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‘No,’ she protested, pushing him away.

‘Relax, I am not doing anything,’ he whispered near her cheek. Slowly he inserted his hand inside. His eyes closed, and his breathing grew heavier. He gave a small moan. ‘I could die for you yaar, you are my princess, my queen, for the rest of my life there is only you.’

She tried to respond in kind, but the words did not come.

Suresh was lulled enough to reach under her kurta for the tape that kept her salwar up. This time she pushed him away with all her might.

‘I’m not staying,’ she announced, sitting up.

‘Are you angry with me? Have I done something?’ he pleaded.

‘Take me back.’

‘What is wrong with you? Haven’t we known each other a long time? Didn’t you trust me enough to come with me here alone?’

He made it sound as though she had committed a crime. She turned away her head.

Here Suresh threw himself on Nisha and began to wail, ‘I love you, I love you, why are you so cruel to me?’

‘I love you too,’ she cried, tears wetting her face, her hanky, his shoulder, as he pulled her, resisting, to him.

Eventually they left the room. Once on the road, Suresh ran back, saying he had forgotten his watch. It was just as well for Nisha’s peace of mind that she did not have to see the money that passed between him and the suddenly materialised servant.

On the way back she remarked if he was so keen to do all this, why didn’t he make his parents talk to her parents, let the whole thing be clear.

Yes, yes, said Suresh, all in due time, he did not understand why she kept on about the parents.

If only, thought Nisha over the subsequent months, Suresh didn’t always want to go to Vijay Nagar. But he begged so hard, and was so loving when they did get there, that she was forced to agree more often than she would have liked.

She would not allow Suresh to fully undress either her or himself, there was only so far his love could carry him. ‘It is just as well there is something left for when we are married,’ agreed Suresh, making the best of a bad job.

On the evenings of those days she tried to avoid her parents. Her face was stamped with where she had gone and what she had done. Her skin prickled, from time to time she would scratch so hard the surface dotted with blood.

Once she showed it to Suresh. ‘Look what is happening to my skin.’

‘Do you think you should see a doctor?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nisha vaguely. ‘Maybe it will go away.’

Suresh kissed the faintly darkened patch. ‘I will always love you no matter what,’ he declared manfully. ‘I can take you to the doctor whenever you say.’

Nisha giggled – she associated doctor taking with women, not men. ‘You are very silly,’ she replied.

XVII

Discovery

Towards the end of Nisha’s third year, her parents received a letter from the college authorities. Their daughter was short of attendance, and would not be allowed to sit for the exams.

‘Why have I got this letter?’ demanded her father.

‘I don’t know. It must be a mistake, Papaji,’ quavered Nisha.

‘Just like that, they are making mistakes? What does this mean, 37 per cent attendance in the whole year?’

She thought of what it meant. Sitting with Suresh in Kamla Nagar restaurants, going with Suresh to the room in Vijay Nagar, feeling needed, wanted, and loved by Suresh. She hung her head.

‘Answer me.’

Nisha flinched at the unaccustomed harsh tones. ‘I am sorry, Papaji,’ she murmured.

‘Every day you go from here, why should you be short?’

Her fear gave her a desperate explanation. ‘Teachers mark you absent even if you are two seconds late, others cut attendance if you do not do your work.’

This was a poor explanation from a girl who had been a position holder in her first year.

‘We will see the Principal,’ said Yashpal, ‘and find out exactly what has been happening.’

Nisha began to cry. ‘The Principal will only say what the teachers say. Why can’t you get me a medical certificate, Papaji? Many girls do that.’

‘If you attend your classes, why should I spend on a medical certificate? Tomorrow your mother is going to college.’

That night Nisha could hardly sleep. She had warned Suresh that she might be short of attendance. But coming from a college where classes were hardly taken, let alone attendance, he had made light of her fears, dissipating them with the hotness of his breath.

Now she was going to be found out. When would the axe fall? It loomed before her, sharp and massive, the axe that would fall on the bad girl, the one with things to conceal.

