Sanju had short-listed four houses to see and Anu had just found a nice place to have lunch. She had to make good of the situation somehow. If you are to tackle a dreaded task, there better be a good reward at the end of it.

‘Do we drop Vicky at your parents’ or mine?’ Sanju had asked the previous night.

‘Yours.’ Anu’s mom would dig dirt on where they were going, why, what time they were returning—so Sanju’s parents were a good choice.

Anu cranked up the music and lip-synced. It was only eight in the morning and Bangalore hadn’t yet gone into the Saturday tizzy. People woke up late on weekends so if you had beat the traffic, you had to beat people’s wake up time. They arrived at a gated villa in less than an hour.

But the problem was, their real estate agent was probably still sleeping too. Each time Sanju called him, he said he was ten minutes away. The hour-long wait in front of the gate started to get so irritating, Anu was sure she was soon going to pick a fight with Sanju. Because of the man who was ten minutes away for the tenth time, Sanju hadn’t let her go have a coffee either. Luckily, before she burst open like a floodgate, a pudgy man in his late thirties or fifties (was hard to tell from untidy beard and bloodshot eyes,) in night shorts showed up on his bike. Swinging the keys like it was Vishnu Chakra, the man gave them both a curt nod and walked to the guard at the gate talking on the phone. ‘That is only ten lakhs. I want at least double that, Macha.’

Big shot without a clean shirt, Anu gave a mental eye-roll. The word ‘Macha’, which was used like ‘dude’ by all the guys in Bangalore lately, totally got to her too. If this guy talking in lakhs used the word ‘Macha’, then he was only showing off.

When they entered inside the gate, Anu’s mood began to lift. Green lawns on the side, paved roads, kids on cycles—it was like from an old English town. The houses were two-storied, white, and with winding drive-ways and colourful bougainvillaeas spilling over the compound walls. If she could get some ideas for interiors from the houses they were seeing and redo their apartment, Sanju may not even want to move!

But the man did not stop at any of those pretty houses. He kept walking until they reached a stretch with a lone house in the distance. The manicured lawns and curbstones were now replaced by discarded bricks, mounds of mud, and a strong stench. The man kept waddling ahead with his phone, absolutely ignoring Anu and Sanju.

‘Where is he going? Is he selling us for organs?’ Anu whispered to Sanju. She was a bit scared.