The day at the toddy shop was something Rony and Nisa never forgot. For Rony, it was the day he allowed Nisa the freedom to explore her heart’s pleasure — and the day it opened his own heart to a deeper realization: that her freedom was never his to give in the first place.

It changed him in bed. He no longer felt the need to please her. It was always about being in the moment.

Was she best satisfied with him? No.

But she loved him. His place was unshakable in her heart.

For Nisa, that night was a liberation. She understood many things about herself — and deep down, she sometimes worried: what if someone found out? That she gave herself to 6 men, one a old man, with her full heart, while her husband watched with pleasure.

But for her, the pleasure of that night was worth it.

Does that make her a loose woman in the eyes of society? Yes.

But who’s judging? The same people who don’t blink when a wife is forced to stay in a marriage — and into a physicality she doesn’t crave.

She felt liberated for what she did — oh yes, she felt liberated.

Nisa worked in Kottayam, Kerala. She was a banker. Her daily routine usually took her from the office near Shastri Road to Nagambadom, by the side of Nehru Stadium, often walking briskly with a colleague, hurrying to catch their buses home.

She still found time to speak with the people she saw every day — the lottery ticket seller, Appu Chettan, a 50-year-old with a wrinkled face and a tired smile, whose wife is a cardiac patient; the auto drivers opposite her office, some of whom she knew by name, like Vishnu, whose wife worked at one of the nearby medical stores. She even smiled at the ragpickers and sanitary workers who sometimes idled near Nehru Stadium — its stands always deserted, the ground overgrown with grass. Her colleagues often teased her, half in disbelief: “You know everyone, don’t you?”

There was a change in Rony also. He was more sensual in bed now; it wasn’t an examination anymore, like she was judging him for performance. He understood he didn’t need to be like someone else. The way he loved her was enough. She might crave something taboo, but what they had was the base—without it, nothing would work.

On days when work ended early, she left the office by herself. With time in hand, she would walk to Nehru Stadium, head to one end of the stands—concrete still hot from the day’s sun—and sit there, thinking. Letting herself get lost in the fantasies she knew still had a hold on her.

It was on these days that he began to notice more closely the workers spending time after a hard day’s labour—work that society had assigned to them, work no one else dared to do. The kind of work that kept the town running. Without them, everything would come to a standstill. It had happened during the pandemic—when the government had to send special trains to bring them back. The sanitary workers who went down into holes in the ground that no one else would enter. The ones who cleared the rubbish people casually threw on the roads.

They were people garnered no attention— those who walked in darkness, in daylight. Nisa had almost missed them too, even though she often saw them sitting there on the days she visited, sifting through scraps for something useful to sell for a meal. The stadium itself remembered a past forgotten by many. No football matches were held there anymore. Greenery had taken over the ground, and the stands — where once people had cheered for the great Mohun Bagan football team from Kolkata — now lay abandoned. But the place still had its uses. It had become home to them: the dispensables.

It was he who caught her attention. A boy, maybe twenty. He was reading the newspaper after flattening its wrinkles. When she saw him again, she smiled at him — a smile he didn’t return, like he never thought someone would. It started to change they met randomly on the road somedays in the morning, other days in the evening. He started smiling back in recognition. Later he would say he used to notice her, That she was beautiful. It was when they became friends and she told Rony about the Boy, Muneer, his mother came to the town some 20 years ago, him inside her. He never asked her mother who his father was. He went to school till 12th, and dreams of a job in the government, with Public Service Scheme exams as his pathway.

They met for tea at the stall near her bank. He was a little more comfortable around her now; his eyes lingered a bit longer on her breasts and lips. Nisa didn’t mind. He was just a boy — he’d never had a girl.

It was one of those days — hot and ordinary, nothing special — when, as they were having tea, her manager Raghuvaran came to the stall.His eyes widened when he saw Nisa with the sanitary boy from the stadium.