From his position on the balcony, Mr. Sinha had a clear view of the woman riding into Nazrul lane on her thundering motorbike which belched gray smoke. The loud vroom-vroom reverberated through the old brick houses that lined the narrow Lane, waking their nosy balconies and drowsy seven-by-nine-feet front gardens. Mr. Sinha saw his neighbors, Mr. Ghosh, Mrs. Das, and Mrs. Biswas, poking their heads out of their balconies to see the newcomer. The woman stopped at the house facing Mr. Sinha’s. 

Helmetless, she had a tacky scarf woven into her pitiable braid. Mr. Sinha decided, standing right then and there in his balcony, the newcomer was unreliable. Something about the skeletal frame of the motorbike, how brazenly she rode it, and even the flimsy scrap of cloth in her hair indicated that she didn’t care much for public opinion. She looked like one of those hip women who talk too much, get into trouble, and are too irresponsible to have a family.

The neighborhood wasted no time in trying to find out this newcomer’s history.

“Why don’t you ask your police inspector nephew to look into her past?” Mr. Sinha asked Mr. Das.

Over the next three months, pieces of information were collected about this newcomer, and exchanged over cups of tea.

The woman’s marital history unfurled. A son materialized.

“Moumi is a divorcee! Apparently, it was a love marriage,” Mr. Das said.

“The ex-husband is in charge of the boy. My nephew said that her parents came over here after the war.”

“Bangladesh? It’s no surprise then,” Mrs. Sinha smirked. “Girls from broken countries have broken homes. What was her surname before marriage?”

“We don’t know,” Mr. Das said, shrugging. “Whatever it was, it can’t possibly be a good family.”

Over the course of the next year, Mr. Sinha exercised his outstanding ability to look into the homes of his neighbors. He concluded that the woman’s son visited her only in the summer and winter vacations. The other neighborhood kids did not let the eight year old boy join in their games; most probably because of his unreliable mother, Mr. Sinha’s wife definitely thought so.

Mr. Das lowered his voice when that same subject came up while talking to Mr. Sinha at Munnu’s barber shop at the end of Nazrul Lane.

“A divorcee is dangerous. She will be a bad influence on all our women,” he said.

In the chair beside Mr. Das’s, Mr. Sinha was getting his no-nonsense haircut. He had been coming here with Mr. Das on the first Sunday of every month since they were eighteen years old. The barber shop was small and cramped, and on two of its opposite sides, waist-height walls gave way to street views.

At seven in the morning, the ladles, kadhais and pressure cookers were coming alive in houses across the street. Men stepped out, pacing up and down the narrow lane, sometimes stopping to spit into the open gutters. Toothbrushes dangled from the corners of their lips, they carried mugs of water in one hand, and gamchha towels hung from their shoulders. Every part of this routine was essential in having a good start to the day. Mr. Sinha was an early riser; he had already taken his morning walk at six. Beside him, Mr. Das waved at Mr. Ghosh, who passed by the barber shop. Then both the neighbors watched as Moumi and her son rumbled past Munnu’s on their bike.

“There she goes on her reckless chariot endangering everyone,” Mr. Das grumbled.

When Mr. Sinha returned from Munnu’s, he did not feel as light as usual after his monthly ritual. He felt keenly the threat she imposed on all their women.

In the evening during tea time, Mr. Sinha told his daughter and wife to avoid, at all costs, the woman in the opposite house. Simple, honest folk, Mr. Sinha strongly believed, didn’t give one much to talk about. He appreciated this quality in his wife. Out of all the women his father recommended to him for marriage, Mrs. Sinha had seemed the obvious choice. She neither had a pen pal, nor held hands with male cousins, nor had she ever gone to watch Titanic in the cinemas with her girlfriends.

*

Summer was drawing to an end, the wind became cooler early in the mornings. From his balcony where he was pacing about, with a toothbrush in mouth, Mr. Sinha had a clear view of Moumi playing catch with her son in the front yard. She wore wide pants, and a top that clung to her skin. He watched Moumi dashing, breasts bouncing to catch the ball. Their eyes met. Instead of smiling, she let her eyes sweep all over him. Mr. Sinha returned the stare with as little visible emotion on his face.

“A mother prancing about like a girl of thirteen, that too without a chunri to cover her chest, no shame in her. Characterless woman,” Mrs. Sinha whispered into Mr. Sinha’s ear while he was brushing his teeth.

