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Suresh looked at Nisha admiringly. Since he first met her she had grown so much more beautiful. The curls in her hair were emphasised by the step cut, her arms were waxed, round, and smooth. Her little feet, peeping from black-strapped sandals, ended bewitchingly in red-painted toenails.

From time to time she wriggled casually when he got too near a breast. She was so innocent, this girl, he shuddered to think what would have happened had some unscrupulous boy befriended her.

Finally the idyll under the tree was over. ‘I have to attend some classes, yaar, you don’t know what will happen if I am short of attendance,’ grumbled Nisha.

They arranged to meet for lunch at Kamla Nagar the next day, and get those tuts – maybe I can even hand some in as mine.

Again, those certain shops in Daryaganj yielded their wares. ‘These things aren’t cheap,’ said Suresh, waving a bunch of tutorials under Nisha’s nose.

‘Are they the Stephens ones?’

‘As good as. You can’t get the same thing every time, you know.’

The exams came and went. Nisha’s admiration for Tara, Katyayani, Agastya, and Maya knew no bounds. How well they answered questions! Unfortunately, not all the topics she mugged came up, and identifying the references to context were sometimes a problem, but still she did not anticipate any difficulty with her results. It was exhausting being a position-holder – time to give the whole thing a break.

Summer passed. A hard time for secret love. Clandestine phone calls, occasional surreptitious meetings. Living in the hotel meant surveillance was a bit lax, and Nisha got more freedom than she ordinarily would have. There was no kitchen work, and it was easier to say she had to visit a friend, see this or that film.

Raju’s results were out. The reluctant learner had got 50 per cent overall aggregate. Admission to a respectable college was going to be difficult.

‘How does it matter if I don’t go to college?’ demanded the son. ‘It’s not as though I have to take up some profession.’

‘The boy is so wise,’ marvelled the mother.

‘Get a degree like your sister and brothers upstairs,’ said Yashpal firmly. ‘There is time enough for the shop.’

‘How often have you said, Papaji, that you didn’t need a college education to be a success?’

‘You talk like a fool,’ said the father irritably. ‘You don’t need a degree to make money, but you need it to be respected. Besides, marriage is more difficult with only high-school pass.’

Finally a BA by Correspondence was agreed upon.

‘Will the boy take his Correspondence courses seriously? His uncle found it very difficult to make him study,’ said Rupa, to her sister’s annoyance, as they discussed Raju’s education (or lack of).

‘The boy is keen to take up his responsibilities,’ retorted Sona. ‘It will be good for the father to have his son working with him. Your brother-in-law is too honest, simple, and sincere. He loves his brother too-too much, and that man takes full advantage. He says decorate the shop and lakhs are spent, he says break the house and the house is broken. God knows what he will say next.’

‘But you also consented,’ said Rupa, thinking that in her own set-up at least you knew who your enemies were.

‘That was just to keep the family together. Your brother-in-law had to hear so many complaints about space he started having chest pains. Peace of mind is more important. Peace of mind,’ repeated Sona, omitting the fifty lakhs that came along with it. Some things were best kept even from a sister.

Rupa wondered what Sona’s new flat would be like. Must be modern, with nice kitchen, closed cabinets instead of open shelves that gathered dust and cobwebs, attached bathrooms with unhygienic shitting, pissing, washing, bathing in one place, all granite and marble, shine and sparkle, like pictures in a magazine. But no point asking: Sona would make out that, for the sake of the family, she had agreed to accept the ugliest, most inconvenient flat of all.

Not to mention the holiday lasting months. No peeling, dicing, cutting, slicing, endless vegetables, no kneading dough, making tea, no picking over dals and rice, just sit and talk, order drinks, snacks, and knit. Nice life. Maybe when her husband won his case, they too could demolish their house and build flats. But for twenty-one years he had been getting date after date instead of hearings. For the first time she felt some irritation with her husband. Why was he of a tribe that could not get things done? Arre, if bribing was demanded, just bribe and finish. It made it possible to live your life.

Finally the new house was ready. Pundits were called and a havan performed before moving in. The function was small, they did not want to attract the evil eye.

