Mayank lives in a squat new building overlooking a football field. On the afternoon of a soccer match, girls crowd the windows on the first floor. They sit on the ledges, cheering their college on, their shapely legs dangling like dead meat. Mayank doesn’t much care for soccer but likes the way the girls sound. On days when he is trying to work on an essay, he lets himself be distracted by these high-pitched foreign voices.

Mayank knows the owner of one of these voices. Her name is Libby. She is Canadian. This Michaelmas they are tutorial partners. It’s an uneasy relationship. Deadlines are important for Libby. She always meets them. Mayank works differently. If he does not understand something then deadlines can go fuck themselves. He does not see the point of meeting one just for the sake of it.

Sometimes, he goes to Libby’s room to borrow a book on the reading list. She is always eating something. Mayank doesn’t care much for food but he still feels bad that she doesn’t offer him whatever she is munching or sucking on. Often, when he gets back to his room his mind wanders. Instead of sitting down at his table, he gets even more distracted. He feels slighted—she could have at least offered me a cookie . . . of course, I would have refused . . . imagine this happening in India. God, these people are so selfish. On occasion, he gets so worked up that he cannot concentrate on anything—the Matsui television he bought from Dixon’s, the Isaac Bashevis Singer he borrowed from the English faculty library across the road, the prescribed text for the term: Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason. He paces the room, his legs trying hard to keep pace with his racing mind.

He takes out his smoking bag. It contains blue Rizla papers, a dark green pouch of Golden Virginia and a bright yellow pack of Swan filter tips. He rolls a cigarette for himself and lights it with a small Bic lighter. The smoke alarm goes off as if on cue. Mayank pulls the lone easy chair in the room to a spot just under the fire alarm. He clambers on to it and fans the affected area with a copy of Hello! magazine till the tweeting subsides. He is a tall man. When he stands on the chair, his head almost touches the ceiling. Libby’s room lies on the other side. Sometimes he wishes that the ceiling was not made of concrete, or that he was blessed with superhuman powers. In that magical scenario he knows exactly what he would do.