Mr. Sinha started, a line of froth slipping out of the corner of his mouth. He hadn’t noticed his wife joining him. The fact that he was visibly startled made him feel uneasy and unnecessarily private. He spent the better half of the day listening attentively to Mrs. Sinha, and nodded vigorously whenever she said something about harmful migrants or characterless women. A characterless woman was devoid of morality. Abandoning her husband, she ran after others’ husbands.

When her son went away, the woman receded into a deep, dark corner of her house. The neighbors did not catch her prancing in the front yard or whizzing down alleyways. Her motorbike had turned into a relic. Only Mr. Sinha saw her early one morning, quiet and bikeless, buying lentils at the market. He walked up to her, expecting to be acknowledged. When she didn’t look up, he felt terribly silly for loitering outside the shop.

“Moshai, do you want to buy something?” the shopkeeper asked him, swatting a fly.

“A hundred grams of red lentil,” Mr. Sinha said. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Moumi putting the lentil bundles in her jute tote. She was leaving. He wondered if he should say something. The shopkeeper interjected his thoughts.

“We don’t do anything less than two hundred and fifty.”

“Two hundred and fifty then,” Mr. Sinha sighed, “we are neighbors, that woman and I. But would you ever guess it by looking at her?” he told the shopkeeper who was weighing the lentil bundle on an old scale.

“Who? What?” the shopkeeper asked, busy picking his teeth.

“Never mind.” Mr. Sinha left as quickly as he could.

Throughout that day, in his small furniture shop in the village market, Mr. Sinha remained distracted. When a fruit vendor squatted in front of his shop entrance with his baskets of watermelon and bananas, Mr. Sinha didn’t have the usual energy to chase him away.

*

When her son visited in the winter vacation, Moumi’s bike thundered to life. The neighbors heard her voice. Balconies filled up with careful pretenses: Mrs. Das hanging her laundry, Mrs. Ghosh checking for the fishmonger, and Mrs. Biswas cleaning cobwebs. Only Mr. Sinha stood on his balcony without an apparent job, his gaze squarely fixed on the opposite house. Moumi did not look up to acknowledge the curious faces. As the year passed, the onlookers dwindled. By the second year, the neighbors, bored with her familiar routine, stopped coming out. Only Mr. Sinha went out to the balcony, a part of his daily routine, continuing his solitary quest for neighborly knowledge.

*

The next summer, he found Mrs. Sinha complaining about needing a vacation. When it could not be put off anymore, he booked the cheapest tickets to the nearest hill station. Amidst the hills and quaint stores, he kept wondering about a certain balcony and a front yard coming back to life. Mr. Sinha felt he had had an uneventful summer.

*

Autumn began with the dhak’s rhythmic beats, ushering in a season of festivities. Fairy lights hung like a canopy over Nazrul Lane, lighting every beaming face that passed beneath it. Still, boundary walls and bushy front gardens continued to foster shadows. A bamboo pandal was constructed in the small patch of empty land beside Moumi’s house, where the goddess Durga was kept.

Moumi took no part in the rituals that carried on from morning to night. For five consecutive nights, voluntary vigilance was maintained by Mr. Das, Mr. Biswas, and Mr. Sinha; all of whom took turns guarding the pandal and the decked goddess from thieves. Mr. Ghosh excused himself from this task, blaming the fried roadside jilipis for bringing on a sudden bout of diarrhea. The vigil went on from midnight to the early hours of the morning, the only period of silence in the festive season.

On the third night of the puja, it was Mr. Sinha’s turn to patrol the pandal. While the others had found their gazes fixed on the pandal, Mr. Sinha’s eyes were preoccupied in deciphering the shapes moving in Moumi’s front yard. The fairy lights from the road helped illuminate the stranger’s face, his exaggerated nose, a copse of mustache obscuring his lips. The ends of his long thin arms dipped into pools of shadow cast by the boundary walls. Mr. Sinha watched with bated breath.

The man rang Moumi’s doorbell.

The perpetrators did it as quietly and quickly as possible. Moumi emerged from the house for a couple of seconds. The door opened just enough for the man to squeeze himself inside.

Mr. Sinha convinced Mr. Das, and Mr. Biswas to let him do the night watch for the rest of the days. He did not reveal what he saw the previous night to the others. It was Mr. Sinha’s secret alone, and he liked to keep it that way. He wanted the puja rituals to be over and for night to come. Then, crouching in the thick shadows of rose hedges in Moumi’s garden, Mr. Sinha waited for the stranger to arrive.

The stranger arrived ten minutes past midnight. Mr. Sinha held himself still as he heard the lovers whisper.

“You are late today, Arun,” Moumi said when she opened the door.

Things happened fast. The mosquitoes feasted on Mr. Sinha in the hedge. The man hungrily devoured Moumi’s face. Moumi squealed in his arms.

