33. "It's You...You Only ... Not Her...Not Any Other Woman"
I recognized back then that women bear a resemblance to shadows; they beetle off when being chased after, but they earnestly follow when being cold-shouldered. It would bring upon a woman a shattering sense of inadequacy and unimportance to discover that the intense and evident admiration she had excited had simply passed for no ostensible reason into neglect and disregard. It lacerates the pride and devastates the ego. Yet it can also stimulate, paradoxically, the flames of love, which would flare up obdurately instead of being extinguished. On reflecting back, I realize it was this back-turning demeanour that contributed in particular towards minimizing the sweat and the time that needed to be employed towards appropriating the young heart and the innocent mind. In the absence of diversity, such adroit unapproachability appeared to have attained perfectly its covert objective, without inciting the peril that may ensue from transgressing the heavy-handed regulations of this land of p