Mehr turns on her feet, retreats into the living room. The phone is sitting in its handle, silent so early in the day. ‘Who are you calling, Mehru?’ Mehr’s younger brother hurls the question at her, loud enough for their mother to hear it all the way in the kitchen. ‘Not your concern, get away,’ she hisses, picking up the receiver. But she knows full well her brother is not going anywhere. He comes over and stands close enough to be able to make out the voice on the other end; he will know it’s not a woman’s voice his sister is calling for. ‘Get away from me.’ She sticks out her elbow and takes a jab at him. ‘Ma, Mehr is calling someone, and she hasn’t even asked you,’ he hollers. Mehr bangs the receiver back in the handset. She flashes kohl-rimmed eyes at her brother and retreats to the kitchen.

‘The boy’s people are bringing him over today. He is in the country on leave from work. They might bring mithai with them. The boy has a foreign passport. Such a good family, such a good proposal.’ The talk of her marriage has been making the rounds in the house since she turned fifteen two years ago. Mehr has always known that one of these days a stranger dressed in a suit and a tie will cross the threshold of her house, right into her drawing room, the one that remains locked until important guests like relatives from overseas come to visit. He will recline on the good sofa, the one that is kept concealed under a white bedspread so as to preserve its newness for just this occasion. He will sit back and ogle her while she serves him and his family tea and biscuits. She will be marked according to the colour of her tea and the flexibility of her hand as she lifts a dainty cup off the tray, places it on a matching saucer, and presents it to her guests. Bonus points for her height if she is taller than the man’s mother, her skin colour if it is a shade lighter than that of the man’s.

‘Ma, I’ll come home when the bus brings me back. You know that already.’ As soon as the words snap out of her mouth, she bites her lip. Her mother’s brow furrows, she scratches her shock of greying hair as if searching, with her fingers, for an answer lodged in there. Before her mother can open her mouth and tell her to skip college that day, Mehr blurts out lies. ‘Ma, I have an exam today. Final exam. I have to leave. Now.’ She hurriedly kisses her head again and turns to leave. ‘Where are you running off to? You’ll leave when the bus comes to take you, no?’ She places a ladle in a pan, frees both her hands and crosses them over her heaving chest. ‘You know, we don’t want you to do any finals-shinals. What’s the point? Even the boy’s family doesn’t want a girl with a degree. He earns in dollars. Dollars. You might as well not go today. Waste of time. Waste of money.’ One hand waves in the air, shooing away a fly Mehr cannot see.

Mehr needs to leave the house. She needs to reach Meer, somehow, to tell him of the visitors coming today. She hopes he will volunteer to have his mother call her mother to initiate a proposal for her marriage to him before the stranger’s family arrives, inspects her, and – to seal the deal – puts a piece of sweet laddoo, half in her mouth and the other half in their son’s. She takes one look at the telephone hanging on the peeling wall, sees her brother still standing next to it, hands bunched in fists on his sides. Adulthood has begun to inscribe itself on his body. His whole being seems to be reaching out for something. His limbs have grown rapidly in the last year, his neck disproportionately long, giraffe-like, his head bobbing on top, a smattering of hair furnishing his chin. But his voice is stubborn, the last to release him from childhood. ‘Who are you calling, Mehru?’ he squeaks at her again. Mehr ignores the child.

‘Ma, I’ll talk to Mansur Saab and see if he can pick us up early. I promise, I’ll come home early today.’ The college bus honks outside her front gate. Mother and daughter stand for a moment, appraising each other. Finally, Mehr’s mother abandons the stove, wipes her brow with her dupatta, carelessly flings it over her head, and walks her daughter to the gate. ‘Don’t buy anything from the canteen today. Your skin turns dark black when you stand in the queue under the sun for too long.’ She places a banana and an apple in Mehr’s hands. Mehr jams the fruits in her bag and crosses the small garden between the front foor and the gate where a swing still hangs from her childhood days.