“Not here, come inside. Quick,” she said, pulling him indoors. The door closed with urgency behind the lovers.

Mr. Sinha’s face grew hot. He felt stiff in his pants. He recalled the sound of her squeals. The pandal front remained empty, the goddess unguarded. The mosquitoes fattened themselves on every inch of Mr. Sinha’s exposed skin. Yet, his hands remained steady as the strokes increased. His breath hitched. He imagined the wetness of Moumi’s mouth, her tongue sliding in and out. Mr. Sinha winced when he came. Then, wiping his hands on the matted grass, he assumed his position at the pandal front again. For what remained of the night, Mr. Sinha could not look up at the goddess.

Next morning, his wife found him splayed and snoring on a chair. His back was to the pandal.

The dhakis came bearing their dhaks on their shoulders. People started gathering in front of the pandal. With their curved sticks, the dhakis beat on the drums frantically. The wives held up their earthen chalices with burning incense to the sky, the smoke thick in the air, penetrating mouths, assaulting eyes. The priest ululated, and every neighborhood dog joined in to howl, their noses tipped to the heavens. Mr. Sinha needed to get away.

“Will you not stay here for the arati?” his wife asked. Even though Mr. Sinha could hear his wife over the drumbeats, dogs, and priest, he kept walking away.

Alone in his house, he thought of the horridness of his act, the failure of the goddess, the temptress in the opposite house. Of course, he had no control over himself. There were stronger forces at play, and he had always been too simple a man.

On the sixth day of the puja, it was time to float goddess Durga down the holy river. Waist deep in water and feet deep in sludge, Mr. Sinha pushed the clay structure out into the river, making sure the strong currents carried away the goddess, his only witness and accomplice. No feelings of loss or reverence arose in Mr. Sinha as he watched her floating away. A goddess contaminated by an activity so polluting that it found its expression in the pissing organ.

*

As winter approached, shops in the village market started closing early. Mr. Sinha’s usual sign for closing shop in the winter was when the goatherd from the nearby slum walked by his shop. The boy walked at a leisurely pace. The goats stumbling on their hurrying, shaking legs bleated behind him. The traffic halted. People shouted, (Oye, move you fool! Stupid boy!). This was when Mr. Sinha knew evening would fall on them unannounced.

Mr. Das stopped by Mr. Sinha’s shop after closing his grocer’s shop for the day.

“Dengue season’s here,” Mr. Das said. “Two deaths already. Here’s some Mortein for your family.” He handed the big, ugly mosquito repellent coils to Mr. Sinha.

“The wife will be happy.” Mr. Sinha smiled. He wanted Mr. Das to go away but Mr. Das stood there, waiting for him to pack up.

“I have been meaning to tell you, my inspector nephew got back and you won’t believe what he has to say this time,” Mr. Das said. On any other day, Mr. Sinha would be interested in the unbelievable thing that Mr. Das’s nephew had to say but time was slipping.

“I better go, the wife will be waiting,” Mr. Sinha interrupted his friend.

In an apparent hurry, Mr. Sinha started walking away from the market, then stopped, and turned back to see if Mr. Das had left. When he didn’t see any familiar face waiting for him, Mr. Sinha hurried to Nazrul Lane.

Lately, after closing his shop, Mr. Sinha waited in the darkening lane of his neighborhood to watch Moumi return from the village school, passing him by on her bike. Sometimes, the narrow lane afforded them only inches of distance, and on those days, Mr. Sinha considered himself lucky. The neighborhood found out that after the puja season ended, Moumi found a position at the small village school as an eighth grade English teacher.

As he walked home, Mr. Sinha recalled to mind the speed at which the bike rushed by him, the gust of wind, the faint whiff of the rider’s body akin to jackfruit. Her smell reminded him of the summers he spent in his grandmother’s village, waiting under trees for the jackfruits to fall. The eagerly awaited thump would be followed by their sticky scent hanging thick in the air. All of this, he recalled in the privacy of his bathroom, while Mrs. Sinha and his daughter waited for him at the table, their evening cups of tea growing cold.

When his wife dozed, her head hanging over the various catalogs of Amway Mrs. Ghosh had left for her, and his daughter was nose deep in homework, Mr. Sinha sneaked out to his balcony. He waited for the arrival of Moumi’s lover, Arun. Mr. Sinha had memorized this name so well that he feared blurting it out to his wife or to Mr. Das.