The interview with the Principal was unsatisfactory enough for the family to take recourse to a medical certificate. With the sick leave accrued from two months’ acute hepatitis Nisha would have the required attendance.

Meanwhile, at home questions, questions, questions. Why had this happened? Where did she go? What had she been doing? Had she been up to any funny business?

‘Answer me,’ said her mother, icy-voiced, stony-faced.

‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Nisha, hoping to deflect her mother’s wrath with meekness.

‘Have you been roaming the streets with some boy? Is that what you have been doing? That is why you cut your hair, that is why you have been coming home late, saying you have been studying in the library, lying all the time, that is why you look so happy. You have been deceiving your parents?’

‘No, Mummy.’

‘No, Mummy, yes, Mummy – is that all the explanation you can give?’

Nisha turned away her head, she didn’t want to see her mother’s face. Uncannily she had picked on the lacunae in her college life, and filled them with suspicion.

Sona raised her hand to strike her.

Yashpal caught it. ‘Leave her. Our daughter is too old to be hit. Besides, I have absolute faith in our child.’

‘You are too trusting, ji,’ moaned the mother.

The lovers managed a hasty meeting. Suresh was told he would have to declare himself. Nisha cannot handle the situation at home, she wants everything out in the open. He will present himself in the shop, man to man.

‘Don’t go wearing dark glasses,’ she advised, ‘and you better shave. My father is a simple person.’

‘I will ask the pundit what is the most auspicious day,’ declared the anxious suitor. ‘I want everything to be right.’

‘My mother used to fast on Tuesdays in order to get children,’ said Nisha. ‘Go next Tuesday.’

‘I hope we are as successful as your mother.’

‘Don’t say that. She had to wait ten years. By then we will be old.’

‘I will wait for you my whole life,’ announced the hero.

‘I don’t want to wait my whole life before I marry,’ responded Nisha tartly.

Tense about the outcome of the meeting, Nisha decided to test the waters by talking to Rupa Masi.

‘Masi, what do you think of love marriages?’

The aunt stared at her. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Like that only.’

‘They are a very bad thing. Too much adjustment. Look at your mother. She spent ten years in sacrifice before her situation improved.’

‘That was because she had no children.’

‘I also had no children, but I did not have to suffer like your mother, bap re.’ Here Rupa shuddered.

‘How come?’

How to describe the amorphous hell that had been her mother’s life? ‘Did you meet any boys in college?’ she asked instead, misgivings raised by the interest in love marriages, and wanting to do her sister the service of revealing her daughter’s confidences.

Nisha remained silent.

‘You can tell me if you did,’ encouraged the aunt.

‘Why, Masi, will you be able to do something?’

This casual remark cast quantities of unwelcome light over the last two years. A little slower than her sister, but equally capable, Rupa too leapt to the same conclusions. The new hairstyle, the glowing looks, the forays into jeans and Tshirts, the long hours studying in the library, the shortage of attendance, the poor performance in second year compared to first – of course there was a boy in the picture.

‘Who is he?’ she asked valiantly.

‘He’s going to see Papaji in the shop on Tuesday.’

‘Alone?’ How could Nisha be so naive? Her heart felt heavy as she looked at the blushing girl, head down, pulling threads from her dupatta.

‘How does it matter? It is him I want to marry, not his family.’

‘Have you met his family? What do they do?’

‘Shop owners. Like us.’

‘Where?’

‘Kashmiri Gate.’

‘Caste?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He hasn’t told you?’

‘Of course he has. He tells me everything, but I don’t have to remember, do I?’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Not long. I meet him sometimes at the Coffee House with my friends, that’s all.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Engineering.’

Nisha’s answers gave few details about the boy which could be of significance. Rupa effortlessly visualised Sona’s rage, her acute sense of shame, her vanishing hope of holding her head as high as Sushila had after Vijay’s marriage.

There was one thing she had to know before the storm broke and Nisha’s fate overcame her. Delicately she posed the inquiry, ‘Did he do anything to harm your reputation? Boys are known to take advantage of innocent girls.’

Nisha, her face on fire, her hands like ice, watched the waves that had lapped seductively around Suriya’s feet receding into the distance, and mutely shook her head.

