Then she had met Taneer, and her life had changed forever.
Now she walked proudly, breasts thrust forward against her fancy sari, perfect hips switching just so, a little of the 22k gold that Taneer had lavished on her the equal of all but the richest women perusing the expensive goods on the tenth floor. Her eyes sparkled beneath radiant color-shifting makeup she had only recently learned how to apply. Her blemishless pale skin, just tinged with hues of coffee, glistened as if peeled from an apsara. Lightly applied floral perfume mixed with her own natural pheromones left a trail of lavender and musk in her wake, an invisible plume of eroticism, like a locomotive puffing out sex instead of steam. Men gaped in spite of themselves while their women silently gritted their teeth and tried not to make their envious glares too obvious.
Depahli didn't care. Let the Brahmin bitches growl and curse under their breath! She had taken enough shit from their kind from the time she had been old enough to understand what it meant to be born the lowest of the low. Now she could ignore them. Soon, with luck, it would be
Depahli De had been born a Dalit. An outcaste, or Untouchable.
Of course, that supposedly meant nothing in today's India. Caste had long ago officially been abolished as a method of discrimination. Officially. Real life, just as in the matrimonial ads that filled the pages of the country's newspapers and magazines and websites, was another matter entirely.
Like so many Untouchables, as a young girl Depahli had considered herself condemned to a life of degradation and poverty. A male member of a higher caste, one of the four varnas, might opt to drop down in caste and marry her, but this happened only very rarely. Despite the beauty that was apparent from a very early age she could not even find work as a prostitute except among her own kind. For a member of a higher caste to touch her would be to pollute himself. For one to sleep with her would be to pollute himself irredeemably. She smiled to herself as she stopped to finger the material of a fine carbon-silk business suit imported from Italy.
Dear, sweet Taneer was irredeemably polluted indeed.
They had only met because she'd had the guts to flee the squalid surroundings of her home in a run-down industrial section of Nagpur after her uncle Chamudi had raped her. That was ten years ago. She had been fourteen. With virtually no money but a great deal of determination she had walked, hitched, and begged her way to Sagramanda. Glorious, steaming, pulsing, fetid Sagramanda, where it was said that any thing was possible, even for one born an outcaste. Where, surrounded by a hundred million fellow seeking souls, it was even possible to shrug off a question about caste as irrelevant and deftly turn a discus sion to other matters.
And wonder of wonders, she had managed to do all of it without having to sell herself. Not wholly, anyway.
She had modeled. Both nude and clothed. She was not ashamed of having a body men admired. So extraordinary was her appearance that by the time she was seventeen she had steady work in the trivit studios. On only one thing had she insisted: no intercourse, no penetration. Dry fucking she would consent to, but she wouldn't do hardcore. It cost her a great deal of money, but she had remained firm in her private principles. Or as one disappointed but grudgingly admiring vitographer had told her, firm in her principal privates.
Still, she had managed. One man's appetite might be limited, but that of the box and the Net, she had learned, was insatiable. Even among stiff competition she had stood out as exceptional.
She knew she had stumbled across an exceptional man when, col lapsing in his arms one day while sobbing uncontrollably, she had revealed the nature of her career to Taneer. How much more damage could it do, she had argued with herself, when he already knew she was an outcaste? Her instincts had been proven right and her trust rewarded. Astonishingly, he had only smiled reassuringly at her and said, 'One day you must show me some of your better virtuals.' Ecstatic at his plain-spoken acceptance of her unsavory past, she had spent all that night showing him the reality.
That was the day when she realized she would do more than love Taneer Buthlahee forever. If necessary, she would die for him. In acknowledging her ancestry and her work, he had in a sense already died for her. Could she do no less for him?
The attendant who wandered over to see if he could help was young and trim, neatly dressed in natty gray and blue. It was amusing to watch him try to control his eyes. Struggling to remain locked on her own, they found themselves wandering all over her like a security scanner at the airport. Not to tease but to please the poor fellow, who despite the attention paid to his appearance was anything but hand some, she took a deeper breath and leaned close.