He watched Arun pass beneath the solitary lamppost in front of Mr. Ghosh’s house, watched his long legs hurry to Moumi’s house, watched her welcome him inside (sometimes pulling him inside with her hand, other times merely smiling and nodding). There were times he was convinced Moumi could see him looking at them, even when he was cloaked in darkness.

Moumi’s very real, closed door opened a metaphorical window into a room tucked away in his mind. A room where, years ago, all the necessary actions were carried out before their daughter was born.

He remembered it so clearly. The ceiling of the bedroom looming above them. His chest hair nuzzled Mrs. Sinha’s nose and chin as he rocked his hips in quick succession. She always had her eyes closed because only animals feel no shame while fucking, and she was not an animal. He was always shocked by the dampness of their bodies, the big sweat spots they left on the bed sheets, the nauseating smell of sex like sea salt and fish. That room was renovated after their daughter arrived, and soon after, everything in that room changed. Walls knocked down. Walls painted.

Mr. Sinha wanted to get closer to the lovers. So many times he thought of crouching in Moumi’s bushes to relive his adventure again, but a spate of Dengue had turned the nearby town hospital into a popular destination. People stopped going on morning walks in fields, or fishing in the marshy lakes. They stopped brushing their teeth near the open gutters. The local Panchayat sent a man to the neighborhoods to spread bleaching powder by the side of the gutters twice every week. One man rode a rickshaw with a microphone in hand, and cried out every five minutes, “Use Mosquito nets today, thank me later.”

The rickshaw man sold mosquito nets in every color and prints imaginable. Mrs. Sinha got a set of three for the price of one and that’s all she spoke about for that whole week.

“Mrs. Ghosh’s nets are all hideous. Coarse material and garish colors,” Mrs. Sinha said, “Ours will last for years. Are you listening to me? You never listen these days!”

*

On the nights that Arun arrived later than usual (12:30 am in the dark), Mr. Sinha restlessly paced up and down on his balcony. He wondered if Moumi tossed and turned in her bed waiting for Arun, wondered if they ate together, laughed together, fell asleep in each other’s arms. What did they do?

One night, he saw Arun smoking under the lamppost in front of the Ghosh’s. Arun’s spine was effortlessly straight, his waist lean. A face without fear of the surrounding dark. Arun looked so self-satisfied standing in the solitary cone of light, smoking his cigarette that the next day, Mr. Sinha felt compelled to pick up cigarettes from a grocery shop. The shop was further away from the locality. Mr. Sinha did not want word getting out. Smoking was a shameful thing. He hid the pack of cigarettes in a drawer Mrs. Sinha never bothered to look in. When it was midnight, and Mrs. Sinha retired to bed, he went and stood under the lamppost, his hands shaking, fiddling with the cigarette.

Mr. Sinha had never had a cigarette before. He inhaled a mouthful of it. He pressed on his mouth as coughs tore out of him, shaking his entire body. He stood there in the dark for hours. Arun did not come that night. Moumi’s door didn’t open. Worst of all, he was bitten by mosquitoes on the side of his neck, leaving the skin inflamed. Mr. Sinha pinched the bump in utter dread.

When he crept into bed early in the morning, he was shaking from the cold. He really hoped he didn’t have dengue, but he feared he did. He fussed over the swollen bit of skin where the mosquito bit him, scratching at it, until it became red and angry. He did not want to die just yet. Then he wished he did have dengue, and died from it, and the lovers were held accountable for leaving him waiting in the dark.

Mr. Sinha visited the village doctor who told him he had a mild cold. Yet, Mr. Sinha was convinced that he was grievously ill. For a week, he did not open his shop. Instead, sitting on a wobbly chair on the balcony, pinching his red inflamed spot unconsciously, he waited for Moumi to come out. He imagined Moumi falling on the slippery mud of her garden, breaking her neck, imagined the eggplant and rose hedges gashing her skin; their thorns lodged deep inside her flesh, her wounds turning putrid. God’s justice. When Mrs. Sinha joined him on the balcony, he quickly hid his infected spot.

“Did you know her son’s got dengue?” Mrs. Sinha pointed at Moumi’s house. “The boy was sent home from school, and his father dropped him off at Moumi’s house. Mrs. Ghosh has already visited the boy. We should visit them too,” Mrs. Sinha said, scratching at her head distractedly. Her unmasked armpit had a big sweat patch, and she smelled sour like rancid coconut. Mr. Sinha turned his face away.

“I have been wanting to see her kitchen for a while,” Mrs. Sinha said, the excitement in her voice unconcealed.

“Now, I don’t want you getting friendly with that woman. It is best if I go alone.”

