Whole minutes seemed to elapse before she released me from her gaze. “I’ll make some teas for the jalebis,” she finally said.


“I THINK SHE KNOWS about us,” I told Karun on the train back. “I think that’s why she probably doesn’t like me very much.”

“That’s absurd. If she did know, she’d like you more, not less. I’m thinking of telling her anyway.” Seeing my stunned expression, he retreated. “It’s only a thought.”

But he did disclose things to her, on a visit some months later. I could tell by his disheveled hair, his wild-eyed look, when he returned. “She didn’t take it as well as I thought. She wants me to marry—she reminded me of everything she’s done and said it’s the only thing she asks in return. She thinks you’re a bad influence, not so much because of your community or religion, but the foreign ideas you’ve brought back from living abroad. Ideas against our culture, she says—she demands I move out at once.”

That night, Karun didn’t want to have sex, but I insisted. I wanted to remind him why he stayed with me, to head off any notion he might form of leaving. At first, he simply spread his legs and stared into his pillow as I explored him with my tongue. He offered no resistance or reaction when I wrapped him in my arms and began to enter him. As my thrusts increased, he tried to shake loose, but I held him in place. He arched his neck back, crying out and curling his fingers into fists as we simultaneously came.

Cuddling him to my neck the way he liked afterwards, I asked him if he’d do what his mother wanted. “Don’t worry. I just have to make her understand that this is the way it is.” He said it defiantly, as if affirming it more to himself. “Besides, I’m no longer eligible for the hostel, and it’s not like I can afford my own place.”

He underestimated her. She developed cancer, the witch. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect—one Sunday, he bravely recited for her the speech he had rehearsed; the next, she calmly countered with her announcement. “She’d gone for a checkup last week. The results came this Thursday. It’s quite bad, since it might have spread to her spine. She says I shouldn’t worry, that she’s resigned to her fate. I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help thinking that if I hadn’t told her—”

“You’re right, that is completely crazy. You know there’s no connection.”

“Still, I can’t help but feel responsible. After all she did for me. And now she’s not even asking for anything.”

Of course she’s not, I felt like saying—was it so difficult to understand her strategy? Didn’t he realize the power of guilt? For all I knew, she might have fabricated the whole three-hankie drama to wean him away from me. Would it be too untoward to ask if I could take a good, hard look at the X-rays myself?

Then I felt sorry for him—even bad, a little bit, for the witch. “If you ever need to bring your mother to Delhi for tests or treatment, she can stay with us.”

But she refused to come to Delhi, even though it offered hospitals much better than any in Karnal. She claimed it was too far, though Karun and I both recognized this as a protest against my continuing presence. She began playing the matrimonial market for Karun, soliciting matches and responding to newspaper ads. Each Sunday, he returned with a new packet of notes and photographs. “All she keeps begging me for is a grandchild in the time she has left.”

As her health declined, Karun spent Saturdays in Karnal, then Fridays as well. More months went by, and he changed his status to part-time, then suspended his university work altogether a year and a half into her illness. He spent two months nursing her through chemotherapy, and when she was better, began returning to Delhi on Sundays. I wanted to go to Karnal to see him, but he stopped me each time, saying he wouldn’t be able to get away from her bedside.

About a year after Karun’s mother received her diagnosis, an unrelated problem had cropped up. Mrs. Singh fell in love with a Sikh gentleman living in Noida and started spending a lot of her time there. We’d had an inkling something was up ever since encountering her in a bright orange salwaar kameez one evening, trailing clouds of perfume down the steps. With her daughter recently married off, this left Harjeet as the only day-to-day occupant of the flat below.

At first, we tried to ignore his increased harassment. Instead of just blocking our way on the steps, he now started bumping into us, causing groceries to be knocked out of our hands on more than one occasion. Our mail disappeared from the common receptacle downstairs, forcing us to rent a post office box. The unemployed Sikh youths he hung out with became a permanent fixture downstairs—each night, they got drunk and sang Bollywood songs with crudely altered lyrics (“Homo Shanti Homo,” “Love Mera Shit Shit”). One day, we found a puddle of urine outside our door—another time, a pair of underwear stiff with semen on our balcony.

Mrs. Singh, when we finally tracked her down, dismissed our complaints—her Harjeet was a good boy incapable of anything like that. If we had a problem, we could always find another place. Except we couldn’t, and we all knew that. In addition to the problem of finding a landlord open to both Hindus and Muslims, rents had shot up dramatically in keeping with the overheated economy.

Although I learnt to brush off Harjeet’s bullying attempts (swaggering past when he blocked my way, responding in kind when he muttered insults), Karun got more cowed. He peered down before descending the steps to make sure Harjeet wasn’t lying in wait, and came up with only the most anemic rejoinders when verbally taunted. “I hate it,” he said. “Is this what we have to look forward to our whole lives—dealing with people like him?” I sometimes wondered if he spent more time in Karnal just to escape Harjeet.


WITH KARUN GONE so much of the time, the Jazter’s urges often remained unrelieved—he no longer got regularly milked. The palm, the sock, the fruit, the fowl—their creative use helped, but only in a limited way. For a while he fought the good battle, thinking about the park he’d stumbled upon with Karun, but not venturing near. Riding a bus to the stop one day, but turning back at the gate. Darting in just for a little peek at the flowers after that, but trying not to notice the fauna frolic. Joining them for a quick modeling jaunt down the runway the next time, but the self-control still commendably in place.

