Solving the Greek crisis with one terse email, I ask my submissive — oh no, now look what I’ve done to myself — secretary to bring me lunch. Hmm. Rajma. For once she’s got it right. Ever since Leela — oh, how she would moan every time I would bark, ‘Ready for your flogging?’ — taught me the joys of Indian beans, I’ve been full of gas in every single thing I do. Which reminds me, I really must show Djoker who’s in charge here by whipping his ass — oh no, now look what I’ve done to myself — at the US Open.

Open. Oh yes, baby. Who wouldn’t, for me? I’m a spoilt young tycoon with an entourage of extraordinarily efficient people who jump to my absurd bidding and deliver flawlessly. After all, I’m the boss — oh no, now look what I’ve done to myself. And, just a minute while I launch an unmanned mission to Pluto, there, that’s done, I’m incredibly modest too. Not to mention unself-conscious. I mean, I never think of myself when making l… no, I don’t make love, I… you know the next two words by now if you’ve read that female impostor EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey.

But. What does she know about me, really? Does she even get how a dominant obsesses in his head? There are no shades of grey in me at all, it’s all just one colour: red. For obvious reasons. But wait, who is this wondrously beautiful young woman at my door, so gauché she’s mind-blowingly — though it’s not my mind that wants to be blown — beautiful and will break through my non-romantic barriers in an instant as she trips at the threshold and falls that delicious face first on my impossibly expensive floor and oh! my! god!

I am about to be smitten. But first I must pull oil prices back up to their 21st century highs with a few careless email instructions. Should I also invent the Apple watch while I’m at it, because this is 2011, and Steve Jobs is still alive? Which is why I will gift a Mac to this woman who bites her lips every three pages of this 588-page book in a deliberately provocative attempt to distract from my BDSM ways and turn me into mush. Oh no, now look what I’m not doing to myself anymore with all these thoughts of love.

No! Don’t touch me. OK, touch me. I’m a sadist but all I want is to make l…. NO! I don’t DO love. I’m so confused. Let me go into the kitchen and whip up a — oh no, now look what I’ve done to myself — dessert. No, I’ll go running instead.

Oh Anastasia, Anastasia, why are you making me do all these uncharacteristic things like stalking you and being jealous of any man I suspect of being your boyfriend? Before I bash their faces in, I must have a feverish nightmare about Mrs Robinson (helLO! Mrs Robinson? Dustin Hoffman? The Graduate ? You don’t get it? I didn’t either. Apparently I was seduced at 15 and I still carry the emotional scars and that's why I want to dominate every woman. Which idiot objects to being seduced at 15, though?).

Where was I? Ah yes, helping Ana lose her Stasia, so that she is now a virgin no more. After which I compose the complete works of Bach at my piano while she sleeps. Now to spend 400 pages falling in love with her and writing her flirtatious email while she bites her lower lips and gives me an instant reason to say oh no, now look what I’ve done to myself. And just so you know I have given myself a bad reputation with all that suggestive talk of BDSM, let me tell you, I hardly use the whip or the belt in all those 588 pages.

Because, as Leela might have said, lau.

But eventually, pausing during my epic takeover of Twitter, Tesla and Reliance and merging them into a single BPO based in Shanghai — oh but that ugly Antilla would make SUCH a marvellous playroom with all my equipment — I beat Ana a little too hard. She walks out. I am overcome with worry. But just in time, I remember I have two more books to slap something romantic together — oh no, now look what I’ve done to myself.

(This monthly column helps you talk about a book without having to read it.)

Arunava Sinha translates classic, contemporary Bengali fiction, non-fiction into English; @arunava

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