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Thinking of Vicky she thought of Suresh; thinking of Suresh drove her back to Vicky. If, with Suresh’s arms around her, she could reveal what had happened all those years ago, she would be absolved. No matter what her cousin had done to her, he, Suresh, had touched her in love, theirs was love, nothing else.

She tried to keep her mind on love and purity, but the past intruded with all its might. It crept closer and closer to mingle with the present, till she wanted to run screaming from herself. Was there never to be relief from her thoughts? She imagined the acid used to scour toilets, yellow, evil-smelling liquid sold in old beer bottles, the strongest cleaner she knew. If only she could dip a rag in that, run it under her skin, swab her mind with it, dissolve the foul stuff so that it lost the power to affect, now and for ever.

In all the years that Vicky lived upstairs she never had to contend with his huge, terrifying figure. He grew more menacing as her nights continued more wakeful. She clung to the only pathetic reassurance that came to mind: she was technically a virgin. No one need ever know. But with every cell in her mind preoccupied with violation, what difference did virginity make?

Oh Suresh, if we could marry, these demons will vanish. You told me so many times you loved me, lifetimes together, remember? What you said in Moti Mahal only shows how good and noble you are. Don’t be afraid of my family – once my exams are over we will talk to them, fight them, run away if necessary.

She spent the hours marked for sleep being dragged through the midden of her memories, ticking off the hours that would bring the dawn. Shadows reflected by the streetlights lay on the gleaming marble of the new house, heat settled slowly around her as she lay. Wistfully she thought of the angan where they had once savoured the cool night breeze and the dew that fell.

In the day she opened her books, but could make no sense of the words. She was so ill-equipped that all she was hoping for was a meagre pass. This year there would be no brilliant legacies of successful Oxford entrants to rely upon.

The fifteenth of April. The first English exam, Paper V, Eighteenth-Century Poetry and Drama. Nisha had her early morning tea, got ready, flapped through her mug books when she noticed Raju getting ready too.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘With you.’

‘Why?’

‘You know as well as I do.’

‘Who asked you to do this?’

‘Papaji. You don’t think I am accompanying you of my own accord, do you, Madam? I have exams too, you know. Now I will have to waste a morning waiting outside your college.’

They left the house at eight a.m. with the sun beginning its ferocious attack on all students travelling to exam centres. In the bus, Raju edged her towards the first empty seat he could find. She steadily ignored him, staring at the passing scenery through the broken windowpane. Then came Kashmiri Gate, Suresh’s stop. Her destiny had lain here, in Suresh’s tall, thin form, dark glasses, blue jeans, and long feet, dusty in their kohlapuri chappals. Surely love must find out the English Honours third-year exam timetable, and make its presence felt. If not in the bus, then perhaps at the gates of her college, only to greet her in a friendly fashion, and to hand her an innocent best of luck card. She could do with that.

Once they reached college, she surreptitiously looked for him among the group clustered around the gate, ready to brave her family’s wrath for her.

But there was no one.

In the exam hall, the air was stale. The windows were shut against the hot dusty air, and the slow-moving fans creaked listlessly. The predominant smell was sweat. When the electricity went, and the fetid air collapsed in pools around the perspiring girls, the invigilators opened the windows to let the loo blast in. Nisha tried to concentrate, shutting out Suresh’s absence, shutting out the faint surr-surr of desperate cheating whispers that came from behind her as soon as the invigilator’s back was turned. She knew it would be enough if she could just vomit out all the ideas that had been processed during her lecture periods. In her case it wasn’t much: a year of love and punishment had forced her into last-minute cramming from mug books, her memory was too occupied with other things to be of much use.

At twelve o’clock the exam finished. Chattering girls filled the corridor. Pratibha pounced on her. ‘Arre, where were you all these days? I phoned you twice, but they said you were not at home. Didn’t you get my messages? I thought, is she studying so hard she cannot even return a call?’

Pratibha, whom she had entertained with tales of courtship and love, whom she had felt superior to – what to tell her of her humiliation? Better to lose a friend than to venture into those treacherous waters. And wouldn’t Pratibha respond with I told you so? Conscious of Raju waiting at the gate, she muttered, ‘It is nothing like that,’ and then escaped, almost running towards the gate, leaving the girl staring at her back.

