Sex, lies, & the desi woman client!

I am ldquoprank callrdquo years old in the history of global telecom Which is to belong to an era when juvenile delinquents often gathered around landline phones without callerIDs with rotary or digital dials calling up random numbers to prank the shit outta unknown people for lsquotimepassrsquo as pastime in the eveningsOur standard operating procedure was to dial any sixsevendigit number Say ldquoHellordquo in a hoarsemuffled voice Upon hearing the man of the house on the other line wersquod go ldquoHum lsquoXYZ Gigolo Servicersquo se bol rahe hain Your wife hasnrsquot cleared our bills for months Make good on the payment or elsehelliprdquoThis is when the gent at the other end would go berserk ldquoUlloo ke patthe phone rakhhelliprdquo And wersquod hang up having caused as per our demented judgment considerable marital discord in an everyday happy household HahHonestly none of us 15yearolds knew if there was such a thing as a gigolo serviceagency Like the one that exists on a website in the Netflix series Tribhuvan Mishra CA TopperShakespeare Tripathy who works in the adult entertainment industryWherein the brilliant Manav Kaul as Tribhuvan Mishra enrols himself as lsquoCA Topperrsquo providing sex to women clients in his townTo be generous Puneet Krishnarsquos CA Topper is a pretty quirky showmdashin itself lsquotimepassrsquo enough for casual pastimemdashthat chiefly for action also comedy and romance derives far more from moviesshows than life itselfAnd I actually enjoyed spotting movie references in it To start with as a local gang rounds up a couple cheating on their spouses in a cinema hallmdashthe film playing in the theatre is directed by Ram Gopal RatnamWhile SalmanSRK references abound the repeated romantic song still is Sapne mein milti hai from Ram Gopal Varmarsquos Satya 1998 that continues to top the gangster genre in Bollywood The company thatrsquos produced the series is named Rangeela presumably after Varmarsquos 1995 musicalDuring a policestation scene where Panchayatrsquos lsquoPrahladrsquo Faisal Malik plays a cop you can overhear a line on Amitabh Bachchanmdashwhich is essentially the copstation scene from Anurag Kashyaprsquos Ugly 2013 about actors changing their names for screen concurrently playing out in an imagined room nextdoorAn authentic setting for all thatrsquos going on in CA Topper though can hardly be UPrsquos NoidaIf for nothing else but the sheer number of news channels headquartered in the National Capital Region that would broadcast livemdashthat many guns going off so easily simultaneously on streets parking lot court restaurant loo wedding venuehellipMaybe you could say the same for the relatively quiet mercantile town shown as gangland central like Gorakhpur as Prime Videorsquos Mirzapur insteadmdashalso writtendirected by KrishnaWhat about the intriguing CA Topper protagonist Mishra Ji who moonlights as a male escortI have no other way to chat and know better than to call my goto guy for all things lsquogigolorsquo Namely my journalistic source Shakespeare Tripathy name unchanged popular adultentertainment actor euphemism for pornstar whorsquos selfadmittedly been offering carnal pleasures to females in exchange for money for over half a decade nowHe nets clients in Mumbai ldquomostly travelers mainly in the 3040 age grouprdquo from pings on social media FB Insta etc Besides intros at posh social soirees where he first built his professional repmdashI remember spotting him at a massive Diwali houseparty on Marine Drive oncemdashTripathy began with a dotcom called lsquoseeking arrangementrsquo before Tinder took overNo Irsquom not outing young Tripathy He insists on his name in print Anonymity in public works against him he implies While he hasnrsquot watched CA Topper herersquos where he differs with the showrsquos premiseApart from ldquosexual satisfaction attention and companionship in that orderrdquo what his clients seek foremost is absolute confidentiality hence trust ldquoNobody would hire a faceless fake name CA Topper onlinerdquoTraining himself for the discreet sexwork lsquoCA Topperrsquo Mishra Ji seeks help of fellow gigolo White Stallion if I recall right who sermonises him on how people often think from their head and heart but others from just below the belt drawing a distinction between pure momentary lust and being sapiosexual perhapsTripathy reveals he has too many friends who are female escorts Key difference between his job and theirs he says firstly is that his is harder As in ldquoWith guys as clients itrsquos all cuttocutmdashthey do their own stuff and leaverdquoWith women clients Tripathy reasons ldquoYoursquove got to make the person comfortable both before and after the act so to say You have to be a good listener allowing them the space to express themselvesmdashemotionally connecting chatting foreplay dancing dressing uphelliprdquo The flipside of this ldquosubsequent friendshiprdquo of course is they could feel possessive ldquoif you arenrsquot fully focused on themrdquo And no fury like a woman scorned as with CA Topper and Bindi Tillotama Shome maybeThat said Tripathyrsquos brain is his second most important organmdashbeing a good conversationalist evidently is his tool of trade He speaks Shakespearean in fact explaining how he got into this game ldquoYou see art of survival is a neverending pursuitrdquoBut now he simply loves it ldquoSometimes even more than when Irsquom with my girlfriendrdquo Same for CA Topper with his wife Ashoklata Naina Sareen you can tellMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper