The room itself was as glamorous as a prison cell and twice as humid. Two beds, one shared wardrobe with a broken lock, a mirror spotted with age, and a ceiling fan that made a heroic but inadequate effort against the heat. Our clothes lived in suitcases because the cupboard had been claimed by a dead student long before we arrived, according to Bua Devi, who told that story with such relish you would think the dead girl had offended her personally.
I kicked off my heels, checked my face in the mirror, and saw that I looked exactly like a woman who had been underestimated by a studio full of idiots.
A knock came at the door.
Monika Kevat entered without waiting for permission, because Monika believed boundaries were a bourgeois conspiracy. She was from a college in South Delhi, or claimed to be, and wore activism the way some women wore perfume: aggressively, with no awareness of dosage. Her hair was always either wildly artistic or deliberately unkempt, depending on the audience. She had a tote bag printed with slogans, a voice capable of waking the dead, and a talent for turning every conversation into a seminar.
“I heard the industry people were being misogynistic again,” she announced, dropping onto Sanjana’s bed with the confidence of a woman who had never paid for a mattress in her life.
I was too tired to fight, which meant I was dangerous. “How disappointing for them. I assumed they did better after lunch.”
Monika ignored that. “You girls keep treating these things as individual incidents. That is the problem. You need collective resistance.”
I took off one earring and looked at her. “You need to stop talking like a poster.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That is exactly the kind of internalized patriarchal attitude—”
“Stop right there,” I said. “If a man wanted to screw me over, I would at least know who he was. Your type hides behind theory and then acts shocked when women are still getting fucked.”
Monika sat upright, offended in the abstract way only the doctrinaire could manage. “So your answer is to sleep your way up?”
“My answer is to not lie about the game,” I said. “I don’t need your ideology to understand power. I use it better than you do.”
Sanjana came in just then, damp from the rain, carrying a plastic bag with a steel tiffin inside. She took one look at our faces and sighed.
“What now?” she asked.
“Your friend here thinks feminism is a costume,” Monika snapped.
Sanjana put the bag down and removed her sandals carefully. “No. She thinks your feminism is a costume.”
Monika stared at her.
Sanjana went on, mild as milk and just as dangerous when cornered. “There is a difference. You say things that may be true in theory, but you speak as if every woman has the same options. That is not politics. That is a lecture with good vocabulary.”
Monika’s mouth tightened. “And what would you know about politics?”
Sanjana’s eyes flicked toward me, amused. “I know enough to see that in our culture, women are still respected in a lot of ways you refuse to acknowledge. Families protect daughters. Men stand aside on roads. Homes feed daughters first when there is less food. It is not perfect, but it is not nothing.”
Monika gave a sound of disgust. “That is sentimental nonsense.”
“And your tone is why people stop listening to you,” I said. “You talk about women, then abuse them when they disagree. Typical feminist and leftist behaviour, really. Abuse when you cannot answer.”
Monika’s face reddened. “You two are impossible.”
“Correct,” I said. “Now go and organise your revolution somewhere else.”
She left in a storm of offended dignity and had the grace to slam the door hard enough to make the mirror shake.
Sanjana looked at me. “You should stop provoking her.”
“I should stop breathing too, probably. It agitates someone.”
She smiled, but her eyes were tired. She had circles under them from work and travel and the persistent burden of trying to be good in a city that rewarded compromise. I did not say it out loud, but that kind of life looked exhausting to me. Still, there was something in her steadiness that annoyed me because it was useful. A person with principles was a nuisance in the short term and an asset in the long run. Men liked girls like her when they wanted to feel clean. Women liked her when they wanted proof that decency had not been entirely cancelled.
She sat on her bed and opened the tiffin. “I brought roti and potato curry. Eat before you become impossible.”
“You make me sound like a disease.”
“You are a habit,” she said.
I laughed despite myself and sat down with her. Outside, the rain had started in earnest, hitting the tin awning below our window with the impatience of a thousand small fists. The electricity went off two minutes later, because of course it did. In the dark, the room smelled of wet concrete and turmeric and the faint floral scent of the cheap powder Sanjana used. Someone in the corridor began to argue with somebody’s boyfriend on speakerphone. Another girl was crying softly in the bathroom. Delhi had no shame about its suffering. It displayed it in public like a shop window.
Sanjana ate with the calm concentration of a woman who had learned not to waste food or time. I watched her for a moment and thought, not for the first time, that she was too plain for the life she wanted. Then I felt ashamed of the thought, which only made me keep it.
“What happened?” she asked.
I told her about the studio. Not everything. Just enough. I did not mention the full humiliation, because humiliation is a private disease and I had no intention of making it communal.
She listened without interrupting. That was another thing about her. She did not perform concern. She absorbed.
When I finished, she said, “You cannot keep letting men move you around like this.”
I arched an eyebrow. “And what would you suggest? A candle march?”
She ignored the insult. “I mean it. First they offer help, then they ask for obedience. It is always the same.”
“Yes,” I said. “And yet here I am, still alive and better dressed than most of them.”
She gave me a look. “Alive is not the same as safe.”
I wanted to laugh at that because it sounded like something a school teacher would say to a child crossing the road. But the truth of it landed somewhere inconvenient in my chest, where I kept my real fears and my best lies.
Before I could answer, my phone rang again. Khanna.
I looked at the screen and felt the tiniest flicker of annoyance. He hated unanswered calls the way some men hated women with opinions. I let it ring once, then picked up.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In my room.”
“With whom?”
“With my roommate.”
Silence. Then: “You should have told me you were going out.”
“I did tell you I had work.”