Having staved off more than my fair share of predators since puberty (or perhaps even from before), I could immediately recognise the central character as an archetypal, non-threatening, father figure, played rather brilliantly by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who has an unusual bonding with the child through a strange economy of concealed, codified signals.
It’s a secret world inhabited only by the abuser and the abused–a sacred relationship inviolable by societal law, authority figures, family members or friends. Shyam tells Sandhya, “Jo kuchh bhi huwa hain, main bhi kuchh nahi bolunga aur tum bhi mat bolna.” The first stage of abuse–the cooption and inclusion of the abused into the adult’s secret universe, where she shall suddenly be allowed to grow up, suddenly allowed a woman’s body, a women’s licenses. Where she shall be loved and handled in strange ways alien to a child’s thoughts.