And then it happened. A glance exchanged, a path into the trees, a bed of grass with the familiar blue ceiling. A quick game of cobra and burrow, mongoose and den, and relief came surging in (or out, technically). Shirts tucked, zippers zipped, no need for pleasantries to be exchanged. The bus waiting to take me back—such a convenient one-stop shopping trip.

I got home congratulating myself on the solution I’d found—why hadn’t I thought of it before? The answer lay in wait—guilt broke upon me in an overwhelming wave as soon as I stepped through the door. The cupboard we shared, the bed we slept in, the table at which we ate—everything reminded me of my betrayal. Hadn’t I professed my devotion to Karun each time he clung tightly to me during his brief home visits? How could I have done this to him, especially with his mother so sick?

But logically speaking, what difference did it make? Since I didn’t intend to tell him, the question of hurt didn’t arise. Besides, I always used protection, so I wasn’t exposing him to any risk. In fact, my actions promoted a positive outlook, an upbeat disposition, which helped me be more supportive. Wer rastet, rostet—what rests, rusts.Surely it behooved the Jazter to remain prepared, to keep his parts well-lubricated?

So I went back to the park. I reacquainted myself with sweat and spit, how different men smelled, how they felt, how they tasted. I explored all the cruisy new internet sites, learnt the mores of shikar in virtual spaces. Each time Karun returned home, I suspended these efforts and concentrated solely on him. He had grown thinner and looked gaunt—in his hair, I even found a few strands of grey. He spent a lot of time lying in bed, with no appetite for sex and little resistance when I initiated it. I wondered if he suspected my transgressions, somehow sensed the other men my body had been intimate with. He spoke very little of his mother except to say she was steadily deteriorating—the doctors had given her a few more months to live. He didn’t mention the matrimonial ads any more. Sometimes he leafed silently through his abandoned Ph.D. thesis.

I tried to rally my affection for him, to remind myself of the joys of our relationship. But his listlessness was so draining, his gloom so contagious, that I felt relief at the end of each visit. Sighing away the guilt, I continued in the same taxi to the park after dropping him off at the train station.


WALKING ALONG MAHIM BEACH, still on the lookout for something seaworthy to Bandra, Sarita and I stumble onto a group of people huddling against a shed. At first I start, my hand instinctively dipping into my pocket to close around my gun. But then I notice they’re not Limbus—everyone’s much too clean-cut and well-dressed. “Hello,” one of them calls out, her voice friendly, breezy. She seems in her late twenties, as do the others. “Are you here for Sequeira’s? The ferry should stop by any minute.”

“Sequeira’s?”

“It’s the End-of-the-World Party tonight, haven’t you heard? They’ve even promised us electricity!”

Like the other two women, she carries a burkha folded loosely over her arm instead of being robed in it. She accepts a cigarette from one of her male companions—its end burns bright orange as she takes a drag. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll spot you smoking?” Sarita asks, staring.

“Who, the Limbus?” The woman laughs. “Don’t worry, they never bother us here.” She takes another drag of the cigarette. “Are you hiding from them?—is that why you ask?”

Sarita begins to stammer a denial, but the woman interrupts her with another laugh. “I’m just teasing. And it’s OK even if you are. We won’t tell—no Limbus among us.” She offers Sarita the cigarette. “Here, would you like a puff?”

Sequeira’s turns out to be a nightclub on the Bandra side. “How strange you haven’t heard of it. I thought for sure that’s where you were headed when I saw the jeans and the sneakers. That’s what all the men wear—it’s practically a uniform. Not that I mean to pry into your destination, but you might as well have a look if you’re trying to get across.”

Just then, a bell chimes softly behind us. A dark shape has materialized from the sea—as we watch, a small boat detaches itself from the ferry and approaches through the ripples. An ark borne by fairies through the heavens couldn’t warm the Jazter cockles more, I think to myself, as our means of escape from Mahim draws up.

“This is the part I hate,” the woman, whose name is Zara, says, taking off her shoes. “You have to wade into the water to get to the boat. Which means that afterwards, on the dance floor, your feet remain sticky all night with salt.”


THE INCIDENT WITH Harjeet occurred when Karun came back for a short visit before they took his mother’s new tumors out. The convalescence period would last well into the winter, so he wanted to get his sweaters and coat. He had purchased a medical garter his mother would need after the operation and was just opening the metal gate downstairs when the motorcycles pulled up. “Home, Sweetie?” Harjeet called out, and his three friends laughed and whistled.

We’d agreed Karun should simply not react when taunted, so leaving the gate open, he hurried up the path towards the house. The motorcycles vroomed in behind, right through the gate. “A present for your hubby?” Harjeet said, and still astride his bike, yanked the box out from Karun’s hands.

He couldn’t help but reply, he told me, even though he probably shouldn’t have. “Give that back.”

Harjeet pulled the garter out of the box and held it up, dangling by a strap. “Look! It’s some sort of women’s underwear. Does Sweetie get to wear it, or does Hubby?” He took a deep sniff of the material. “Mmmmm—smells good—must be Sweetie.”

“It’s for my mother.”

“Look, everyone—not just a sweetie, but a motherfucker too! And Hubby must join in—who does he fuck first—the sweetie or the mother?” Harjeet wrapped the garter over his head and, getting off his bike, started prancing and singing, “I’m a gandu and a ma-ka-chod too.”

Karun managed to get into the house, but Harjeet and his friends followed and cornered him in the stairwell. Harjeet started snapping the garter at his crotch—one of the shots hit home, making him double up in pain. “Perhaps the sweetie would like a taste of uncut Sikh instead of the same old hubby-mian every day?”