*

While he waited for Moumi to open the door, Mr. Sinha felt the muscles in his eyes twitching. He tapped his feet in increasing frequency, wondering if he would lose control and thrust his tongue into Moumi’s throat as soon as he saw her. He would taste all that she tasted. A thought crossed his mind. She must be tasting Arun’s body parts too. The straight spine, the long fingers, even the vilest bits. Mr. Sinha gagged. In her mouth, all the three of them would be one. However horrid the thought, he went back to it again, and again.

*

“So sorry for making you wait, Mr. Sinha,” Moumi said when she opened the door. The skin of her face was dry. There were cracks in her lips, and her hair fell in tangles around her face.

“It’s no worry,” Mr. Sinha said.

Moumi led him upstairs to the living room. Looking at the house from inside filled him with a secret joy. He observed how wide and open the room was. The large windows facing the road threw slanted light on the walls, and the end of the room funneled to a small kitchen. On one side of the room, her son lay sleeping on a narrow bed.

“Would you like tea, Mr. Sinha?”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” he said.

“Will you stay by my boy while I go to the kitchen?” She walked into the small kitchen without waiting for his answer, and barely looking back.

Her son was sleeping. He saw that the child was red and sweaty all over.

Mr. Sinha sat on the edge of the bed. The boy’s feet were inches away from him, his toes like little pebbles sticking out from ridiculously large feet.

“People have been coming to see him,” Moumi called out from the kitchen. She turned the tap on. Mr. Sinha was disturbed by the noise of the running water. A green, sour smell of unripe fruit wafted to his nose, and he looked about the room to locate the fruits. There were far too many objects in the room: books sitting atop books rising like towers from the floor, jars of various pickles on a table, cardboard boxes of Horlicks and Complan, newspapers and magazines bursting out of a small, bulging cupboard, and bags hanging from a line of hooks on the wall. If Mrs. Sinha kept their rooms this way, he would have left her at her parents’ house.

Moumi was speaking to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the tap or the clattering utensils in the kitchen. Everything from everywhere flooded him, and overwhelmed him. Moumi came out of the kitchen carrying cups of tea. She bent down to place the cups on a small tool in front of Mr. Sinha, then drew up a chair to sit opposite him.

“How did your boy get the dengue?” he asked.

“I blame myself for it,” her voice broke. Mr. Sinha had never felt so uncomfortable in his entire life. Did she have to tell that to him? He was not her relative.

“A week ago, I took him to cricket practice. To that big field near the pond. He didn’t want to leave the house, and I didn’t want my son to be all alone.”

“You should have brought him to your house instead,” Mr. Sinha said. The words were out of his mouth before he knew it. Hastily, he gulped his hot tea and burned his tongue. His eyes watered. Moumi’s head was hung low, she did not notice.

When she looked up at him, her eyes were wide and sincere. She leaned in closer. Mr. Sinha smelled that sticky jackfruit scent of hers again. He felt himself growing stiff. His heart thumped loudly, the tips of his ears grew hot.

“It’s hard being his only friend,” she said. “They tease him relentlessly at school. His father is careless with him. He doesn’t understand that he is a sensitive boy. I worry for him.”

All the lust Mr. Sinha felt, immediately turned into pity. He felt himself go limp.

“Were you sensitive at his age?” she asked. Mr. Sinha did not know what to say.

“How old is he?” Mr. Sinha asked instead.

“He just turned eleven.”

“I played the harmonium at his age,” Mr. Sinha smiled as he said this. “I wanted to be a musician.”

“What happened?”

He wanted to tell her how his father thought his playing was weak, his fingers playing catch up with the tunes. Mr. Sinha never wanted to be a furniture seller, rotting away in his father’s shop. It was painful to think of all of that now. It dawned on him that Moumi could do him irreparable damage.

“It wasn’t practical,” he said in the end.

The small talk was over. She stood up and walked to the kitchen. Mr. Sinha followed her.

“You didn’t need to come,” she said, placing her cup in the kitchen sink.

“It’s okay,” he said, “I wanted to help.” He felt a deep, interior part of him soften; he was anxious of the surprising ways it might ooze out of him.

Moumi had her back turned to him. Mr. Sinha bent down over her to place his cup in the sink. He felt her step away, only slightly, but not enough that he couldn’t smell her anymore. A funny little sound escaped her mouth, and he thought of how similar it was to Mrs. Sinha yelping at his sudden touch. In his thoughts, he replaced his wife with Moumi, put his large palm over her small one, and Moumi yelped and yelped and yelped. Then, with her dry, cracked lips, she tasted all of Mr. Sinha’s vilest bits, and he was disgusted and pained and pleasured and then, when it was all over, she said, sorry for making you wait so long.

