‘Just put it in the sun for a bit,’ I said.

I bought a packet of high-quality condoms from the medical shop in town run by a man from Cherthala. Strawberry flavoured, it said on the packet in English.

‘It’s Mahanavami and you haven’t laid down your weapon for pooja, Vasu,’ he joked, handing me the packet hidden in his palm under the table as though he was a drug dealer selling ganja.

‘It’s not that,’ I said, pointing to Soordas who was waiting on the other side of the road. ‘I am initiating someone.’

In a deserted corner of the old fort, I took out a condom and demonstrated how to use it by putting it over Soordas’s index and middle fingers.

‘I doubt it will get to all this, this time,’ I said. ‘Still, better safe than sorry.’

Soordas tore open another one and tried it on my fingers. ‘She’ll chase me off if she knew what we were doing.’ The tips of his fingers shook.

The hostel was as deserted and silent as a gallery after a big game. Seven of us—me, Ragesh and three other men from the card games, and two of their friends—stood waiting on the veranda of the mess hall. A handful of voices, left over from the day before, came down the stairs and quickly left the building. On the always locked door of the warden’s room were obscenities in Tamil, written by the inmates. A live-in warden who had tried to bring some order to the chaos in the hostel had been beaten up by unknown assailants during a power cut. The only warden who had survived for a while was someone who was worse than the men who lived there. I warned them not to smoke or whisper. Blind people had extraordinarily sharp senses of smell and hearing, I told them. We, the sighted, only see what is in front of us. They see everything around them.

Still, at the first sight of Vidya as she approached with Soordas, one of the men made a ‘ss . . . ss . . .’ noise, sucking in saliva and air as though he was tasting something. The others sighed deeply, thinking about Soordas’s luck as well as his misfortune. As usual, Soordas walked in front with his white stick, and Vidya followed him holding on to the left sleeve of his shirt. As I had instructed, they had left the autorickshaw two junctions before the hostel and walked the rest of the way. They were both sweating profusely. Standing on the chairs on top of the tables pulled up to all four ventilation gaps of the room, we looked into their room as they entered as though we were silent spectators of a tennis match waiting for the players to start. As though to create more darkness, Soordas shut the door and windows. A futile exercise as Ragesh had installed a bulb which now lit up the room in its milky-white brilliance. One of the young men silently took some photos on his mobile phone.