What was he thinking?

What kind of man would put his hands around his wife's throat, pinch her nose, use both his wrists to push her face back and on occasion reach across the table to clamp his hand across her mouth?

What kind of man would do all this in public, in fact, seated at his favourite restaurant, an upmarket hub of media and entertainment celebrities, frequented by the paparazzi? Do all this to his wife who happens to be one of the most famous - if not beloved - women in the land?

What kind of man would do all this when he himself is a very public figure, a contemporary icon, someone whose every move and sentence makes headlines?

Could there be behaviour more inexplicable than that of Charles Saatchi, millionaire art collector, celebrated spin doctor, advisor to prime ministers and presidents, and columnist than what has been revealed recently?

For those who were away from Planet Earth this past week, Saatchi's misdemeanours have to do with recent pictures published in the press of various assaults on his wife, domestic Goddess and celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, at the popular Mayfair eatery, Scotts.

Who took these pictures, or the earlier one of him brutishly clamping his hand on her mouth, why none of the other diners did not intervene to help Lawson, why she has not lodged a complaint, why the couple were seen two days after the assault dining at the same restaurant quite nonchalantly are questions that have come up - but none so compelling as that of 'What was Saatchi thinking?'

Because the sheer insidious violence and the creepy nonchalance with which he carried out these acts has had a blood curdling effect on practically everyone who has seen them.

Domestic violence is not an unknown phenomenon, even in developed countries and amongst the upper class. But to think that a woman with fame, beauty, riches, a hugely successful career and with a background as pedigreed as Lawson would not only be subjected to it in public but would be seen to be placatory and mincing through it is what is making people sick in the stomach.

Saatchi and Lawson comprise two of the civilised world's most admired personalities. Between them they straddle the worlds of intellect, power, influence and sophistication.

Can we even begin to imagine what other women in far less civilised worlds must be subjected to? Could there be a more telling indictment of this dark and ghoulish subject than the photograph of an elegantly dressed man in an expensive London restaurant with his hands around his wife's throat? Perhaps Saatchi, given to coining winning campaigns in his career, would himself have used these pictures in a campaign to end domestic violence if he were not the perpetrator of it.

In past interviews Lawson has hinted at her husband's explosive nature, he himself has spoken disparagingly about her career, she has admitted to having been the victim of emotional abuse as a child , prone to depression and a tendency to please. How could no one have picked up the signs of her distress earlier?

But of course, perhaps the cause of battered wives is best served by this explosive incident. After one of the world's most desired women has been publicly assaulted, no one can dare doubt the words of another victim when she cries for help. The conspiracy of disbelief and shame has been lifted forever.

How sad that it fell to Lawson to achieve this. From domestic Goddess to become the symbol of domestic violence! Could anything be sadder?

Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com