'I would like this suit, but in forest green. Do you have anything like that?' She had discovered that whenever she chose to deliberately lower it, her voice could make even confident conversationalists stammer.
The young salesman was no orator. 'I-I'll check the imben-the inventory.' He stepped back. Or rather, retreated helplessly as he gestured to the nearest female clerk. 'If you'd like to step into our scanner, please?'
Please. She had spent an entire childhood never hearing the word. Though it was commonly directed her way now, she never tired of it. 'Of course,' she murmured obligingly.
The department's scanner raced red lights up and down her form, penetrating her sari to take her measurements. Yes, they did have the suit she had selected available in a dark green. Would she care to view the color? Checking the sample, she condescended to approve. The appropriate suit was pulled from inventory and sent to the store's tailor. Half an hour later, after the material had been melted, re formed, rewoven, and cooled, she returned to pick up her package.
She paid with cash. Ever since Taneer had gone into hiding they had paid for everything with cash. Her beloved had told her that in some parts of the world cash was no longer accepted for large pur chases. To the best of his knowledge, however, that was not yet true anywhere in Asia. The bag containing her purchase slung deftly over one arm, she left the store and sauntered out into the mall's towering atrium. It was a wonderland that as a child she had not even imagined could exist, except in dreams.
Like translucent balloons, automated ads drifted through the mul iple converging halls of the mall, rising and falling from floor to floor as easily as they negotiated side passages and entryways. Electronics kept them banned from certain areas such as the children's playground and the food court. The latter was a favorite stop of hers. Growing up, she had never imagined there could be so many different kinds of food. Growing up, she had never imagined there could be so much food.
Though she could now pay for whatever kind of dish she wanted, as often as she wanted, she never left as much as a crumb on her plate. Not even when sampling such exotic cuisine as game from Africa or chili from America. Even when venturing into Starbeans, she made herself finish every last sip of coffee concoctions that were sometimes too rich for a digestive system that had evolved to cope with far simpler fare.
Employing built-in aerogel cameras, adverts designed to appeal specifically to the young, female, and middle-to-upper-class zeroed in on her repeatedly. The constant battle between manufacturers of pocket-sized ad- blockers and the designers of mobile advertisements had spurred technological leaps among both. Depahli rarely used the blocker that Taneer had bought for her. Truth be told, she enjoyed enough of the ads to allow them access. Even the ones for the omnipresent matrimonial services that allowed her to compare, fancifully of course, other prospective suitors to Taneer. Invariably, all were found wanting.
Not all the ads she walked through were gender-specific. The expensive three-dimensional one for the new Maruti Hathi 4x4 skirted the edge of acceptability. Until appropriate regulations had been put in place, mobile adverts had diverted some people to their deaths by blocking their vision or unsettling their sense of balance.
More noise than usual in front of her drew her attention. It was coming from the vicinity of the food court, her intended destination. Suddenly the milling, well-dressed crowd that had been promenading noisily in both directions surged toward her. The shouts of angry men formed a low counterpoint to the screams of women and the anxious cries of confused children.
A handful of men and women formed a tight knot that forced its way through the crowd. Most but not all of them were young. As she ducked to one side and sought shelter against the transparent polycarbonate wall that kept patrons from tumbling into the open, multistory atrium, several loud pops were distinctly audible above the noise of the crowd.
Ignoring the scattering, panicky mallers, the retreating men and women kept up a continuous running fire on their pursuers-half a dozen khaki-clad mall security personnel. Dark as an African but wearing a multihued cap over his shaved skull, one squat, mustachioed runner took a stun pellet in the right leg. Grimacing, he went down in the center of the walkway, right in front of the crouching Depahli. A moment later two of the security guards were all over him. The look on their faces was known to her. It was one she recognized all too well from her childhood. They
