more poison for it.” He apologized again and saw her off.
Om emerged wearing a sheepish smile, quite ready to be teased about his trouser-rat. Jeevan clipped him viciously over the head. “Saala idiot! Such huge trouble you could have made for me! What caused the noise?”
“Sorry, I slipped.”
“Slipped! What filthy things were you doing that you slipped? Get out, both of you! I don’t want to see you again in my shop!”
Maneck tried to placate Jeevan by offering the two rupees for Om’s viewing, but that only aggravated him further. He swept the hand aside and looked ready to strike him. “Keep your money! And keep this troublesome boy out of my shop!” He pushed them through the door and down the steps.
They were subdued as they walked up the lane to the main road. A crow shrieked from a window ledge. The sobering effect of Jeevan’s rage was deepened by the evening light lapping at the hem of darkness. Streetlamps started to flicker tentatively — yellow buds, intimating the arrival of the full glow. Something scampered across their path into an alley.
“Look,” said Maneck. “There goes madam’s rat.” They caught a flash of pink skin through the rodent’s diseased fur, patchy and mange-eaten.
“It’s searching for Advanced Tailoring,” said Om. “Wants to order a new suit.” They laughed. The rat disappeared into the alley’s darker recesses where a gutter gurgled. There were sharp squeaks, and sounds of splashing. They headed for the bus stop.
“So tell me,” Maneck nudged with an elbow. “What were you doing in there?”
Smiling wryly, Om made a fist and moved it up and down. A short laugh that was more like a cough broke from Maneck.
Ahead, something spattered onto the crowded pavement from an upper-storey window. Pedestrians who had been soiled screamed at the building. They reached the entrance steps and raced upstairs, though it was impossible to know which window was hiding the culprit.
“Did you see much?” asked Maneck.
“Everything. Her new pants were so tight, when she pulled them down her knickers went down as well.”
Maneck kicked a stone into the gutter. “You saw the hair?”
Om nodded. “It was a real bush.” He used both hands to describe it, wriggling his fingers to emphasize a rich thicket. “Have you ever seen one?”
“Only once. A long time ago. We used to have an ayah when I was small. I climbed on a chair while she was bathing and looked through the ventilator over the door. It scared me. It seemed fierce, as though it was going to bite.”
Om laughed. “It wouldn’t scare you now, for sure. You’d jump right into it.”
“Just give me a chance.”
They waited for the signal change to cross the road. At the edge of the footpath two policemen held up a rope, taut between them, keeping the crowds from spilling into traffic. People surged against the barrier like waves testing the shoreline. The policemen dug in their heels, straining, shouting, containing the impatient homeward- bound flock.
“You know, it’s a good thing the rat wasn’t really behind the partition,” said Maneck. “It would have chewed off your little soosoti in one second.”
“What do you mean by little?” said Om. “It stands up like this.” And he brandished his forearm energetically.
The proscriptive red hand on the traffic light disappeared, and a green stick-figure illuminated the round glass. The policemen skipped aside nimbly with the rope; the crowd swarmed across.
Fireworks reached their climax on the night before Divali, and sleep was difficult till well after midnight. At each detonation, especially of the red cubes called Atom Bombs, Ishvar sighed “Hai Ram” and put his hands over his ears.
“What’s the point in covering your ears after the bang?” said Om.
“What else can I do. Bilkool crazy, a time of light and celebration turning into pain and earache. Is this any way to welcome Lord Ram back to Ayodhya from his exile in the forest?”
“The problem is too much wealth in the city,” said Dina. “If people must make smoke of their money, I wish they would do it prettily.” She flinched as another Atom Bomb exploded, “If I was in charge, only sparklers, fountains, and chakardees would be allowed.”
“Hahnji, but the great religious experts will tell you that it wouldn’t be enough to frighten away the evil spirits,” said Ishvar sarcastically.
“These Atom Bombs will scare the gods as well,” she said, retreating from the verandah. “In Lord Ram’s place, I would run straight back to the forest rather than face the explosions of these fanatics.”
With a plug of cotton wool in each ear she started to work on the quilt. Ishvar followed her in a few minutes, sitting with his hands over his ears, and she got cotton wool for him too. At the next boom he beamed, to say it was working.
Maneck and Om refused to relinquish the verandah, though they stuck fingers in their ears if a reveller began preparing a string of red cubes. “Too bad we’re watching,” said Om. “Or they’d be in bed — jumping, for sure.”
“Who?”
“Dinabai and my uncle, who else?”
“You have a dirty mind.”
“Yes, I do,” said Om. “Listen, a riddle for you: to make it stiff and stand up straight, she rubs it; to make it slick and slide it in, she licks it. What is she doing?” He was laughing before he had finished reciting the question, while Maneck hushed him with a finger to his lips.
“Come on, answer. What’s she doing?”
“Fucking, what else?”
“Wrong. Give up? She’s threading a needle,” said Om smugly, as Maneck clapped a hand to his forehead. “Now whose mind is dirty?”
There were six days of vacation left before college reopened, and Om had an idea for more fun. He knew that age and moisture had distorted the bathroom door and its frame, leaving a sizeable gap when shut. He said they could take turns peeking while Dina bathed. The other would keep watch, to make sure Ishvar didn’t catch them at it.
“Your story about the bathing ayah gave me the inspiration. So what do you think?”
“You’re mad,” said Maneck. “I’m not going to.”
“What are you scared of? She won’t know, yaar.”
“I just don’t want to.”
“Okay, then I will.” He got up.
“No, you won’t.” Maneck grabbed his arm.
“Aray go! Who are you to tell me?” He wrenched his arm away, whereupon Maneck gripped his shoulders and pushed him back in the chair. They grappled in earnest. Om lashed out with his feet but Maneck worked his way behind the chair and pinned him to it. Om gave up, unable to move.
“You’re a selfish bastard,” he said softly. “I know you. All those months you lived alone with her, you must have watched her naked every morning in the bathroom. Now you won’t let me have the same fan.”
“It’s not true,” said Maneck vehemently from behind the chair. “I never have.”
“You’re lying. At least admit it. Come on, describe her for me if you won’t let me look. What about her tits? Are the nipples nice and pointy? And the — ”
“Stop it.”
“- and the brown circles around the nipples, how big are they?”
“Shut up, I’m warning you.”
“And the cunt? Is it big and juicy with lots of — ”
Maneck moved in front of the chair and slapped him across the mouth. Shocked, Om clutched his face silently for a few seconds. The pain filled his eyes. “You lousy fucker!” He came to life then, and sprang at him, swinging his fists wildly.
