The pouch belonged to Swati. She had taken it out of her handbag because she wanted to brush her teeth before she went to bed. Mayank now unzipped it. He was thrilled to discover that it was full of her make-up stuff.

Mayank turned around to check on Swati. She still had her back towards him. Thank god for that. He could see her shoulders in all their bare and bony glory. Her knee-length, off-shoulder black dress lay abandoned on the carpet. Mayank tried but failed to resist temptation.

He undressed, slipped into the black dress. It was not easy but he managed. He remembered an old college friend telling him about how she had dressed her boyfriend up in a sari once, and discovered she found him sexiest that way. ‘Insanely sexy’ was the phrase she had used. Mayank felt insanely sexy in the smoky black dress. He’d harboured a secret crush on this friend for many years before she disappeared into sunny California with her sari-clad partner. He wished she could see him now.

Next, he took out Swati’s mascara. He drew black circles around his eyes, rock ’n’ roll style, as if he was going to a Kiss concert. Satisfied with the effect he had achieved he replaced it, fished out a stick of reddish-brown lip gloss. This he applied carefully, correctly, with the practised ease of a receptionist used to touching up her lips every half hour or so. He took off the tiny button earrings he was wearing and replaced them with long mango-shaped ones that swayed merrily, juicily, each time he shook his head. There were more discoveries along the way, like the clip-on nose ring which he happily clamped to his right nostril. Now he felt like a vamp in a Hindi soap. He tried to get into her stilettos but they were too small for him. Disappointed, but not wanting to accept defeat, he returned to the magical pouch that seemed to contain just about everything he would require on a desert island, an island where he could do whatever he felt like without fear of censure or ridicule.

A chunky bracelet of oxidized metal caught his eye. Extricating this bracelet was a delicate operation that involved disentangling it from various other pieces of jewellery floating around in the pouch—rings, necklaces, thin silver bangles. Every once in a while, Swati would turn around and change her position. But her eyes remained firmly shut. If she had seen him, she was certainly not saying anything. Initially, Mayank felt jittery each time she moved, but by now he was far too happy, too far gone, to care.