Over the next couple of nights, we returned and stashed piles of boxed wine and bottles of green-apple vodka on the roof, and proprietarily threw a blanket over the lot. For a few weeks, until we’d worked our way through the alcohol stash, it became our favourite place to hang out. We would look out over the city until liquor turned the lights hazy, and then lie down next to each other and sing along to The Shins or talk. On some nights—the best ones—we let the lyrics talk for us.

‘Ash. You know how we always wonder what the point of life is?’

‘Nothing?’

‘Sometimes I think it might be nights like this.’

He nodded. Set up by the moment, we kissed. Something was off. I pulled away.

‘Are you gay?’

He looked taken aback for a second, then shrugged. ‘Yeah.’ I grinned at him. ‘Thank God. That was a terrible kiss.’

‘I know. It was SO bad!’

‘Hey!’

‘It sucked so much because I’m gay and you’re a girl, right?’

‘I think so?’

‘It has to be!’

‘There’s no way we’re that bad!’

‘What if we actually are?’

‘Oh my God, don’t even say these things. I think we should practice, quickly.’

‘Are you just trying to make out with me again?’

‘Maybe just a little?’

We went through three boxes of wine that night. Shitty, but so good. And we kissed till we passed out on that abandoned roof. Platonic, but with tongue.

The Brides

November 2013

Nitwit makes a stunning bride. The groom is led in on a decorated, deafened horse amongst dancing pomp and spitting champagne. Parents look happy all around. Sold!

The last time I’d been to a wedding like this, I was seventeen and Jay had joined me at the water’s edge. I looked around for him constantly, on the decent chance that Delhi’s compressed high society might have brought him there. I didn’t see him. But it was wedding season in his city, and he would be somewhere like this, somewhere where girls and silverware were glossed to a speckless shine, everything up for approval. It was all one big audition, and I wondered what he was making of it, whether he felt it run through him like an infection in his blood.

At four in the morning, the hour was deemed right; Neha and I were told to lead Nitwit to the mandap to begin the rites. Her fingers were frozen sticks and, in her eyes, I could see that she was seeing it all for the first time—the life stretching out before her, carpeted in Vuitton and hurdled in obligation.