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He put those fingers against his mouth. ‘Give me your hand,’ he went on. ‘I want to show you something.’

‘I don’t want to see.’ Nisha was crying.

‘Of course you do.’

‘No, I want to go to Mummy. Leave me.’

‘See, another secret.’ And quickly, so quickly that she didn’t know how it happened, he introduced it to her. Terrorstricken, she looked at the black thing sticking up, and then quickly looked away.

‘Feel it.’ He grabbed her hand. She pulled back, and felt the stiff, straight thing knock against her fist. It felt dry and hard and hot.

‘See.’ Vicky’s voice was hoarse. Once she started looking she couldn’t look away. It appeared weird, repulsive, and fascinating. ‘Hold it, go on.’

‘No, no, I don’t want to.’

Vicky gripped her wrist so hard and painfully that her fingers opened around the big dark thing. There it was, the small, pudgy, fair little hand against the much darker skin, with the boy’s larger hand clamped over the girl’s.

He started moving their hands up and down. Quickly the tempo increased, as the fear grew in her. When she tried to struggle, he increased the pressure of his hand.

He gasped, and out spurted white liquid on to the snakes and ladders, then trickled down her fist. The thing shrank, his face shrivelled. ‘It’s our secret. If you tell anyone, they will beat you and me.’ He gripped her arm. ‘No one must ever know. No one. You understand.’

Nisha nodded wordlessly. Vicky wiped her hand, then the snakes and ladders, with a corner of his shirt, and gave the game to her. She took it gingerly. They started down, Vicky clutching the durrie and his books, his hair flying over his forehead, his blue Bata rubber chappals going clutter-futter loudly down the stairs. Nisha followed.

They reached downstairs and Vicky disappeared into the corner of the dining room to his cupboard. Nisha stood silently, staring at the game in her hand. She crossed the angan to the outer wall of the house, and as high and hard as she was able, threw first the board, then the small cardboard box of counters, over the wall, waiting to hear them thud on the other side before going in.

VI

Nisha

In the days that followed, Nisha grew silent. For the first time she felt divided from the family she had so unthinkingly been part of. Her mother was always so particular about her being clean, now she had done something dirty. Her hand had touched that filthy black thing. She tried to block it from her mind, but it proliferated, grew large and terrifying.

Meanwhile Vicky’s preoccupation with Nisha increased, his eyes fixed on the small white hand that had caressed him, the hand that had made him come all over the durrie. Just thinking of the excitement and the release made him long for it again.

He started making excuses for coming home early. ‘I can’t study in the shop,’ he said. ‘I need to stay home and concentrate.’ This was accepted as a sign of mature behaviour.

With the small change he wheedled out of his uncles, he bought more gifts for her, little chocolates, sticks of chewing gum, packets of sour mango, sugar-coated fennel seed.

Vicky was always on the lookout for opportunities to get Nisha alone. Then bliss would follow. She was too young to understand what was happening, and then he really wasn’t doing anything bad to her. Certainly she showed no signs of remembering anything.

He bought kites. ‘Come, Nishu, I’ll teach you to fly them.’

Nisha didn’t look up from her colouring book, and Raju came instead. Sona watched in approval while Vicky made himself useful with her son.

It was evening, the time children drink their milk and go to play. When adults move out of bedrooms darkened against the glare by heavy curtains, sip their tea, and contemplate the heat receding against lengthening shadows.

The little servant boy had left the hosepipe on in the angan to cool it, and was now sweeping the water into a hole in the corner connected to the drain outside. Raju was getting in his way, squirting water at the swept areas, flooding them all over again, grabbing the broom, insisting on sweeping himself.

Nisha was staring at the glass of milk in her hand.

‘Drink, beti, drink,’ urged the grandmother. She took the glass and held it against the resisting lips. ‘One for Papaji, come on, one sip.’

Nisha took the smallest possible sip.

‘One for Mummy.’

Another infinitesimal swallow.

‘One for Bhaiyya.’

Sip. The grandmother looked into the steel glass. ‘Beti, your sips must be larger. Otherwise how will you grow into a big girl? Bhaiyya will race ahead of you.’

Nisha said nothing. ‘Now finish, finish,’ coaxed the grandmother. ‘One for Bhaiyya.’

‘You said that.’

