hooked. I loved the explicit language and I loved the glorious, detailed, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination photographs. I was awed by what I saw — all that cock-sucking and cunt-licking, group sex, those wildly sexy costumes in black leather, the elaborate French kissing, anal sex, the masturbation with dildos and vibrators. I devoured it all, even the ads for live sex shows in places I’d only dreamed of seeing, like Amsterdam, which I’d till then only associated with windmills and tulips. Suddenly there was this whole new world, sleazy and sweaty and inexplicably exciting, totally irresistible.

But I did more than ogle. I studied the stuff. So I couldn’t have a man. But I could at least dream of one. I read letters and advice columns and paid particular attention to those about how to please men. I read about masturbation and sex toys. Of course I’d masturbated before like the other girls in my class, but it was more exploratory and instinctive, just doing what seemed to feel good coupled with a huge sense of guilt. Now I read about how good it was, and how advisable and how it should be done and I plunged into it with a fervour that bordered on obsession. I had my own bedroom and nobody minded when I aped the positions I’d seen in the magazines (occasionally I stole one and masturbated reading it). I’d be on all fours pretending I was being fucked from behind. I practiced riding a cock. I lay on my back and pictured a lover thrusting into me. Of course I didn’t have any sex toys, so I made do with whatever I could get — and there’s a surprising range of alternatives if you put your mind to it. Which I did, with a great deal of devotion: hairbrush handles, a badminton racquet handle, cucumbers, hard bananas, carrots, peeled bitter gourds.

Things got better. I rummaged deeper into Dad’s closet — he’d forgotten, I think, that there was a complete duplicate set he’d had made for Mum before her illness, and never taken them back or changed the locks. Sure enough, I unearthed a real trove. It turned out that he had a pretty decent collection of sex toys for women. These must have dated back to before Mum’s tumour or perhaps he used them with his girlfriends. Either way, I didn’t care. I was totally on fire as I looked down at the collection in the drawer, each toy neatly set in its own place in a specially made dark velvet jewel-box lining. There were dildos of various shapes and sizes, including several that looked like real cocks. There were vibrators, metal and hard plastic and silicone. There were Ben-Wa balls. There was even a missile-sized ejaculator.

I was ecstatic.

One by one, I tried them all. The vibrators were incredibly and I could barely stop my screams as I came violently again and again, the thing humming and buzzing in my cunt. And ejaculator — it was terrifying in its thickness and length, but I used it anyway, filling it with warm water, then pushing it into my cunt, jerking it feverishly back and forth, running through its multiple speeds and finally hitting the ejaculator button, chewing on a wadded handkerchief to keep my sounds down.

And that wasn’t all. What I found there was a cornucopia of lust. Now movies. Tons of them, all hardcore, on CD and VCD and DVD, all neatly labelled and nestled in zippered CD carry cases. Each had a marking — interracial, group, anal, mixed, desi. We each had a small television and portable CD/DVD player in our rooms, and I began ploughing through the collection. My joy was, I thought, complete. I’d strip naked, arouse myself with a magazine, start masturbating with a dildo or a vibrator, turn on a movie and slip into one wild erotic fantasy after the other. I was that girl being fucked mercilessly by a man, heaving and moaning and sweating, writhing frantically under him. I was there in the orgies, and I was there when three men fucked me together in cunt, mouth and ass simultaneously.

Two things returned with increasing frequency and clarity. The first was that I found myself intensely attracted to dark and black men. I loved their bodies and was awed to a frenzy of lust by the sight of their big cocks.

And Raju entered my most vivid and intense fantasies. He was that man, fucking me demonically from behind. Tossing me on his lap. Making me suck his cock. Cumming in my face.

I learned the language of lust. I learned the words in English and, from the wretched, tacky Indian DVDs, their vernacular equivalents. I practiced using them and found I liked the sound of them. They turned me on and I knew I wanted them said to me.

My sexual pleasure were extraordinary. Intense, exhilarating and like nothing else I knew. But still I thirsted for the real thing, real flesh, a real man.