At Rupa Masi’s house, the only place she is allowed to go: ‘I am going to phone him, Masi, you want me to die?’

‘Your parents will kill me, beta.’

‘Masi, if you don’t help me, who will? What harm can there be in one little phone call? You can stay and listen.’

And the aunt had to hear her niece demeaning herself, asking the low-caste why he wasn’t at the gate of her college, did he not even have friendly feelings for her?

‘Well, what did he say?’ she asked, as Nisha put the phone down.

‘He thought if he came I would be too disturbed to do my exam.’

‘I always said he was a sensible boy.’

‘After the exams are over, we will talk seriously about the future. Till then I should study, and do well, as I always have. It will come in useful.’

‘What, is he planning to make you support him? Very sensible, as I said.’

‘Masi, if you do business, so can I.’

How the young misread things. Nisha must understand that women’s work was allowable only in unconventional situations (no children), and that respectability demanded it be avoided as much as possible. ‘Your uncle encouraged me to occupy myself, he has such a big heart he wanted to see me happy and busy.’

‘Like Suresh.’

‘O-ho. Who is Suresh? Here today, gone tomorrow. But you are the flesh of your parents, nobody can love you like they do.’

Nisha ignored this. ‘We can both work after we marry. We are not asking anybody to support us.’

‘Let us see what tomorrow brings,’ temporised the aunt.

The end of Nisha’s college career came two weeks later. After some stilted conversation with Pratibha, parrying her questions, she slowly walked towards the front gate. It was twelve-fifteen, the sun was pouring down in all its intensity.

‘Your exams are over,’ said the waiting Raju. ‘Let’s celebrate with a dosa at Sagar. I hear the Kamla Nagar one is good.’

Where she had gone so often with Suresh. Nisha listlessly agreed.

They walked into the air-conditioned restaurant, with its grey-streaked marble floors and glare-proof windows. Incense burned before the goddess Lakshmi, a red light bulb shone on the sandalwood garland around the photograph. They were led to a corner table.

Nisha sat lethargically in the cool, musty air. The sense of endings lay heavily upon her, depressing her into realism. Suppose love did not triumph?

In a corner she could make out a classmate with a boy. The blue-tinted light barely touched them, but had it been the blackest night she would have seen them as they leant towards each other, unobservant of the waiters, of the noise, of the other tables, their hands almost touching between the spoons and the glasses of water.

‘Nisha?’ broke in Raju. ‘Are you all right? Why are you sitting so silent?’

Nisha looked at him wordlessly.

‘You are not thinking of that chutia, are you?’

She shook her head.

‘Where are those dosas?’ Raju asked, suddenly angry. He gestured to the waiter. ‘Bhai, is our order going to take all day? My sister is feeling sick.’

The waiter nodded sceptically and sauntered off, flicking his duster over his shoulder.

‘Saala,’ said Raju absentmindedly. ‘Really bad service, but I suppose people come here to be left alone, like those two over there.’

So funny, thought Nisha, when she had actually been sitting here with Suresh, she hadn’t thought she was that happy. They had eaten, hung around, and left. Now, every minute reminded her so vividly of him that her breath, as it slowly came and went, cut her to pieces.

Now that the exams were over there was nothing to distract the family from the main business at hand, which was the difficulty the girl had put them into, her blindness, stupidity, and suicidal desire to self-destruct. ‘At least see what other boys are like, see who we choose for you, see, see, see. Nobody is forcing you, but this much you owe us.’

Their eyes were always on her, their tongues always at her. She was the sole occupant of the tower her family was laying siege to. With promises, threats, presents, kindness, reminders of obligations, with tenderness, love, and blackmail.

‘Even he doesn’t want to marry you,’ they assured her again and again.

She did not believe them.

‘He already told you so. Raju heard him, your uncle heard him, what more do you want?’

‘You made him say that with bribes and threats. If I am such a catch, why would he renounce me?’

‘Because he knows you will never be happy.’

