What Tara Kaushal wants to tell you about rape Premium Kaushal's book 'Why Men Rape' was published by Harper Collins India in June. (Photo: Sahil Mane) Share Via When Tara Kaushal was researching her book Why Men Rape, at least three of her male interview subjects, while answering intimate questions, were aroused and started touching themselves. One of them tried to proposition her. Between 2017 and 2018, even as Kaushal conducted investigations with nine men who have committed rape, she felt physically unsafe only twice: once in Jammu’s Kathua district (“before Kathua became notorious") and once in Bhopal. Was the psychological cost higher, I ask over a phone call. “I was inhabiting a persona. I treated it as work, and got it done," she says, adding that it was imperative for her to have empathy for her subjects. “But there has been a psychological cost, no doubt."