FIVE

Kumaresan had never looked at any girl surreptitiously, but he could not stop stealing glances at Saroja. He spent very little time actually sleeping under the tree. He simply lay there, hoping for a glimpse of her. Whenever someone approached, he shut his eyes. ‘This boy sleeps all the time,’ remarked neighbours who walked past him. But Saroja knew that with his eyes half closed and facing her house, he was looking at her.

For him, her every movement—when she walked towards him, when she went away, when she turned this way and that—felt like a whiplash. Yet he bore the pain with pleasure. Even when she was not around, he dreamed of her when he closed his eyes. Once, he saw her carelessly toss her long braid that lay over her chest behind her. All day long, that image had held him in its thrall—its power struck him like a whip falling on a bull’s back. Thereafter, each day, there was one such image of her, one gesture, which would haunt him. He even wondered if he should strangle himself with her whip-like braid and die. He was chasing after her even without her knowing. He could not control himself.

Saroja too stole glances at him when he wasn’t looking. Whenever she went to the leather company where her father and brother worked, men came over to her just to talk to her. But she could not tell one from another. They were all impressed upon her mind as a series of unremarkable, seemingly indistinguishable faces. A composite of a generic man’s face with no marked differences. But it was different with Kumaresan. The affection that flowed from his eyes overwhelmed her. She felt that she could drown happily in his eyes. Occasionally, when their eyes met, he was overcome by a shyness that she had never seen in anyone else. It was like the brilliant glow of ashen embers when you blew on them.

She took great care to dress up and make herself beautiful so that he would keep looking at her. She dragged out all those new saris that she had stored away in a box for special occasions. Though she had many skirts and long, flowing daavanis, she had tired of them and, instead, wore the few saris she owned. From now on, she told herself, whenever I buy new clothes, they will be saris. Whenever she wore a sari, it reminded her father that she was now of marriageable age. Whenever her brother said, ‘Shall we start looking for a boy?’ it was Kumaresan’s face that appeared in her thoughts. Unlike before, she now spent more time outside. If he was not around, the whole place was filled with her frustration. It did not take her long to realize that the very thought of him engulfed her like a flame. But they still had not exchanged any words.

In time, they began to predict each other’s movements. On days when she was at home, he stayed in too. Minutes after she left home carrying her bag, he rode away on his bicycle, fighting the temptation to follow her. He went on his rounds, dropping off cold drink bottles at bunk shops, and then hurried home. He wanted to be there when she came back. Otherwise his heart would sink. If she had returned before him, he would wonder exactly when she had come and by how much time he had missed her arrival. In the afternoons, she did not go anywhere, but Kumaresan had work to do and he left with great reluctance. They knew each other’s schedules by heart. Without ever talking to each other, they kept track of the time and made sure they saw one another every day.