The fullness of Shanti's buttocks was unmistakable on an unremarkable Saturday winter morning. Badri Narayan hadn't slept the night before. His mains were over and once again he hadn't made it. He had to get ready for his prelims. His last attempt, as they say. The roundabout at Old Rajinder Nagar paani ki tanki wasn't the quietest of places at the best of times, but today, at nine degrees Celsius, his own voice surprised him with its clarity, as he said to the woman, overtaking her from behind and planting himself in front, facing her:
"Will you have sex with me?"
He had often seen her walk past his house as the tea bubbled in the saucepan. The kitchen window opened into the car park below. No house in his block had engaged her services as a cook. So, there was no real threat of neighbours knowing about the incident. It was more than a sentence for him; he felt as if he had moulted – this turning 30 in an eight-by-ten room with a common kitchen with younger boys; this memory of that buxom girl from Bihar who would never wear a perfume but topped the UPSC interview and promptly dumped her live-in partner. To think he had almost succeeded in sleeping with her last winter! And then his father's plans of repairing and renovating their ancestral house in Gorakhpur with money he would bring in as dowry. That was last year. This year he just had to do it.