to be clean. But I try to wash my face every day.
“How do you know what happens in the gents?” I ask Didi. “Do you peep inside because you want to see that spotty classmate of yours wearing only his chaddi?”
Pari pushes me and tells me to zip it as if Runu-Didi is her sister. Then she says, “Didi—Quarter and Aanchal, did they know each other?”
It’s a stupid question but it stops Didi’s eyes from burning me.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just.”
“Quarter used to sing songs whenever he saw Aanchal. He gave her Valentine’s Day cards all year round, like in June, or October.”
“They were boyfriend-girlfriend?” I ask.
Didi looks at me with contempt, then she says, “She took his cards, she took everyone’s cards. The girls at the water tap talk about it all the time. Quarter sang songs declaring his love for Aanchal, but for Quarter, that’s nothing special. If we were to go by his songs, he’s in love with every girl in the basti.”
“And Aanchal? She liked Quarter?” Pari asks.
“Who knows?” Runu-Didi says. “She had many admirers. People say she liked the attention.”
I don’t know what any of this means. I can’t ask either because right now Runu-Didi hates me for no reason.
AANCHAL
The girl sensed the skittering among the men gathered by the dhaba opposite Let’s Talk in Angrezi. Their heads swivelled as her blue sandals squeaked against the tiled steps leading out of the institute, and their gazes tethered themselves to her, moving as quickly as she did. She pulled her yellow dupatta down to cover her arms. Only that morning, her mother had warned her against dressing for the boys in the Spoken English class. No good would ever come out of wearing a sleeveless suit in the cold weather, her mother had said, the crutches in her hands tut-tutting at the same pitch as her voice. She had insisted Aanchal wear at least a dupatta.
It didn’t matter because yellow was Aanchal’s color, even more so against the black winter air that stuck to her skin like wet tar. Besides, Aanchal was hardened to the cold, to the desire that ripped through the eyes of the young men who bribed the receptionist at Let’s Talk to glimpse her timetable so that they could learn it by heart. Shirking jobs or studies, they showed up outside the institute at the exact hour her class got over, like now. The worst of them gestured at her crudely. Others whistled or surreptitiously raised their phones to click her photo. A few of them had her phone number too; the receptionist had taken offense when Aanchal suggested that at least certain details of her life be allowed to remain private. All day Aanchal’s phone beeped with messages from these strange men: hi! Hai!!! Can I make friendshp with u? how r u? u got my massge? And those were just the decent ones.
She knew what they said about her in the basti and the alleys of Bhoot Bazaar. Men and women, the young and the old, even the wives who took many lovers because their husbands couldn’t satisfy them or beat them too often, and the husbands who spent their earnings on hooch and mistresses, disassembled her character with the viciousness of starved dogs chancing upon a scrawny bird.
Let them have at it, these people who yearned for something more real and close at hand than the dramas they watched on television. Let them spin stories from a skirt that in their eyes was too short, or the bearded boy they had seen her with. A Muslim, that too. Tauba tauba, now that’s a girl who has no shame. Remember how young she was when she started? They gossiped and returned to their homes pleased that their own children, while disappointing or ill-behaved or plain-faced, at least didn’t embody utter moral failure like she did.
She made her way from the institute, seeing in the periphery of her vision the looming shape of a man following her. She refused to acknowledge his presence, but his steady footsteps caught up with her.
Remember me, he said. Remember what we talked about.
She did remember him, his face, the touch of menace in his voice. She quickened her pace, but not before she heard him say: Don’t be shy now, we know what you’re like.
A few months ago, his fingers had drummed against the glass windows at the beauty parlor where she worked, until she stepped out and asked him what the matter