‘Achcha achcha, sorry. One for Vijay – one for Chacha – one for Chachi – one for Dadi – one for Dada – one for Vicky –’

‘I don’t want to drink to Vicky.’

‘Arre, why? He is your Bhaiyya, just like Raju –’

‘No, still.’

‘O-ho, poor Vicky, what has he done to you?’

Nisha pushed the glass away.

‘Whatever it is, forgive him. He has no one else, poor boy. Now, one for Rupa Masi – one for Uncle –’

The names of the family slowly recited took almost twenty minutes, as the level of the milk sluggishly dropped. The grandmother kept her eyes firmly on the little girl. She knew that if no one was looking she would pour her milk down the angan sink.

The milk finished at last, Nisha got up, put her glass next to the tap on the floor of the kitchen for the utensil washer-woman, and disappeared into her grandparent’s room, where she had been placed after Raju’s birth.

She lugged her school bag over to the bed, and took out her English book to learn the names of the months for tomorrow’s dictation. Twelve names, five sums in addition, an eight-line poem in Hindi, and then she could go out to play. Back and forth on the bed she swayed, her hand covering the words she was trying to memorise, chanting the spellings softly to herself.

She had reached August when she heard Vicky settle himself on the bed behind her. He too had dragged his bag in, and was making a great show of opening his books. Nisha kept the letters of August firmly running through her mind.

‘What are you doing?’ Vicky asked after five minutes.

Nisha bent her head further over her book.

There was silence for a while. Then Vicky murmured, ‘Nishu?’

‘I’ll tell Mummy you are not letting me study.’

‘Mummy has gone upstairs with Raju.’

‘Dadi then.’

‘She is talking to the neighbour.’

‘Go away.’

He shifted a little closer. Instantly her skin began to prickle.

‘Nishu,’ he whispered, ‘are you angry with me?’

The smallest shake of the head.

‘Then why aren’t you talking to me?’

‘I’m talking to you.’

‘Here,’ he coaxed, drawing her stiff, resisting body nearer him, ‘show me that you are not angry with me.’ His hands reached under her dress. She pressed her thighs tightly together, but his fingers forced themselves between her legs. A little su-su she could not help came out and wet her panties. She wanted to die of shame.

‘What have you done, naughty? So big, and wetting your panties?’ he said hoarsely, his lips against her ear. He started stroking her, the wet panty resting on the knobbly knuckle. ‘See, I am drying you,’ he rasped. ‘You must thank me, dirty girl.’

She tried shaking her head, bumping it against his shoulder, but he was concentrating on what he was doing and his grip grew harder. She winced in pain, his deep, uneven breaths burnt against her cheek.

In a daze she struggled against the body that was pressing itself so completely into her. Her book fell from her hand. She could feel him tugging at something behind her back. Then he reached around, took her hand, and clasped it on that hot monstrous thing. She turned away her head, he gripped the hand in his, and began the fast movement up and down, but not for long – the liquid came, his clutch loosened, he sighed, moaned, and wiped her hand.

‘If you say anything to anybody,’ muttered Vicky unnecessarily into her ear, ‘they will beat you. They will lock you up, and never let you go to school.’

Nisha freed herself, got up unsteadily, and went into the angan. Her grandmother was still outside with the neighbour, her mother still upstairs with Raju. She sat alone in the kitchen, till her mother scolded her for being a lazy girl, and not attending to her schoolwork – did she want to end up like Vicky, failing all the time?

That evening Nisha could not eat. Her mouth felt dry, her head heavy, her hands clammy. When her Dadi coaxed a morsel down, she coughed and threw up.

‘Look at this girl,’ scolded her mother in routine exasperation. ‘Why can’t she ever eat? Fussing even when it is her favourite black dal with butter.’

Nisha broke her roti into bits, hid some under her bowl of curd, dropped some on the floor, and scattered the rest around her steel plate, so that it would look as though she had eaten.

‘Why have you left so much?’ demanded her mother.

‘Poor thing, she couldn’t be feeling hungry. She is looking pale,’ interposed the grandmother.

‘Is she ever hungry?’ asked the mother. ‘The whole day is spent feeding her. Still she is so thin. And upstairs of course they fill her with rubbish so that at dinner she eats nothing again.’

‘I wasn’t upstairs,’ Nisha replied, stung, tears filling her eyes. ‘I was here only. Vicky also.’ She choked on the word.