There was simply nothing I can do. Our society and social circles didn’t permit a girl like me to have sex. I’d just got into college then, where I quickly hitched myself to an attractive and athletic fellow student a year older than me. He had a reputation of being a ladies man and that was my only motivation. I maintained the required charade, waiting for him to make the first though my body and mind screamed for sex. He was very slow off the blocks, and, as it turned out, even I, without any real experience to speak of, could tell that he was totally inexpt. The kissing was messy rather than sexy and the little petting we did involved him squeezing my breasts with more enthusiasm than skill. Parked in a car in a deserted lane late one night, I let him guide my hand to his crotch. I felt a tremble of excitement — I was going to see my first real cock! I loved the thickness and bulge of it and my fingers trembled in his as they closed around the swell in his pants. He pushed his hand up under my skirt. I clamped my thighs together. He persisted, kissed me, squeezed my breasts. I let my thighs part. His hand was in my crotch and now there was no stopping me. I moved my own hand back between his legs and gasped, for he had unzipped and dropped his pants and briefs and, for the first time, I held a real cock. It was beautiful, more alive and tempting than I’d imagined it would be. My panties were at my ankles and my legs were open and he ran a finger up into my cunt and I gasped and flung my head back, tore open my tunic and exposed my breasts to his lips.

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” I heard him gasp as he sucked on my breasts and masturbated me wildly, thrusting his finger in and out of my cunt.

I held his wrist with one hand, the other clamped around his cock, jerking it eagerly.

“Take it in your mouth! Do it!” he gasped.

It was what I’d been waiting for. Without a moment’s hesitation, I bent my head over his lap and began the first of more blow jobs than I can count. It was heavenly. At last, at long last! I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved the smell and the tang of it and I sucked it eagerly, used my tongue as I’d read I should do. He moaned and gasped, moving my head up and down over his lap while his finger continued running in and out of my cunt though from behind now. My cunt was in hapless contractions on his cock and I heard my own muffled moans and gasps. He came violently … right into my mouth. I gagged on it momentarily but, within seconds, I was holding his cum in my mouth, rolling it around my mouth, swallowing it and discovering that I thoroughly enjoyed it. He gasped in awe as I licked his cock clean, swallowing his cum.

“Now me,” I murmured and sprawled back in my seat and spread my legs. “C’mon! Do it! Hard!”

He groaned again in excitement and began finger-fucking me furiously. I gasped and cried out, thrashing on the seat, my hips bucking and heaving feverishly, clenching his head and pulling it to my breasts. My orgasm was like nothing I’d experienced, thunderous and explosive, leaving me trembling and drained.

It was good — better than silicone, at any rate, but it clearly wasn’t the real thing. He wasn’t man enough, didn’t have enough experience. We repeated the petting frequently and even progressed to complete oral sex, cock-sucking and cunt-licking in my bedroom in the afternoons while dad was at work, Madhu at school, the servants at their siesta and my mother’s nurse snoozing in a rocker. We fought to keep it quiet and I think it was harder for me than for him, but we got away with it, and often. He begged for more, kept saying he wanted to sleep with me and make love to me. I didn’t. I didn’t want to make love or sleep with him or have sex with him. Or anyone else for that matter. I just wanted to be fucked, animal, physical, no emotional commitment, pure carnality. I put him off saying we couldn’t chance it, not till I’d seen a gynaecologist. The risk of him knocking me up scared him enough to keep him quiet for a while.

And then there was still Raju, still in my dreams, still entering me slowly and taking me again and again, night after night after night.

