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To Nisha, college had made it obvious that she did not have the skills to be a good literature student. Grammar mistakes were pointed out, and essays criticised for poor analytical content. The maximum marks she ever got were four on ten. She had never in her life been troubled by English lang and lit and she did not take kindly to it now.

‘It’s not your fault, it’s the fault of the Indian school system,’ said one teacher, looking at her crumpled face compassionately. ‘To transfer from two hundred-word descriptions to cogent analysis is difficult. I do not wonder at your plight,’ said Mrs Das Gupta. ‘I do not wonder at your plight,’ she repeated, warming to her theme by slipping into irony, ‘but when you do English, language alas does count.’ She smiled, twitched, and tapped her foot. Some girls tittered, others in the same situation looked uneasy. Nisha stared at the floor, flushed with humiliation.

It had all seemed so hopeless that instead of trying harder with Austen, Dickens, Plato et al she had preferred the more admiring, less stressful company of Suresh. Now that exams were around the corner she felt scared and guilty. Meeting Suresh so early in her college career had allowed her to exercise an independence that long hours away from home had given her. If only she could achieve a respectable result it would prove she could both do well and what she liked.

‘I can’t meet you, I have to study, I have to get a second division at least,’ she told Suresh.

‘Arre yaar, what does it matter? It’s impossible to do badly in English.’

‘That’s what you think,’ snapped Nisha.

‘Yaar, don’t get so hot.’

Nisha refused to answer her suitor. What did he know of the intricacies of literature? Indeed, she was barely cognisant of them herself.

‘What is there to study in English?’ repeated Suresh as they sat in the familiar, fly-buzzing darkness of the South India Coffee House in Kamla Nagar.

‘Shut up,’ she said, and a tear swam in her eye. If only she knew how pretty this made her look, and how moved Suresh would be to help her, she might have cried earlier. For now, he sat uncomprehending, absorbing her distress.

Two days later. Suresh in the bus – I have something really important for you – and in the coffee house Nisha watched him take out a bundle of paper wrapped in plastic.

Suresh leaned forward. ‘St Stephen’s tutorials. The very best. These people are first-class toppers.’

She looked bewildered. ‘From where did you get them?’

‘On the pavements of Daryaganj at the Sunday bazaar.’

‘Tuts? They sell tuts?’

‘Well, you have to know whom to approach.’

Nisha started leafing through the photocopies. In places the ink was a bit smudged, in others the handwriting wasn’t clear. These tuts had obviously been through many hands and duplicated many times, but one couldn’t expect perfect legibility on top of everything else. The marks at the end were six on ten, six and a half on ten, even seven on ten.

‘Such marks,’ she sighed.

‘Written by toppers,’ said Suresh with quiet pride. ‘Now you can stop worrying.’

Mansfield Park, Mayor of Casterbridge, David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights, Mill on the Floss, Joseph Andrews, Antigone, The Republic, The Odyssey
, the Bible,
Pot of Gold
… everything in the first-year course was here.

‘Thank you,’ she said finally.

‘Now you won’t have so much tension?’

‘Well, it’s a lot to learn,’ she said, irritated by having to be in this position, yet grateful too that she had in her hands the entire syllabus, in language that was undeniably grammatical.

‘What is there? You’re so good at studies.’

Back home, for the first time Nisha did not feel disheartened as she indulged in the learning activity so familiar to her: mugging. Mugging the Daryaganj tuts.

In the second half of April, exams. Most of the tutorial topics came, and at the end of the last paper Nisha could go home with the confidence of a job well done.

It proved very difficult communicating with Suresh during the holidays. Nisha lived in dread of being found out. There was no question of meeting him, and they could only converse through surreptitious phone calls. When she whispered into the receiver at home, she felt those whispers reverberate through the house till they reached her father, mother, brother, uncle, aunt and all her cousins. This drove her to market payphones, each word laced with dread that somebody would see her. She looked forward to the opening of college eagerly.

When the results were declared in July, Nisha surprised everybody, herself included, by getting a first division. There was satisfaction at home, particularly from Prem Nath. All choices justified, all expectations met. Nisha could do no less.

And in college disbelief among her teachers.

‘How did that girl manage it?’

