I see Angelo walk into the bar. Angelo is a tall slim man with long curly hair and opaque eyes. He is a man of many talents. He works as a shop assistant at a music store around the corner from Quest. That’s where I met him first.

He would always let me step behind the counter so I could have a better look at the tapes. Angelo is also a dog walker. Often, in the evenings, I see him in Gandhi Park, walking two or three dogs at a time, their leashes wrapped around his wrists. One Valentine’s Day, I see Angelo in Paltan Bazaar, a girl on each arm.

Angelo teaches choreography at three local schools. He likes Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake. And it is precisely because he is a choreo teacher that Angelo never dances in discos. He thinks it below the dignity of his craft to dance with lumpen drunk men who wiggle their untrained bodies in completely random fashion in small-town discotheques.

Angelo walks over to my table, his slender fingers wrapped around a rum and coke. He knows about my wife but Angelo is the kind of person who expresses empathy by skirting the issue at hand. He is full of news. He has just bought a new Honda scooter. He shows me the keys, invites me to take it for a ride. I try and feel excited for him, politely refuse his offer. ‘I don’t drive,’ I say, but Angelo refuses to give up. ‘Just give me half an hour and I’ll teach you how to.’

The place is filling up by now. The awkward couple is long gone. The only two girls there have got lost in the crowd. Angelo and I are talking about the weather when something happens. The music stops. People stop talking to each other. In the dim blue light one can make out two girls holding hands. I can hear screaming: ‘They don’t know who we are. These bastards. They really don’t know anything, Sonalika.’ Initially, the girls seem to be targeting their fury at specific people. By the time they leave, they are shouting at the world at large, accusing everyone inside Quest of being monsters and rapists. The men stand in groups, mildly stunned, drinking, smoking, sniggering. The girls leave without a backward glance. The party resumes.