Photo courtesy: Ayaneshu Bhardwaj via Unsplash

I want to five rupee you.

No, she pushes forward and refuses to make eye contact. She didn’t know what it meant, and didn’t want to know.

No? I can’t five rupee you? His younger brother, eight, sneers and makes her feel lewd.

He had tried to get her to stop the day before by staying Stop. Stop. Please Stop! It was the same junction where two boys had lured her in by waving their phones—You like? You like? She thought they were asking for help. Instead, they shoved phone-porn in her face. Twenty-four hours later she came up with the retort: Is that your family reunion?

Recognizing that this junction transforms otherwise wholesome boys into vulgar wolves, foaming at the mouth, You like?—she did not Stop.

He guessed where she was headed and throttled his motorbike in the opposite direction. By the time she approached her front gate, his form materialized from a dust cloud of hormones. Hi, Bye, he said as she locked the gate behind her.

She didn’t think anymore of it.

The Boy on a Motorbike spotted her the next day.

He had memorized her route and knew that in the mornings she made an incomplete isosceles triangle, passing in front of Raja’s Look and Find Shop, trudged between twin garbage heaps where dogs sprawled like dogs, and petted the coconut eating cow before meeting Shiva Road.

He nearly trounced her with his motorbike; veered so close she leapt into the gutters of India. The gutters were indistinguishable from the not-gutters of India—they both contained cow shit and beggars. I’ll take you to the ashram. She shook her head. Please, jump on. Me. Jump on me, he wanted to say. She wouldn’t look at him and hid her foreign face behind the brim of her foreign hat. They were coming to Shiva Road where Shiva the god would protect her. Bye, he squeezed her arm above the elbow before speeding away.

He touched when he should not touch. She began to think about it. Then she ridiculed herself, How ridiculous! I’m his mother’s age! I’m his grandmother’s age! She began to think he was dented in the head.

He discovered her walking alone at night. In the beam of his headlamp, her layered gauzy skirt and scarf laid out to him like a tantalizing hint: she was in there, underneath there. If he could just unwind the scarf, he’d discover her. He swerved with a sharp U-turn and nearly rammed into her. He touched his finger to her cheek, Just one kiss. The Boy on a Motorbike had her pressed up against the bushes, pressing her cheek as if to check the bounce of a freshly baked cake. Please, he pleaded with the Cake, Just one kiss.

She escaped the bush, turned the corner only to run into another one: Lover of Cake. His mouth watered. They were everywhere, these boys, they all wanted Cake, they wanted a kiss, they wanted to check her bounce. They wanted a family reunion with her like they’d watched on their phones.

The next morning, she changed her route.

She planned to hand out chocolates to the beggars in the gutters of India. She found one—an old sadhu who looked like a tree—scraggy with desiccated leaves for skin. He sat crouched with head down and one hand upturned. The moment the chocolate slid into his palm, his eyes snapped open: I want to five rupee you. 

Immediately the tree shuddered, desiccated leaves unleashed desiccated coins in an avalanche, pelting the foreigner. She lost her foreign hat. The coins consumed her feet. They cracked her skull and split her lip. They tangled in her hair and one became emblazoned between her eyes. Nearly suffocating, she crawled out of the mound of coins. She had lost her hat, she had lost her purse. She had lost her slippers, her scarf, her mind. She walked down the road unmolested. No one wanted her to Jump on. No one tried to penetrate her with a motorbike. She was free.

Shiva the god unfolded the wrapper and laughed as the chocolate melted on his leafy tongue.