The unruly ceiling fan made listening to what was being said difficult, but I thought I heard the word ‘love’ filling up the room. Expressing her dissatisfaction with the cleanliness of her lover’s room, she began walking around. She sniffed at the discarded clothes, found what belonged to him by smell and folded them up neatly. The air smelled of cigarettes and alcohol, she said, and complained about the suitability of his room-mates. Reminding him of the changes that would need to happen in his life, she swept the room, extracted the crumpled pieces of paper discarded under the bed and behind the table, put them in a flat cardboard box and ordered him to take it outside.

‘Has she come to clean up the place?’ Ragesh asked, writing on my palm with his finger. I raised my little finger, signalling patience.

Soordas took out two large chocolate bars from the jungle inside his table drawer and held it up to Vidya’s nose. Happily, she sat down on the bed, and he broke off squares of the chocolate and gave them to her. When she lifted them to her lips, red as though stained by wine, Ragesh lost his control and poked me on my arm. Like an ancient sculpture, Soordas leaned over and laid his head in her lap. Her initial response was to stop him, but she relented and began combing his hair with her fingers. I began to feel that he would spend this day and night in the space between her sweet, sweet breasts and waist. He lay there and breathed in her fragrance for what seemed like the next two years or a whole lifetime, as though he was writing and rewriting a single line from a story.

‘Get him! Beat him!’

Without waiting for my signal, Ragesh shouted, and in the next second, he and his friends kicked open the boltless door and entered the room.

‘Doing the dirty in the hostel when there is no one else around!’

They slapped Soordas across the face and kicked him to the floor. A lone spectator in the gallery, I stood where I was and watched the game unfold through the ventilation gap. One of them slapped Vidya’s cheek, caught her by her hair and banged her head against the wall, while another, like a child who had been given a birthday cake, grabbed her breasts and buttocks. I checked my watch, and when exactly six minutes had passed, I ran into the room panting as though I had run a marathon.

‘Stop!’ I shouted at the young men attacking her. ‘Leave the poor girl alone!’

Then I ‘rescued’ her from her attackers by grabbing her hand and running out of the room.

I sat her behind me on my scooter and took her into town. ‘What foolishness he did!’ I said, hailing an autorickshaw. ‘A man bringing a young woman to a hostel in broad daylight!’

‘He said there would be no one there,’ Vidya said. ‘He said Vasuvannan said it would be all right.’