‘It just shows how little you can rely on exams.’

‘Well, it’s our fault. We should volunteer to correct more. Then we can set some standards.’

‘How to set standards? I corrected with Daulat Rai last year, and she said that to take grammatical mistakes into consideration was being elitist! What about the poor students in the non-campus colleges, she kept saying, why should they be penalised? So we had to pass students that we fail in our mid-terms.’

The twelve teachers of the English department looked gloomy. Nisha Lal with a first division. It didn’t bear thinking of.

‘That girl will become so puffed up, she will be impossible to teach. And I thought I was getting somewhere with her. She was making fewer grammar mistakes by the end of the year. Quiet girl. Eager to learn,’ remarked Mrs Das Gupta.

‘Her school English marks were good, if I am not mistaken.’

‘Those students come with inflated notions of themselves. What kind of education do they get in school anyway? Memorising reams of facts, no writing skills, no reading interests beyond Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele.’

‘If that.’

Flushed with the success of her marks, Nisha entered her second year. She was now nineteen and the family’s attempts to find a groom were becoming serious. Her looks and intelligence were things that would balance the defect in her horoscope. Vijay upstairs was also ready to get married, and the air was thick with proposals.

Suresh hadn’t done well in his exams. ‘But what does it matter?’ he said. ‘All I have to do is pass. Then my father wants me to join the business.’ How familiar and comforting this was to Nisha. In her family all the men had to do was pass too, and sometimes not even that.

Meanwhile Suresh’s ardour increased.

‘Arre, yaar, let’s get married,’ he proposed.

‘Mummy Papa also did love marriage,’ ventured the girlfriend uncertainly.

‘Your family won’t like me,’ remarked Suresh gloomily at this mention of his beloved’s parents.

‘Why not?’ asked Nisha, glancing at his handsome face, pouting red mouth, and the virile growth on his cheeks.

‘I am not rich.’

‘Neither are we.’

‘Everybody in Karol Bagh has heard of Banwari Lal’s.’

‘Don’t you have a shop?’

‘A small one.’

‘For my parents the boy’s merit is the only consideration.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked the suitor.

Nisha was nonplussed, everybody knew what that meant. ‘It might help,’ she returned severely, ‘if you did better in your exams.’

‘You are such a boss, yaar,’ said Suresh, pulling her dupatta over her eyes.

‘Don’t you want us to have a good future?’

‘If I study, your father will accept me?’

‘My father is a very kind man. He educated my aunt’s son after she died, now he keeps his wife and son as well.’

‘Whose?’

‘Vicky’s.’

‘Vicky?’

‘I have told you about Vicky. Lives on the roof, eats with us, watches TV with us.’

Suresh stared at Nisha. ‘You don’t like him?’

Nisha went absolutely still. ‘Who said?’

‘Look at your face in the mirror.’

‘He’s all right – used to trouble me a lot when I was young, then I went to my aunt’s house.’

Suresh looked interested. ‘Trouble you like how?’

‘Always wanting me to play with him, didn’t let me do my homework. It’s only because of my uncle I did well in school.’

‘I know how much brains you have. But tell me, how trouble you? What about the others?’

‘Can I talk about my brothers all the time? Four of them in the house.’

‘He has lived in your house all these years?’

The girl got angry. ‘I don’t want to talk about him, all right?’

The courtship continued into its second winter. Nisha, now certain of her ability to do well, began to miss even more classes. There were plenty of roadside vendors selling things to eat around the University lawns, and the pair sought entertainment there. Suresh bought Nisha green guavas, cut and sprinkled with masala, he bought her chaat of sour fruit and hot fried potatoes, he bought her bhel puri tart with lemon juice, sprinkled with chopped onions, green chillies, and fresh green coriander. Sometimes when the palate demanded variety, they took a rickshaw to Kamla Nagar to have a dosa or channa bhatura.

They also saw films. The hit that season was
Hum Aap Ke Hain Kaun
, the longest-running film after
Mother India
, the biggest box-office grosser of the decade. Family drama. Fourteen songs. Its song ‘Didi, tera dewar deewana’ was the number one on countdown programmes for weeks and weeks with Madhuri Dixit in a purple sari and Salman Khan aiming at her with his peashooter, invading every home that had a TV. Each time Nisha heard this tune plagiarised by devotional hymn writers and political rabble-rousers alike, she thought of Suresh, she imagined their love, and she smiled a secret, knowing sort of smile.