Rupa did her best to find fault as she sat with others before the sacred fire. How hot they will feel in summer, the ceilings are so low, no open space, only a small balcony in front. Alas, she could come up with nothing else as she sat with the others on white-sheeted mattresses laid down on gleaming marble floors beneath gilded crystal chandeliers and smelt the sweet smoke floating through the empty rooms. Envy drove her thoughts again towards a future where they too could pay off the tenant, give their plot to a builder, and live in splendour. Why did her sister always have all the luck? No children, along comes a daughter; no son, along he comes; dark, inconvenient rooms, along comes a palace.

But then who in the world had a husband as difficult as hers? Even if it meant cutting off his nose to spite his face, he would refuse to reach a settlement with the tenant as had been done with Vicky. It was his religion to be blind to his own interests, and to refuse to learn from others.

She would keep her Tuesday fast even more strictly, then maybe the goddess would hear her prayers. One day she too would live in such a house, there was really no reason not to. They had fewer people to consider and a plot as big.

XVI

The room in Vijay Nagar

By now Nisha was in her third year.

‘When is your family going to approach mine with a proposal?’ she asked Suresh as they were sitting in one of their Kamla Nagar haunts, the light in the restaurant a murky aquamarine from the blue glass windows. Some flies buzzed around a few drops of spilt Thums Up. ‘Yesterday they took me to have a fresh set of photos taken, the old ones were not good enough.’

‘Naturally, you are so much more beautiful now,’ said Suresh, seeming to miss the point of the photograph-taking.

‘Will you be serious? It’s only because I am a mangli that I am not already engaged.’

‘My family is not superstitious about such things,’ said Suresh hopefully.

Sometimes Nisha did wonder about Suresh’s family – would her own approve of people who did not take horoscopes seriously? Did he have a horoscope at all?

‘Well, if that is so, why haven’t they contacted my father? Or haven’t you told them about us?’ asked Nisha, trying not to sound irritated. She slid her hand out of his and moved her foot away from his own.

‘Arre, why are you getting so hot?’ demanded Suresh, chasing the hand across the grimy, stained table.

‘Many of my classmates are already engaged. They keep asking, when is it your turn, Nisha? Of course they all know about you.’

Suresh looked pleased.

‘And at home they talk of this or that boy, who is manglik, who is not, it’s all very tensing for me. We can break up if you are too scared to tell your parents.’

‘It’s not my parents, it’s yours. We don’t have much money, I keep telling you.’

‘Haven’t I told you my parents did love marriage? They are not narrow-minded.’

‘Even if they do not agree to our marriage, I will never stop loving you, never. You are the princess of my dreams.’

Suresh looked into the distance. His jaw grew firm. Nisha’s heart beat faster. They were walking by the sea, there was music in the background, wind was rippling through her hair, there were tears in her eyes, her full, red, moist lips trembled, white teeth flashed. Her bosom undulated conspicuously before she started talking.

SURIYA
: My duty to my parents comes first. We have to break our love. I cannot go on.

HERO
: Never. I will die before I allow that to happen.

SURIYA
: Our union cannot be built on the ashes of their hopes.

HERO
: I will find a way. Your parents will agree to our match.

SURIYA
: Never. I am doomed to a life of unhappiness.

HERO
: What? Are these tears? (
He holds her close and wipes them tenderly
.) Silly girl, I will see to it that there is never a tear in these eyes again.

(
Suriya looks down. He forces her chin up, she smiles, the music grows louder, the waves roll in, the water touches their feet
.)

The waiter thrust the bill on its plate of saunf and sugar between them. Suresh carefully counted out some notes. ‘Do you have a fiver?’ he asked. Nisha took out a fiver, and added the tip Suresh always forgot. They emerged into the heat, and took a rickshaw back to the University.

‘Look,’ Suresh said a few days later.

‘What?’

He thrust his closed fist at her. Nisha gazed at the silver ring, the large, dark hand, the black, springy hair on the knuckle, the few threads hanging around the cuff, the steel links of the watch. She prised the fingers open. Inside was a key.

‘For us,’ said Suresh, closing his hand around Nisha’s.

‘What is it?’