But she still did not believe them.

She was only human.

So, it turned out, was Suresh.

One more meeting, please. I want to see him one more time.

How many more meetings does the child need before she accepts the situation, wondered the aunt.

But the family’s love for Nisha was great.

One more meeting was arranged, with an ease she took for granted.

‘I will die before I marry anyone else, don’t listen to anything you hear,’ she assured Suresh in Moti Mahal, Rupa Masi and her uncle sitting at a distant table.

But Suresh was not in a dying mood. He threw his desperate gaze this way and that, avoided his beloved’s eyes, did not make use of this opportunity to suggest death together. Instead he mentioned his parents, hitherto inactive players.

‘My family is not agreeing,’ said Suresh.

‘What?’

‘They are saying, if your people are so against the match, it will be very bad to go through with it. It will seem we are after your money.’ Suresh drew himself up as though the accusation had already been made.

‘But my family says all kinds of things about you – I don’t listen,’ said Nisha, resentfully. Why should she plead about her love to her love? What was the point of it then?

From the corner of her eye she could see her aunt and uncle. Had they known how it would end, were they just giving her enough rope to hang herself?

‘It is not good making so many people unhappy,’ said Suresh. ‘One day you will regret.’

‘Why don’t you say you have changed your mind?’

Suresh reached out his hand. Nisha kept her own clenched in her lap. ‘You will always be the princess of my dreams.’

‘I don’t want to be in your dreams, I want us to be together. What has happened? Have they said anything to you privately?’

The boy shook his head.

‘Then?’

‘Leave it, Nisha, leave it,’ said Suresh miserably. He called for the bill – only two teas – paid without a tip and left, leaving Nisha to the refuge of the watchful aunt and uncle.

Later, at home: ‘How much money was he paid?’

Her aunt looked at her angry, contorted face and spoke gently. ‘It was the family that mentioned some figure, lowclass people that they are, and your parents love you so much they agreed. You should be grateful. Not everybody lets a girl off so lightly.’

After her three-year romance, gratitude towards her parents was not uppermost in Nisha’s mind. ‘What about him? Did they talk to him?’

‘I don’t know the details, but the boy must be aware.’

That her meeting with Suresh had already shown.

‘How much?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know how much I am worth?’

‘You are worth the sun, the moon, and the stars. Your father would do anything to see you happy. All the time he is crying. The only daughter of the house, a girl like a flower …’

But Nisha had been compared to flowers too often for it to affect her much now.

Suffering paved the way for anger. Raju was right: Suresh was a chutia, a total fucker. If he loved her he had no right to decide her future on his own. She phoned him at his shop. A coarse voice asked her many questions, who was she, where was she calling from, why did she want to speak to Suresh, before reluctantly informing her that he had left town. She phoned him at home, and received the same answer.

Suresh had vanished from her life and there was nothing she could do.

XIX

Skin

Nisha’s nights were now ones of restlessness. As she tossed and turned on her bed, her hands absently crept around the itchy patches on her skin. First behind her knee to explore that damp, prickly area; next to her ankle bone to soothe the greater uneasiness that lurked beneath the surface. She pulled her foot up and rubbed lightly. Rub, rub, but the skin refused to be satisfied. Harder and harder she clawed, digging her nails in deeply till the wetness under them made her stop. Next morning a scab of dried blood marked the place.

‘What is that?’ asked her mother as her daughter sprawled on the bed idly flipping through a film magazine.

‘Don’t know,’ replied Nisha, looking blankly at the dried darkness. ‘Must be a mosquito bite.’

‘Be careful. Look, this bite became infected and left a scar.’ She lifted her sari to offer Nisha her example. There, amid an expanse of plump, mottled flesh, scattered coarse black hair, and pale stretchmarks was a round, puckered mouth with a raised bar across the middle. Nisha stared with fascination at the scar, the always hidden leg, then modestly looked away.

The next lesion was in her groin. The itching in the folds of her skin was unbearable. She disappeared into the bathroom to bring herself relief, staring in puzzlement at the swollen weal. Was she sick? She tried putting on powder and cream, but the wound persisted in the integrity of its nature.