Mehr’s college bus is your usual dabba, a regular box that picks her up, as well as a group of other girls living in the area, and drops them off at the college gates. It’s a shabby affair of rusty steel and loose bolts, hastily put together in a run-down garage after it was totalled. The empty space at the back is fitted with two low benches facing each other. The driver, Mansur Saab, must have picked them up from a roadside café. Mehr heads to one of the plastic benches, mindful not to leave shoe prints on the other girl’s pristine white shalwars. She finds her seat and looks out at an overcast sky, sunlight further muted by a scrim of dust coating its back screen. A trail of paw prints are etched in the thick dust; a cat must have made a home on the roof last night as she argued with Meer over the phone.

Mehr can still see her mother wedged between two halves of a split gate, her body in the worn-out clothes she only wears at home, carefully concealed behind the gate from any neighbours who might be watering their front gardens, or the dense hedges surrounding the house, thick enough to veil it from the street. Head poking above the gate, she watches the bus. Just before it lurches round the corner, Mehr spots a boy sitting on a grassy patch. He is thumping his bansuri with his palm, as if reprimanding a dog.

Mehr’s insides rattle as the bus jumps over a speed bump. The other girls on board giggle at one another, from the front seats to the back, for having their bodies jostled indecently by the road-theatrics of their finger-thin driver. A honk behind the bus, a clean-shaven boy on a motorbike smirks at the girls. He is one of many boys who follow such buses throughout the city in the mornings on their motorbikes, abandoning their own journeys, depending on the amount of attention they receive from the passengers. Nadia, sitting in the front row, calls out to Amina, her cousin and closest friend, sitting opposite to Mehr on a bench. ‘Look Amina, your husband is here.’ Neither Amina nor the other girls remember seeing this particular boy before. Amina feigns a look of martyrdom, an expression the girls will all wear on their wedding day. With a downward droop to her mouth, she summons tears, puts a wrist against her forehead and cries out, ‘Ma! Nahi! Don’t send me away so soon.’ Mansur Saab, sensitive to the slightest currents of excitement running in his vehicle, lurches the bus around a sharp turn and glares at the girls from his rear-view mirror. The girls catch a peek of a few strands of hair flying loose on top of an otherwise bald head and reach out for one another’s hands, dissolving into fits of laughter.

Most days, Mehr loses herself amid the frivolities on the bus, spends the ride with her hand over her mouth, stifling peals of laughter. Today when Samira, after a remarkable flip of tyres, shouts, ‘Mehr, still on board or have you flown out the back?’ Mehr doesn’t reply. She looks out the window at the trees trembling in the breeze, its glass permanently jammed shut.

‘Mehr,’ he asked last night on the phone, ‘do you know what your name means?’ She smiled into the receiver. ‘Mehr. It’s one of the names given to the full moon.’ She tasted the full texture of her name on her tongue for the first time.

‘You know, animals go mad during the full moon,’ he said. ‘Last night, a skinny mutt bolted out from behind a tree, bared fangs and all, and took off with a piece of flesh from a horse’s leg. We had been treating the same leg for days. It was the fourteenth night of the moon. Last month a koonj, this migratory crane, went dancing around its cage, crying for its partner. We couldn’t sleep the whole night. The racket it made. The partner died days ago but why do you think the bird only remembered to lament its death a week later? Full moon. That’s what your name does.’

She knew he was teasing, could imagine a sly smile softening his angular face. His mellow jabs were meant to reflect his affection for her, but she felt as though the world had suddenly turned hostile. Bloodthirsty mutts, ailing horses, koonjs left behind crying for lost lovers – all because of her. She tried to field the allegations half-heartedly but soon lost the image of his face smiling, and hung up the phone feeling exhausted.

What if he doesn’t send his parents over to ask for her hand? The thought sloshes around in her head as it knocks against the window pane. She charts a plan. Instead of entering the gates of her college, if she hides behind the old, dusty tree next to the boundary wall and waits for Mansur Saab to leave, she can walk towards Meer’s university for a few streets and then hail a rickshaw at a main road to take her the rest of the way. They have never met in person before; Meer dropped his phone number through the open window of the bus once after tailing hers for over a month. But Meer is no stranger, she knows him well. She has spent many nights whispering to him on the phone.