‘The key to a friend’s room in Vijay Nagar.’

‘What for?’

‘So we can be alone together. It’s boring only going to film halls and the University lawns.’

She knew of course what he was saying. ‘I don’t know,’ she said shyly. ‘It doesn’t seem right.’

‘We’ll only stay as long as you like. Come, come, please come na,’ he persisted, gazing at her in the way she found hard to resist, his whole heart in his eyes, reaching out, wanting her, living for her.

‘How far is it?’ she asked nervously, as the rickshaw wobbled towards the colonies behind the University. It was a cloudy, breezy day and women were knitting on charpais outside their houses as babies played around them. A few sabzi wallahs and fruit wallahs slowly wheeled their baske-thung, produce-laden bicycles down the lanes. Cows and dogs nosed through the garbage that lay scattered around the municipal collection points. Outside a shop a group of men sat on the pavement playing cards and smoking beedis.

‘Not far,’ murmured Suresh, clutching her hand.

‘I wish people wouldn’t stare at us,’ Nisha muttered. She knew it was written all over their faces that they were going to a room in Vijay Nagar for clandestine purposes.

‘Don’t look at them.’

But those eyes were everywhere. The men gazed at her and divined the key in Suresh’s hand, the women judged steadily over flashing needles and balls of yarn. Her own mother, chachi, masi, sitting on a charpai, knitting eternal sweaters for eternal relatives, condemned her in whispers, their eyes never on their work (which didn’t need it), their eyes fixed on her.

It was a corner house in the back lane of a gully. Suresh unlatched the door into the angan without a sound. Some clothes were drying on cement banisters which led to a little room on top covered with corrugated sheets. They crept upstairs past the clothes, practically crawling behind the balustrade, the steps were so high. At the top Suresh quietly struggled with the clanking lock.

They were inside an airless, tiny room with peeling paint. On the desk a little hotplate, a small aluminium saucepan and an electric kettle were surrounded by an open packet of bread, two eggs, bananas going brown, a packet of milk powder, a bottle of tea leaves, and some sugar. On one wall a tattered flowered sheet sagged from a bit of rope stretched between two nails barely covering some shelves built into the wall. There was a mattress on the floor, with a squat stool next to it on which rested a large clay diya full of cigarette butts, a matchbox, and an empty packet of Wills Navy Cut. The bedcover had big black and red squares on it plus some holes.

Looking around her, Nisha demanded, ‘Why have you brought me here? Whose room is this?’

‘I told you, a friend’s. The couple here take paying guests, they both work – if we see the servant we have to tip him, my friend has already worked it out.’

The friend a pimp, Nisha the tart, Suresh the buyer. Was this what his love amounted to? He edged her towards the mattress. She pushed him away.

He looked hurt. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you love me?’

‘It’s not that,’ she mumbled, feeling trapped and uneasy.

‘You came with me this far. Besides, I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.’

He put his arms around her, pulling her closer than she had ever been. His smell rose pungent, male, and musky. ‘So long we have been friends, have I ever tried anything? Don’t you trust me?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘Then?’

‘We should wait till we are married.’

‘We are waiting,’ he answered. ‘What else am I doing?’ He took her chin in his hands. ‘Life after life we have been together. No one can separate us.’

Still she looked unhappy.

‘Look, we have known each other two years. Have I ever taken advantage of you? But in the Univ lawns people are always looking, it is not so nice, yaar. Don’t you also feel?’ he implored.

Tears came to Nisha’s eyes. It was clear Suresh loved her deeply. Very slightly she nodded. She gazed at the look on his face, felt the change in his breath, heard the words that came pouring out, paeans to her beauty, her softness, her perfect skin, her divine body, more lovely than any film star’s, the loveliest girl in the world, worth dying for, over and over and over, worth waiting for, always, always.

Again he tried to push her down, and this time she acquiesced. He put her feet in his lap, even her feet made him mad, he said, as he fondled them, dirty and dusty, a sign of how truly he accepted her. He began to caress her all over, and her mind divided, one part on college and parents, one part following his hypnotic touch. Then one hand snaked around the buttons of her kurta, and the muscles under her skin tightened.