“It must be strange,” he said, “to finally talk when we have lived so long in the same place.” Mr. Sinha continued to warm himself in her scent.

She stepped a little further away, and said, “Thank you for your visit, Mr. Sinha.” She smiled nervously and walked out of the kitchen.

“Ah, the time,” he said.

*

“We sat in silence, she wept a lot,” he told his wife.

“Weeping in front of a stranger, how naturally these feminine wiles come to her,” his wife grimaced. “I could never weep in front of male strangers.”

“Of course not, you are too sensible for that,” he said, but he felt guilty.

*

The next day on the way to the shop, he knocked on Moumi’s door.

“Mr. Sinha?” she sounded surprised. She looked silly, her mouth parted, her eyes flitting from his face to the toolbox in his hand, her dress worn with the insides out.

“Busy morning?” He hurried in. He did not want his wife or his neighbors to come out to their balconies and see him standing at Moumi’s door.

“Mr. Sinha, I’m late for school,” she said.

“It won’t take long.” He headed for the stairs. “Your cupboards need fixing. I noticed the rotten wood yesterday. You don’t want to keep it like that.”

Then he heard a man’s voice in the room upstairs. His hands began to tremble, his legs hurried to take him up the stairs. That must be Arun, he thought. Did he not leave this morning?

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Sinha, but –”

“What are neighbors for?”

“I am late. Please leave.”

Mr. Sinha hastily left. In his shop, Mr. Sinha kept chewing the insides of his cheek. When a customer came from the nearby town to look at a bed, he was irritated with his questions.

“Take it or leave it,” he told the customer. The customer left.

*

Sharp at five, Mr. Sinha stood at the entrance of Nazrul lane, just where it bent to meet another road. This was a little further up than his usual spot inside the lane. Mr. Sinha waited for Moumi there. The man from the electric office hadn’t come to turn the lamppost on yet, thus the lane remained dark.

Mr. Sinha heard the bike from a distance, and he saw its big, front headlight throw up light in the lane. He receded into the curve of the bend, standing submerged in complete darkness. When he felt the bike come closer, he suddenly stepped forward, bursting into the narrow lane. The bike’s tire jolted him to the side. It screeched to a halt. He fell down and lay there, pain shooting up his thigh. Mr. Sinha was so brave, and alive and hurting.

Moumi hurried over to him. He could tell she was frantic.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He didn’t say a single thing. He let her check his hand, his waist, and feel for his leg in the dark. He felt the weight of her fingers through his clothes.

“Forgive me,” he heard her say, and he wanted to laugh because he still couldn’t believe he had done it, and it had worked. He felt fortunate, blessed even, to have that effect on women.

“I am alright, you can go,” he said, his voice cold. Any moment and he would giggle.

He limped into the alley, and finally up the stairs of his house. Every movement hurt but all he could think about were Moumi’s fingers on his thighs.

“Oh, lord!” Mrs. Sinha let out a sob when she saw him limping. Their daughter stared at him with a frown on her face. Seeing her mother cry, she started weeping too. It was music to his ears. His wife looked ugly, and nothing like Moumi while she fussed over him, but it still brought a smile to his face. How much these women cared about his well being! He patted his daughter on the head.

He had gone through life thinking he deserved his wife’s unquestioning devotion, his daughter’s respect, and his neighbors’ admiration, because he came from a good family with the right surname, because he was a respectable furniture seller in a village close to town, because he didn’t have wayward children, because he had never given people the chance to talk about him, because when his father said his harmonium playing was weak, that he should work at the furniture shop, and like a sensible man, marry a stupid, unquestioning wife, he had followed every single advice. And he had emerged successful. Just how successful, it only now began to dawn on him.

“I will be fine,” he said. He couldn’t stop smiling.

“You won’t believe what Mr. Das told me today,” his wife told him later that night. “His nephew found out that Moumi had her son out of wedlock. Her parents forced the man to marry her. But the filthy woman divorced him, claiming half of his property. They had a huge squabble in the courthouse. Moumi accused him of beating her.”

Mr. Sinha did not want to hear this gossip. He wanted to pity Moumi. In time, her son and he could be friends. He could show him how to play the harmonium. He could help Moumi clean up that mess of a living room. So many things needed fixing – the bulge on the cabinet door, the small kitchen, her dry cracked lips.

