Chapter 2: The Accidental Viewer (1996)

The tape sat in Ravi’s hand like a confession. He had wrapped it in yesterday’s newspaper, the way you wrap fish, the way you wrap something you want no one to see, and he stood at Sameer’s gate with the summer sun burning the back of his neck and the sound of cricket coming thin and far from the maidan beyond the houses. Sameer was out there. Sameer was always out there — pads, bat, the whole afternoon gone in dust and shouting — and that was the plan, had always been the plan: borrow the tape in the evening, return it in the afternoon when Sameer was deep in his innings and no one would ask questions.

The gate was open. The courtyard was swept clean, the tulsi plant in its painted pot, water dripping from the tap into the drum. Ravi’s mother had a tulsi plant too, in the old house, in the village. They had moved to the district town the year after the exams, his father’s transfer coming through like a sentence, and Ravi had learned that a town was different from a village in ways that mattered: the streets had names, the houses had walls, and the walls had windows, and behind the windows were televisions and VCRs and, in Sameer’s house, a steel almirah full of tapes that Sameer’s father kept like valuables.

He had seen the almirah open once, the tapes stacked in their black plastic cases, and Sameer’s father had waved a hand at them and said, “Take one, take two, return them when you’re done,” the way men said such things, careless, generous, and Ravi had taken the one with no cover — a plain black case with a handwritten label, Sharma Wedding, in blue ink — because the label made it safe, because no one would ask questions about a wedding.

The tape was not a wedding.

He had waited until his parents were out — his mother at the market, his father at the office — and he had slid the tape into the VCR of the rented house and sat down on the durrie with the windows closed and the curtains drawn, the way you sit for something you know you should not watch, and the screen had bloomed with color, not the muted colors of Doordarshan but something else, something saturated, and a woman had looked at the camera — looked at him — and the world had rearranged itself around that look. He had watched it twice. Three times. He had watched it with the sound low and his hand somewhere he was not thinking about, and he had watched it the way you watch a door you know you are going to walk through, and when his parents came back he was sitting on the sofa with the TV off, the tape hidden in his school bag, his face a mask of homework.

Now he stood at Sameer’s gate with the tape in his hand, returned, the lie already prepared — it was good, tell your father it was good — and Hema aunty came to the door.

He had seen Hema aunty a hundred times. She was Sameer’s mother, the one who brought out lemonade on hot days, the one who scolded from the terrace, the one who wore cotton sarees and kept her hair in a plait. She was not young the way Divya had been young; Hema was older, thirty-five at least, with lines at her eyes and a way of standing that said she had been doing this for a long time. She was ordinary. That was the thing about her. She was so ordinary that Ravi had never once looked at her the way he had looked at Divya, had never once thought of her body, had never once imagined her the way he imagined everyone now — everyone female, everyone with skin.

She took the tape from him. She held it in her hand, the newspaper still around it, and she said, “Sameer’s not here. He’s at cricket.”

“Aunty, I came to return this. Tell uncle —”

“Come in. Have some water.”

The afternoon was hot and Ravi’s throat was dust and he went in. That was the mistake. He knew it was the mistake the way you know a thing only after it is done — the door closing behind him, the cool dark of the house, the smell of lunch still in the air, fish and onions, and Hema aunty filling a steel glass from the filter and handing it to him, and him drinking, and her watching him drink.

“You look tired,” she said.

“Fine, aunty.”

“All that studying.” She took the glass from his hand when he was done, and her fingers brushed his, brief, nothing. “Your parents home?”

“No, aunty. Market. Office.”

“Mm.” She was looking at the tape now, turning it in her hands, the newspaper crinkling. “Your father has a VCR?”

“No, aunty. I watched it here.” The lie came out before he could stop it. “Sameer and I watched it together, before —”

“Sameer said he never watched it.”

The words landed in the room and Ravi’s blood went cold.

“When did Sameer say that?” His voice came out strange, high.

“This morning.” Hema aunty was still turning the tape, not looking at him. “I asked him what he watched last night. He said nothing, he was at cricket till dark. So I asked him what you borrowed. He said he didn’t know. You just took a tape from the almirah.”

The fan turned. The afternoon pressed in at the windows. Ravi stood in the middle of Hema aunty’s living room and felt the walls close around him like a hand.

“So I watched it,” she said.

The room went very quiet. The clock on the wall — a pink clock with a picture of a goddess, ticking loud — filled the silence with its steady beat, and Ravi’s heart beat with it, faster, harder, and he could feel the heat climbing his neck, his face, his ears.

“Aunty —”

“I watched it this afternoon. After Sameer left.” She looked at him then, and her eyes were ordinary, brown, the eyes of a woman who brought out lemonade and scolded from the terrace, and there was nothing in them that he could read. “Sit down, Ravi.”