She lists the risks involved. She could get pulled out of college if her mother or brother received a phone call regarding her absence. She could lose her way, be abducted, or get sold in the red-light district. Morning newspapers were filled with such headlines. Meer could turn out to be a stranger, interested only in her voice in the secrecy of the night. She empties her wallet for all the silver coins that she can use for the rickshaw fare, lets them pile in the palm of her hand; she rubs each face, feels the raised surface where a crescent and a star are embossed under the rough beds of her fingertips, while her mind pushes away one possibility of disaster after another. When she looks up again, her mind made up, the bus has pulled onto the canal road towards the city centre, the only road that Mehr knows to be lined with so many trees. As the trees inch past them in the thick traffic, she spots swimmers gathered at both sides of the canal in anticipation of the rain that might fall soon and raise the water level enough for them to go for their morning dips.

Mehr has never walked along an open road on her own before. She imagines the crunch of asphalt under the plastic soles of her shoes. Her hand reaches for the apple in her bag. She takes it out and looks at its bruised surface. She knows there are patches of russet blooming just beneath the red skin, but she polishes its surface on the back of her sleeve and takes a bite anyway. Sweet juice leaks onto her tongue. She takes a bigger bite, savours the foamy texture in her mouth. Her eyes roll back to the canal, to an over-excited swimmer already wading knee-deep in the muddy water, dirt plastered over his thighs. He cups the runny mud in his hand and throws it above his head. He bends over to scoop up muddy water; his muslin sarong slips down his haunches. Mehr catches a glimpse of bare skin, and the nectar in her mouth turns muddy. She shudders, jams the bitten apple back in her bag, and looks away.

An uneasy pulse spreads out in her head; elliptical thoughts hover around her. Unable to keep up with the easy camaraderie inside the bus, Mehr’s eyes gravitate back to the roads. The path to the college is varied. Shaded roads take sharp turns, and open on to clusters of tall colonial buildings, old and decrepit, standing in defiance to the passage of time; tall buildings lead to dusty fields and little boys playing cricket with makeshift bats. The idea of her walking down these roads, making the trip that she has dreamt of countless times, pricks at her skin from the inside. Her cheeks flare in a fury she does not quite understand. Tiny specks of rain land on her window pane, perforating the screen of dust.

The bus turns onto the busiest street leading up to the entrance of her college. It’s a slow drive here, and the road is flanked by shops on each side, the strip of shops named Anarkali Bazaar after the royal concubine who was concreted alive in a wall by a jealous vizier. Mehr knows of this history in an impersonal way; the legend’s darkness bears no traces of the childhood memories of eating cotton candy and fried samosas from its road-side stalls. The morning’s grey clouds, scattered before, have condensed into an umbrella above the bus. The air is still, like everything on the road is holding its breath. The light sprinkle from before has ceased for the moment. Amina, sitting opposite to Mehr, waves her hand across her face, ‘Oye, Mehru, where are you lost today?’ Mehr shifts her eyes to her friend’s hand, feels the currents it makes in the stillness of the air at the rear of the bus. She withdraws her face, diverts her eyes to the snack stalls, and the smoke clouds hovering above them, to the dense clutter of shops. The bus snails ahead.

On a footpath, a group of boys in uniform is gathered around a stall. The stall owner has a grin on his face while he roasts one corn cob after another in a wok of sizzling sand, a small fire crackling underneath it. The boys snatch the cobs from his hand, fall on them with bared teeth. The bus hasn’t progressed two feet before the sky gives in. Rain starts to splatter the street. It comes pelting down on the roof of the battered bus; Mehr winces, instinctively puts her hand over her head. Pedestrians shed their facades of civility as they scamper around for shade, pushing and jostling against one another, ignoring advancing automobiles. The girls laugh and hoot at this untimely rain – it is not a monsoon month – and clap their hands while Mansur Saab puts his own hand on the horn, and forgets it there.

Rain has a way of washing away pretences. The group of uniformed boys who had pretended to be sated by the corn cobs throw away their soggy purchases. Thrilled to be caught in the rain, thrilled to be running in packs, they put their faces defiantly to the sky. The girls in the bus, caught in the excitement, look around the road wildly. One head pokes out of the window seeking its share in the rain.

And that is all it takes.