In the dark film hall, Suresh had whispered she was as pretty as Madhuri Dixit. In the dark film hall she could respond to the pressure of his hand. Prettiness and love went together. It was there on the screen, it was there in her own home in the shape of her mother, whose beauty had moved her father to endure family disapproval.

Suresh and Nisha went to the morning shows at Batra, near the University, frequented by college couples. Here too they saw Suriya’s latest, shot in Europe and the mustard fields of the Punjab. It was entitled simply
Prem
.

Prem
says it all, thought Nisha, entranced by the whole story. A daughter, although living in London, has been brought up to submit. Her marriage is arranged to the father’s friend’s son, living in India. As a farewell to maidenhood the girl travels to Europe, meets a boy, and falls in love. Her father’s word is, however, law, and part of that law is that his daughter must marry whom he chooses. The mother understands the daughter’s feelings, but as a wife she has to uphold her husband’s dignity. The situation is resolved after countless threats and tears. In the end the Hindu household is intact.

Maybe it will be like that with me, thought Nisha, swept by the magic of the songs and the appeal of the story. By this time Suresh’s hands were all over her, she was slumped in her seat, her head heavy with desire, her heart pulpy with longing.

During the interval, after a particularly intimate session on seats where the dividing arm between them was only a notional barrier, Suresh would breathe, ‘I love you, yaar.’

Nisha looked at him, and then looked away. His eyes were so large and liquid, she felt she could drown in them. Her body felt warm and heavy, she wondered whether her father would be pleased with her choice.

Shows passed in an erotic haze. Each time Suresh went a little further. During intervals they would gaze in the foyer at Kwality ice-cream, popcorn, chips, chicken, paneer and veg patties, samosas, bread pakoras, soft drinks, tea, and coffee – an array from which Suresh tenderly asked her to choose.

Once Nisha recognised a classmate with a boy. She pretended not to see, and the girl too turned her head.

On the way back in the scooter-rickshaw, they sat close together, thighs touching. Going to the cinema became their favourite activity.

By the end of the second year, Nisha had become more adventurous in her clothing, alternating her salwar kameez with jeans and T-shirts.

Her affair with Suresh began to be commented upon.

‘Look at you, so quiet,’ teased her classmates. ‘Come on, tell us what is happening.’

‘Nothing to tell,’ replied Nisha coyly.

‘Sunita saw you the other day talking to a boy in the bus. Is that him? Now we know why you are missing classes.’

‘Are you going to get married, yaar?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Nisha, tossing her hair about – hair which was now regularly trimmed in steps halfway down her back at the beauty parlour, and only oiled before washing, never after.

‘Do your parents know?’

‘Arre, I keep telling you there is nothing to know,’ preened Nisha and found she had more friends than ever before.

XIV

The Karol Bagh shop

Lala Banwari Lal’s death meant that negotiations could start for the purchase of the 1500-square-foot area above the shop. The owner gave them to understand that the shop next to theirs was interested in buying it too.

The irony of fate! When Banwari Lal was alive, the owners were begging them to buy their unit for fifteen lakhs. Now his objections were no longer an obstacle, they were quoting twenty-five lakhs, 60 per cent in black, 40 per cent in white, take it or leave it. Bloodsuckers, said Pyare Lal bitterly to his brother.

‘Property prices are going up, what to do?’ replied Yashpal pacifically. ‘Look at how much you need to buy places way out of Delhi. They keep advertising: Greenwood, Meadowvale, Hillview, Sunnyacres, I don’t know what all, miles away.’

Pyare Lal stared into the middle distance. His brother’s mind could meander maddeningly around trivia, while his own seldom strayed from areas fruitful to business.

He thought of his younger son, twenty-one, a college graduate, and now ready for marriage. Already the Bansals, a large furnishing store in Karol Bagh, had made enquiries. Should the Bansal dowry match the price of the flat upstairs it would be a sign that this union was meant to be.