He wanted to get away from Mrs. Sinha. He dreamt of leaving her. He wondered how his life would turn out if he had not listened to one single thing his father had told him. When Mrs. Sinha fell asleep, he went to the balcony. He watched the sky turn pale. Then, crouching behind his parapet, he watched Arun leave like a thief (frequently looking over his shoulders to scan the houses), before men started coming out of their houses for their morning walks. He watched Mr. Biswas pacing up and down the lane, a dirty scarf wrapped around his neck. A horrid thought crossed Mr. Sinha’s mind. He wondered if he looked like the others – Mr. Biswas, Mr. Ghosh, Mr. Das. He could imagine living their lives. All of them had been here for years, their fathers and grandfathers had grown up here. How absolute the power of this village was in retaining all of them. Only death gave reprieve.

Mr. Sinha wrote Moumi a letter. He wrote silly things like, I want freedom, and I want it with you. I always wanted to be a musician, but my father did not approve. My mother never stood up to him. I hated her for that, but forgave my father. I married a woman my father chose, a woman who was a stranger then, and is a stranger now. I am disgusted with her and myself. I will leave her when our daughter leaves for college. I have wasted half of my life. Your hair is beautiful but your skin is too dry. Your smell haunts me. You should stop riding your motorbike. You are too reckless. You live your life without any care. You have your lover creep into your house in the dead of night and have him leave early in the morning like a thief. You are a shameless woman and quite frankly, I am jealous of you, and I wish you never set foot in this town. Love, a friend.

He hid the letter in the drawer where he kept his cigarette box. He would give it to Moumi at the right time. When his daughter would leave for college, he would leave this village too. He would bring out his old harmonium and play in local functions. Mrs. Sinha could go back to her father’s place. Of course, he wouldn’t divorce her. He would not disgrace her that way, or encourage speculation. Somewhere in a distant village or a town, he would ask Moumi to meet him, and she would come because she respected him. In a coffee shop, he would tell her that he had become a musician and she would tell him, sorry for making you wait so long. He would talk endlessly. She would listen quietly with a smile on her lips.

*

Mr. Sinha was preparing to pull down the shutter of his shop when Mr. Das walked up to him.

“Never get to see you these days,” Mr. Das greeted him. “You take on too much. Your wife was telling me how your daughter’s school fees have been hard on your family, and I told her, it’s always the honest and simple folk like us who have to work so hard to make ends meet. You ever think Ambani is thinking of paying school fees? No.”

Mr. Sinha thought his wife was talking to Mr. Das too much. When he returns home, he will forbid her to talk to him, and tell her not to concern herself with their finances.

“It’s alright,” Mr. Sinha said. “I am alright.”

When Mr. Das went away, Mr. Sinha felt he could breathe again.

*

Upon returning home, Mr. Sinha found that his wife was not there. The letter that he had hidden in his drawer was lying on the dining table. He felt himself increasingly thirsty as he stared at it. He drank so much water that his stomach ached, and the belt of his trouser bit into his protruding belly.

“Jhimli?” he called out to his daughter. “Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“She has gone to the Ghosh’s, some important meeting,” his daughter called out from the bedroom.

Mr. Sinha hurried to the Ghosh’s house. His leg still ached where the bike had hit him, but none of that mattered. In the Ghosh’s house, he found Mr. and Mrs. Das, and Biswas too; all of them sitting at the table, evening tea in hand.

“I was just going to call you,” his wife said. She did not look like she had read the letter, or told the others about it. Everyone greeted him normally.

“I was just telling your wife that you take on too much.” Mrs. Ghosh came up to him with a teacup, and a plate full of digestives. Mr. Sinha sat down.

“Mrs. Ghosh was just joking that no hoodlum will dare step inside Nazrul lane. She told me, your husband’s always out on the balcony watching the passersby like a hawk,” Mrs. Sinha said. Mrs. Ghosh laughed.

A terrible thought occurred to Mr. Sinha while he watched their laughing faces. It dawned on him that while he was watching Moumi, the others were watching him.

“And I told her, keep that husband of yours indoors, or he will catch the chill,” Mrs. Das spoke up.

“This winter’s particularly bad,” Mrs. Sinha said.

The stupid ignorance that he was so used to seeing on his wife’s face was slipping away, a mask coming off. Her eyes and mouth hinted at things that Mr. Sinha did not want to get to the bottom of. He saw his neighbors exchanging secret glances. He felt so silly sitting amidst them. He dipped the digestive biscuit in his tea for so long that half of it collapsed, and settled at the bottom of his cup.

“I didn’t know we would all be meeting today,” Mr. Sinha found himself saying.

“Must have slipped your mind, you work too hard. I was just telling them what we saw,” his wife said. “We discussed it, remember?”

