Singh headed towards the neem tree where he had parked his Luna. Puffing on a chhota Goldflake, he tried to picture the future: teaching in facing classrooms meant plenty of opportunities for eye contact. He’d heard that Christian girls were fast but had never really had a chance to test this theory. He hadn’t known any Christians before coming here. He had grown up and continued to live in Colonel Ganj, a middle-class Hindu neighbourhood marked by small temples, hole-in-thewall electrical repair shops, stray cows and a run-down police station. The Christians lived on the other side of town in Muirabad. Brooklyn High School, where he taught, lay somewhere in the middle.

As a boy studying in Government Inter College, he and his friends would often come to Brooklyn to eye the Christian teachers. They were the only women in town who wore skirts. The GIC boys would park their scooters outside and wait for the junior school teachers to emerge from behind the forbidding gates. Most had hired cycle rickshaws waiting for them. When they climbed on to the rickshaws, their skirts rode up, momentarily exposing their thighs. Singh preferred white Anglo legs to the dark-coloured legs of local Christians. As an adolescent he held a special fondness for Mrs Hamilton’s calves which, though not very shapely, were a dazzling, detergent white.

The boys of 9 C were shocked to see Helicopter walk into class on time. This was not part of the plan. This was not the way the world worked. As the days went by, they realized that Singh’s return was no accident. He was here to stay. Mercifully, he seemed in no mood to teach. He sat in his chair in a state of permanent distraction, often turning his head in the direction of Miss Das’s classroom. 9 C was on to the game in a shot.

Once the boys realized the larger reasons behind Singh’s return they were less resentful. They liked the idea of squinty-eyed Helicopter angling for the new babe in town. His laziness, his ugliness, his vaulting ambition, all served to endear him to the boys. It made him one of them.

The location and view had worked out well but there was little progress otherwise. Singh continued to go for strolls outside Miss Das’s classroom, hoping for an opportunity to get closer, but none came his way. He’d return, casting a surreptitious glance over her smooth, brown shoulders. He wished Brooklyn had mixed staffrooms. He wished Miss Das wore skirts. He wished they taught the same form so he would have more to say to her.