No one understood what that meant. She threw herself into her grandmother’s lap, and pulled the palla over her head, like she had seen Raju do countless times when given his bottle. Once in that safe, filtered world she wept and wept.

Ever since Raju’s birth, Nisha had been sleeping with her grandmother. The ancient woman, after the required amount of grumbling, tried to keep secret how much she doted on this gift from heaven. For the first time in thirty years she had a young one in her bed, a young arm thrown around her neck. Her nights were now tinged with care and wakefulness; feeling useful, she clung to the sleeping child.

Now she felt something was not right with Nisha. From being a child who went to sleep the minute her head hit the pillow, she refused to lie down or close her eyes.

‘I will stay up all night,’ she declared.

‘Why, baby, why?’ they coaxed.

‘I want to,’ was all she said. When she dropped off in exhaustion, she awoke crying, ‘Why did you let me sleep? I had bad dreams, I had bad dreams.’ But she couldn’t say what they were.

‘It was nothing,’ they soothed. ‘It was nothing, just a dream – you are in your own home, safe and sound, with MummyPapaji, Dadi-Dadu, Chacha-Chachi, Ajay-Vijay, Vicky-Raju, who all love you.’

In the nights to follow the child’s screaming became worse. As a result it was often impossible to wake her in the morning. Her father began to say, ‘Let her be, do not send her to school today.’

How long can a child not go to school?

‘Maybe she should see a doctor?’ suggested her Sushila chachi. ‘Such crying and screaming is not normal.’

‘There is nothing wrong with Nisha,’ retorted Sona coldly. ‘All children have bad dreams from time to time.’

‘Send her upstairs to sleep with us,’ said Pyare Lal.

‘Yes, yes,’ echoed his wife. ‘She will be all right there.’

‘No need. She will settle down in a few days.’

The uncle and the aunt said nothing more. Who could teach Sona to put the interests of her children above her jealousy? No one.

But they were wrong. Sona was bothered enough by the child’s obvious distress to ask her later whether she wanted to sleep upstairs. Nisha mutely refused.

The nights continued the same. In the day she looked pale and sick. When her sister came over, Sona discussed the problem. ‘Put her to sleep in your bed,’ advised the aunt.

‘Impossible. Raju will never be able to sleep with so much disturbance,’ said Sona. ‘As it is he is a light sleeper.’

Rupa nodded. All the other children in the house were heavy sleepers, the consequence of restricted space and unrestricted noise, but Raju’s sleep was guarded fiercely by his mother.

‘Send her to my house,’ suggested Rupa. ‘Maybe something has frightened her. You cannot always tell.’

Sona was torn between objecting to the idea that anything in the house could frighten her daughter and agreeing because there seemed no other solution. Besides, it would show the people upstairs that she had her own resources, she needn’t depend on them, thank you very much.

Nisha departed and the grandmother was left to an empty bed and long, restful nights. Through those nights she wondered about the little girl. What had happened? When she asked the mother how she was in the aunt’s house, Sona said she was just fine, her sleep was peaceful, and her aunt was looking after her very well. Perhaps something in this house had scared her?

A mulish look came over the grandmother’s face. Sona was envious of the child’s attachment to her, that was it, and was making up things to take her away. What could frighten her when she was never alone?

Vicky also doted on the child – poor boy, so much affection in him, just like his mother. Soon he would finish school, and then he would be old enough to get married. Maybe his wife would bring with her a destiny that would better his.

She now insisted that for the Class X Boards a tutor be hired to make sure Vicky passed. They had to be careful, results could not be arranged for Board exams.

Sona protested for form’s sake that Vicky was being spoiled, in her time nobody had heard of tutors. She didn’t raise too many objections though, because in her heart she was grateful to him for her children. That she couldn’t bear to see him was another matter. Her womb had opened when he came.

A neighbourhood tutor was found. Every evening Vicky walked to his place, to join five others also cramming for the exams. Like him, these were sons of traders living in Karol Bagh, seized of the necessity to be at least tenth-class pass. The lessons were two hours each, and Vicky’s time out of the house was by now considerable. School, shop, tuition.

During evening classes, Vicky frequently boasted of his family’s business. ‘Lala Banwari Lal & Sons, Saris, Shawls, Suitings, Shirtings’ was a prominent board on Ajmal Khan Road, and easily noticed.