Mr. Sinha felt thirsty again. Something scratched at his throat and made it itchy, he gulped but it persisted. His palms became sweaty. His stomach churned. He thought he would vomit and fart and piss at the same time, all liquid and secrets gushing out of him.

“We woke up early today,” Mrs. Sinha began. “My husband was getting ready for his walk, and I was in the kitchen, making dal. And just then, through my window, I saw a man leave Moumi’s house. Can you believe it?”

His wife did not look at him when she told this story, and he had a feeling something worse would follow.

“It’s a family neighborhood, god knows how long she has been carrying this on under our noses,” Mr. Biswas raged, hand shooting up, index finger pointing vaguely at the air.

“Didn’t I tell you she was a dangerous woman? She’s corrupting our neighborhood.” Mr. Das banged on the table.

“What about her son?” Mr. Sinha asked.

“He is off with the father, isn’t he?” Mr. Biswas turned to look at Mr. Sinha. Mrs. Sinha squeezed her husband’s hand. Mr. Sinha did not utter another word.

It was decided that the community would confront the lovers early in the morning. A once divorced woman could not be allowed to see a man who was not her husband. The tea was served twice over. The second time, veg pakoras were served too. Everybody enjoyed the food and everybody left. Only Mr. Sinha found himself at a loss. He couldn’t think or speak.

While walking back, Mr. Sinha told his wife, “I will come inside in a bit.”

“Don’t be late,” his wife told him.

Her eyes were almost pitiful, as if nothing terrible had happened between them. How much he hated her.

He rang Moumi’s doorbell.

“It’s so late in the night, Mr. Sinha,” Moumi said. There was a frown on her face. She was not happy to see him.

“Can I please come in?” he begged.

“Yes.” She looked nervous.

“I would like some tea, please.”

They sat in the living room. He on the bed, and she on the other side of the table between them.

“When is your son coming back? Is he okay now?” he asked. “I would have liked to be his friend.”

“There’s still time,” she laughed.

“They grow up too fast,” he said.

How beautiful she looked, even with her dry lips, her body smelling of wet grass, the jackfruit, faint. He was going over the words in his mind. What would he say? They know everything. Run away now. Pack up your bags and leave. Save yourself the humiliation. Yes, that sounded right.

“Give me a moment, I will be back,” Moumi said. She walked past the kitchen, and entered a room, shutting the door behind her. Mr. Sinha tiptoed as quietly as he could and pressed his ears to this door.

“Come to bed, it’s late.” Mr. Sinha heard Arun’s voice from inside the room.

“There’s someone in the house, you silly man!” Moumi said.

“Who is it?” Arun asked.

“A neighbor,” she said.

He was nameless. Only a neighbor.

Mr. Sinha came back to sit on the edge of the bed. When Moumi returned, he smiled.

“I better leave now,” he said.

“Already? You didn’t finish your tea,” she said.

“Thank you.”

*

Mr. and Mrs. Sinha excused themselves from the confrontation the next day.

From his bed, he heard the noises. From time to time, he felt himself shake, startled by how hoarse the screaming was, how animal-like the sounds were, until he couldn’t separate Arun’s from Moumi’s, or from hers to Mr. Das’s.

“Whore,” he heard Mr. Biswas scream. The neighborhood dogs became so scared they started howling. Someone knocked on their door.

“Mr. Sinha, open the door,” they heard Moumi say. “How does it feel to ruin someone’s life?” Moumi shouted, banging frantically on their door.

In their bedroom, Mr. Sinha’s wife clutched his hand tightly. He was surprised by the strength of her hold.

After the banging ended, Mr. Sinha heard a bike thundering out of the lane. When finally Mr. Sinha went to the balcony, the men had all dispersed. He peered into the opposite house, and it stared back at him with its lifeless eyes.

He joined his wife, the woman he was determined to be free from, for morning tea. Now, he clung to her, and let her fuss over him. She blew on his steaming tea cup, and smiled at him. She looked like a malicious little child, and he was scared of her childish impulses. Her temples had uncountable wrinkles. It reminded him of his childhood days spent in his mother’s village, hacking the tall grass, cutting roads in a forest that he would not take the next day. Mr. Das stopped by to tell them that Arun was taken to the hospital. “No, no, nothing serious. Minor damages. The police will collect him from there. Going after a woman who is not his wife? He should have known better. Anyway, two nights in jail will fix him forever.”

Every little noise, for the rest of the day, startled Mr. Sinha. He waited for the goatherd to pass by his shop, watched the goats bleat, the traffic halt, the men shout, the evening fall. In the dark of his shop that smelled of old wood and turpentine, Mr. Sinha loudly wept.