‘Well, let us see what will happen. Our destiny is not in our hands,’ sighed Rupa heavily.

On Tuesday Yashpal came home, and cast an angry glance at his daughter. Well, what had she expected? Congratulations that she had found her own partner? Without settling down to tea he started:

‘Some boy came to see me today.’

MOTHER
: Which boy?

RAJU
: Has she been seeing a boy? I will break his legs.

FATHER
: He says he knows you. Is this true?

NISHA
: Yes, Papaji.

FATHER
: He says both of you have decided to marry.

MOTHER
: Hai Ram.

NISHA
(
trying vainly to protect herself
): You also did the same thing, Ma.

FATHER
: Beti, there is no comparison between the lives of your elders and your own. Our marriage was performed with the full blessings of your grandfather. Who is this boy? How has he turned your head so much that he tells me what you will do?

MOTHER
: This girl will be our death. My child, born after ten years, tortures me like this. Thank God your grandfather is not alive. What face will I show upstairs? Vijay gets his wife from Fancy Furnishings while my daughter goes to the street for hers.

On and on, half the night, went the questions, as it became clear that Suresh and Nisha were not an item to be argued, threatened, or reasoned away.

Nisha cried, Sona cried, Yashpal cried, but the end result was the same.

The first step the family took was to ban her college-going. She was as yet publicly untarnished, they hoped to contain the damage. You can study at home, we have given one medical certificate for your convenience, Madam, now we will give another.

The easiness between her and her family evaporated. She moved like a guilty thing among them, worse than the dirt under their feet. She was not allowed upstairs. There is no need to give your Sushila Chachi an opportunity to pump you.

Raju was keenly interested. ‘Tell me about this fellow,’ he suggested invitingly, adding on reflection, ‘He sounds like a real chutia.’

Nisha shrivelled at his calling Suresh a crude fucker – Suresh of the long hair, of the dark glasses, the three-day stubble that grazed her chin, of the delicate hands and sinuous tongue.

‘Don’t use such dirty language,’ she said crossly. ‘You know nothing about him.’

Raju stiffened. With a coldness that conferred years on him, he said, ‘I know what boys like him are after.’

‘If he was like that, would he want to get married?’

‘Oh don’t worry, we are going to talk to him all right.’

‘We? Who?’

‘Me and Prem Nath uncle.’

Nisha felt dull despair. They had thought of everything. An older male but not one from the immediate family, so Suresh could not imagine himself a real threat. And why was Raju going? No doubt as a learning experience, to groom him as defender of his sister’s honour.

‘Let me talk to him alone, please, just once. You can watch us, if you don’t trust me,’ pleaded Nisha.

‘The time for trust is over,’ said Raju. ‘And if he can’t even talk to us, how can he hope to marry you?’

‘Who are you to decide whether I am trustworthy?’ she muttered, sounding weak and defeated even to herself.

‘I am only doing what Mummy Papaji want. Papaji is, as it is, finding out about him,’ said Raju to his hapless sister, wriggling like a worm on the hook of her family.

They found out with a vengeance. They were Paswans, in class and caste so far below them that in an earlier age their son would have been murdered had he dared to raise his eyes to their girl, let alone address her. They owned a small motor workshop in Kashmiri Gate, they themselves lived in the gully above the shop. Suresh doing a BEng from DU was their hope of a better future. They were waiting for him to take over, and were quite bewildered when the Banwari Lal family accused them of conspiring to trap a young, beautiful, well-to-do girl into marriage by spoiling her name.

The family protested they didn’t need to trap anyone. They had received enough offers for their son, who had asked the girl to chase after their boy? If they couldn’t control their daughter, why come and threaten them?

Suresh on the other hand tried to convey to his beloved’s family that he would do anything to prove that his intentions were pure. He only wanted Nisha. No dowry, no fancy wedding, he didn’t even care if she was a mangli.

A Paswan telling them he didn’t mind if their daughter was a mangli! Education had turned the boy’s head.

Nisha, on hearing this account, was moved by his nobility.