II

WE WERE WORKING in the garden late one evening when the fire started. The old lady on the second floor above us screamed. We jumped up. Smoke trickled from the window over our garden. It grew thicker and darker as we watched. There was a pandemonium like I’ve never seen. The first floor servants rushed out to the balcony, ours into the garden, dad and Madhu and Raju and I and the nurse were at Mum’s wheelchair, easing it down off the porch, someone screaming to someone else to call the firemen. They came, and surprisingly soon, a big red fire truck running through the enclave’s narrow lane, winging three or four cars, jerking to a halt outside the building, unreeling hoses. Two firemen ran up the stairs and brought the old couple down a little later. The hoses played out and jets of water arched over the building. Our servants raced into our house, slamming windows and doors shut, trying to prevent too much internal damage. We huddled together on the lane outside the garden fence, clear of the firemen and the engine. My heart was in my mouth. Tiles began to crash off the sloping roof. Two or three smashed into my rockery. A burnt timber creaked and swung loose and cleaved through my frangipani.

“My garden!” I cried, starting forward.

A solid hand caught my arm and pulled me back.

Raju.

“Let it be.” His voice was soft and steady.

“But the garden, Raju! All our work!”

“The garden can be rebuilt. This is a question of someone’s life. Someone’s home. Calm down. Don’t move.”

I looked at him. He’d never spoken to me like that before. We were at the very back of the crowd, our backs to the wall of a disused garage across the lane. He let go my arm. His hand slid down to my hand. His fingers laced through mine. I felt as if a jolt of electricity had run through me. Suddenly I lost all fear, all care, all concern. I flushed. My fingers tightened in his. He squeezed my hand reassuringly. Oh god. I watched the apartment burn, saw my garden devastated. I wanted to turn and bury my face in his chest, I didn’t want to see this. I edged closer to him. His hand slipped out of mine and moved around my waist. I pressed my hip to his, moved my arm around his waist. His hand moved down, over my butt. I bit my lower lip. I was wearing loose shorts, and they were very short. I felt his fingers below my buttocks. Oh god, oh god. My cunt had began to seep. My breasts felt heavy and I could feel my nipples standing out. I hardly saw what was happening any longer. I seemed to be in a different world, distanced from everything before me.

The crowd grew larger as more people joined to watch the spectacle. The firemen asked the tenants for a bribe to rescue their valuables. There was screaming and cursing. Two firemen ran up the stairs and began throwing stuff out of the window. Into my garden. I didn’t care. Raju had moved behind me now. The crowd in front of us pushed us back against the rolling shutter of the closed garage. Raju’s hands were on my waist now, both of them. I pressed my butt back against him. His hands moved up the legs of my shorts, under my panties. I squirmed my butt in his crotch. The bulge felt huge. Magically, his fingers had crawled up and around, under my panties, to my cunt-lips. I felt his fingertip at my cunt. I bit my lower lip, chewing back a moan. My feet shuffled apart, of their own accord. His knuckle pressed between my cunt-lips to my clit, began massaging it. My legs trembled. My hand dropped behind me to his crotch, and I squeezed the bulge between his legs. He grunted thickly. I pressed my free hand over his in my crotch. Suddenly his fingers were with mine in his crotch, moving it into his pants. My fingers closed around his cock. I went rigid with shock. It was huge, bigger by far than my boyfriend’s, massively thick, enormously long. It felt rigid like iron and throbbed hot and angry in my hand. I jerked it eagerly. He grunted heavily behind me. His finger moved faster between my legs.

With a soft gasp, I pulled free. “Not here,” I murmured. “Not now. Tomorrow afternoon. Come early.”

My cunt tingling, on the verge of an orgasm, I lurched away from him and into the crowd.

Later, Dad said we’d been very lucky, there’d been no damage except to the top floor, and even that hadn’t been quite so bad. The old couple’s son and daughter-in-law came and took them home. We went through the house, looking for damage. There wasn’t much, just some water through a window in one room, a damaged planter here, things like that. The electricals worked.

That night, lying in bed, I masturbated feverishly, using the ejaculator, moaning at the flickering sight of a hardcore movie on the TV screen where a big black man was furiously fucking a slender young brunette, impaling her repeatedly on his impossible cock. I came again and again and each time I closed my eyes it was Raju, Raju, Raju … his cock inside me … in my mouth … in my cunt … between my breasts … even up my ass … and his cum, stinging and hot and thick in my mouth and in my cunt …