The boys swoop down on the bus, circle it from all sides, hitting the window panes with fists clenched tight. Mansur Saab hisses from the front, his voice tight with nerves, ‘Girls, keep your eyes on the road.’

The girls, intimidated by the proximity of the boys and the slow speed of the bus, obey the driver for once. One boy breaks into a song, ‘Ae Masuam Rangeelay suhanay, Jiya nahi maanay …’ The rest join in the chorus while circling the bus. The raucous cackles grow louder while the girls, trained by life to recognise the sound of danger, shrink in their seats, flinging their dupattas over their heads, clutching hands. Mansur Saab remains seated, something in the boys’ voices glues him to his seat. He yells, ‘Don’t you boys have mothers and sisters at home?’ while brandishing his skinny fists from behind the safety of his window shield.

‘Get the girls out, old man, you only want to keep them for yourself? Share, share. The weather demands it of you.’

Rain seems to egg the boys on. A boy’s face pops up next to Mehr’s window, close enough for her to see rain dripping down his chin, wet hair plastered over his broody brows. He has let his hair drape over his eyes, like a hero would in a Lollywood movie, but the part of the eyes still visible belie the grin on his face; the eyes seek revenge for what Mehr does not comprehend. Fear curdles in her stomach. The boy slams at her window, once, twice, thrice. He tries to pry it open, but the window is sealed shut. The girl’s hands race to smooth out the creases gathering in her lap, to tug at the hem of her shirt, to force it down over her knees.

The boy abandons Mehr’s window and circles to Nadia, the girl sitting next to the window that is stuck open. There is a lull between the face looking up at Mehr, hate brimming in the eyes of a laughing boy, and the next scene, when Nadia has howled. Mehr has witnessed the space between disbelief and belief. In that quaint order.

In moments to come, she will look down at her finger, run her thumb along its surface, expecting to feel the velvety texture of blood; there will be none. She will look around the bus, at Mansur Saab driving and honking at the same time, his mouth uttering expletives not meant for her ears. She will catch sight of the old man’s flyaway hair visible to her in his rear-view mirror, but she will also see Amina’s face opposite hers, tears slipping down her cheeks, and this time, she will not laugh. There will be silence in the bus, from the front rows to the back. Along the sides of the roads she will witness rivulets rage. A gutter will lie open, its contents bubbling out. She will recall scene by scene the boy’s face next to her window, the hate in his eyes; she will remember the miracle of her sealed window, will recall a hand pass the threshold of the front window left open. Her eyes will return to the sewage on the road. It will finally come to her, the moment of disbelief when the hand reached out and grabbed Nadia’s face, the same face that looked out of the window minutes before soaked in child-like glee, the brutal jerk that forced it out, the spit that landed on Nadia’s face, how it felt like the shock when a needle on a sewing machine pricks through the soft bed of a fingertip, drawing blood; the fleeting disbelief that this could happen, quickly replaced by a certainty that this has happened, that it could have happened all along. The disbelief in recollection will be muted around the edges, its contours softened, almost forgotten, but the belief that a violation has happened, has passed, has entered the realm of finality, will remain with her.

Mehr will leave the bus at the entrance of her college gates, will spend the day with the girls from the bus, huddled together in the common room, each looking in the private spaces of their minds at their communal violation. Mehr will go home early that day, on the same bus, will spot a reed flute, a cheap thing that cost someone fewer than two rupees, abandoned near the lip of a gutter next to her front gate.

Meer will call her in the late hours of the night, after she has been betrothed under her family’s approval to a stranger who has deemed her compatible with him, basing his judgement on an esoteric algorithm that has calculated her worth down to the newness of the sofa in her drawing room. Meer will not tease her, for once. In a faraway voice, he will recount the difficult journey that Demoiselle Cranes make from Mongolia across the Himalayan Mountains to Pakistan; will marvel at their resilience in reaching their destination, flying high over altitudes with almost no oxygen. He will tell her that the crane that he nursed after its partner’s death did not survive the lonely weather of the day. She will let him speak until sleep overcomes him. This will be their last conversation. She will tell him nothing of her day, placing her faith, for all days to come, in the miracle of windows jammed shut.