A new book of short stories follows small-town young Indian women trying to make it big in cities

Each corner of the room had been spruced up. The light from the cane lampshade was just as she liked it – scattered on the one spot where inside a glass vase, bunches of narcissus were haphazardly thrown. As the light fell on it, she quickly counted the colours spread on the tablecloth underneath the vase. One colour looked faded. Why hadn’t she paid attention while buying it? Then again, she also hadn’t thought that her useless dreams would be devoid of colour.

While changing, she noticed the bottle of lily of the valley. The last drops of a dying fragrance remained. Nothing is permanent. Even the intimacy of a fragrance that appears to belong to us will one day dissipate.

In the fridge were beer bottles from the last party whose fate had to be decided. At the party she’d told a colleague that there was no real difference between the smell of beer and that of horseshit. No sooner had she said this than everyone at the party abandoned the beer and clashed over the Breezers. Those Kingfisher bottles were still lying here. Orphaned.

“It’s a good hair conditioner,” her roommate’s words reminded her of the odour emanating from the army camp’s stables in the valleys of Sonmarg.

“It’ll be a mismatch. Your hair, this smell...like Sonmarg and the army camps.” And so, plans for the remaining beer were once again postponed.

She didn’t know what she was thinking when she placed two mugs of beer on the dining table. Chilled beer would harm her throat and she wouldn’t find anyone to do a voiceover for her primetime show the next day. Her roommate was going to return late tonight, after suffering a long evening of pointless debates over apple juice at a client’s party.

The Boy never stayed over for longer than an hour these days. Distance was a plausible excuse, but rather than the distance between Rohini and GK 1, it seemed to her that there was a distance between hearts. Sort of like the distance between Mars and Venus. When we are determined to maintain distance, any excuse will do.

Anyway, the Boy would take at least an hour and a half to get here from Rohini. That meant she had a lot of time. Enough time to cook rajma-chawal for dinner, organise her wardrobe, preen herself on reading a book, oblige the newspaperman by reading an article from the weekly delivered TIME magazine. Or to decide what to do with her directionless relationship. This last was the easiest task, because it was no longer difficult to decide what to do with this relationship.

She was from a small town; she could go back. There was peace there, a buffer, and none of the rigmarole involved in getting to know someone. And it was an easy love, too. So-and-so’s daughter would be Mr Such-and-such’s daughter-in-law, no complaints. They were childhood friends. This wasn’t an inter-caste marriage. The families knew each other, so she would be welcomed with a six-inch thick, padded red carpet. There was no conflict, an easy way. Lifelong ease.

The heart kept questioning. The heart kept answering. Then why this stubbornness? What was this feverish desire that seemed incomplete even as it was being fulfilled? The stubbornness was because life’s ease is often its biggest challenge. The harder our struggles, the more easily we are satisfied with the illusion of living. And what of desires? It is their very nature to be feverish.

So what was to be preserved? Who are we to preserve? Through our lives, the task of collecting the scattered is indeed ours. And so? What was to be achieved finally?

The cigarette. The cigarette was to be had for now.

If not a habit, then a craving.

If not a craving, then a need.

She had called the Boy and instructed him to get Classic Milds. There was still an hour before the Boy got here.

60 minutes. 3,600 seconds.

Why should a need be kept waiting so long? She decided to go down and buy cigarettes by herself. As she glanced at the red toenails gleaming in the glittery red slippers, she was reminded of another of her roommate’s triumphs. Why did she give in so quickly? Now she’d have to go home and do the added work of finding the nail-polish remover. If she spent 20 seconds on each toenail, she’d save 200 seconds. Finding the remover would take 600 seconds.

In GK, no eyebrows are raised upon seeing girls buy cigarettes, and alcohol is easily bought at the supermarket. Cigarettes were bought and so was a green apple-flavoured vodka. While making the purchases, she’d even netted 600 seconds in the bargain.

Bargains of time were not that difficult.

There was no Internet, else she could have made a nice cocktail. She called the Boy to ask whether vodka could be drunk neat. “I’m at the last traffic signal” – this response contained nothing resembling an answer to her question. Neat it is, she mused as she poured vodka into a glass and took out a cigarette from the pack of Classic Milds, to light up.

“You’ll never learn to smoke a cigarette, girl.” She remembered her roommate’s taunt. She held the cigarette in her left hand and the lit matchstick in her right.

“Take it in your mouth and light it, then draw a puff.”

She kept following her roommate’s directions in her head and voila! A lit cigarette was in her hand. 240 seconds...

The phone rang. It was Ma. 1,200 seconds, at the very least. She was to marry and reproduce on time. People tend to gossip...200 seconds...the marriages of Chinki-Pinki- Bittu-Gudiya from the neighbourhood had been fixed. A description of the prospective grooms’ families and dowry arrangements...600 seconds...attacks on her waywardness and deviance...600 seconds...a bonus!

The doorbell rang and she was relieved of the phone till morning

“I couldn’t get the cigarettes. Couldn’t stop the car anywhere,” the Boy said.

“I got them, want one?” she asked.

“Oh! No thanks,” the Boy replied.

“Vodka or beer?” she asked.

“Is this a special occasion?” the Boy asked.

“It’s my second anniversary on the job. I’ve promised to remain there for the next 25 years,” she said.

“What do you want?” the Boy asked.

“Ask me what I don’t want. That’d be easier to answer,” she said.

“Do you have a disease that makes you disagreeable?” the Boy asked.

“And you discovered this today, after all these years?” she said.

The Boy attempted unsuccessfully to change the evening’s soured mood. He asked, “Want to eat? Let’s go out?”

“Black salt goes well with green apple vodka,” she answered.

“I give up,” the Boy said.

“I’ve known you were a loser since we were kids,” she replied.

“What’s wrong with you? I feel like shaking you up,” the Boy responded agitatedly.

“You won’t because I don’t permit it. You ask me for my consent before so much as touching me,” she remarked coolly, drawing a deep puff of the cigarette.

“Are you drunk?” the Boy inquired sweetly.

“What does it look like?” she quipped with equal dryness.

“Looks like there’s no point. We’re trying for nothing. I should go back home.” The Boy accepted defeat.

“The door’s behind you. Get me another pack of cigarettes on your way out. My roommate might want one. We’re not going hunting for it at midnight.” The girl ended the conversation.

“This is what happens when small-town girls come to Delhi to study. They become spoilt. At least retain some of your values. Is this what you came here for?” The Boy gave it his last shot.

“If this was your final salvo, it’s wasted. Don’t bother trying again.” The girl started pouring vodka into the glass, deliberately from a height so that the vodka’s glug rang afar. At least as far as the Boy.

“I give up,” the Boy said.

“Take this vodka. You may need it. Buy an extra cigarette too. I forgive all your sins. Looks like our values came bundled in only my luggage when I came to Delhi. Take them with you. Return them to my home. Might as well discharge some duty of being a boyfriend...sorry...ex-boyfriend!” The girl took hold of the door.

The Boy gave her a sad look and spoke, “Why do I feel like this is the last time I’m seeing you?”

“Better get a good look then. I won’t ever look this beautiful again.” The girl kept holding the door and allowed her voice to drift.

The Boy gave her a lingering look, then left after imprinting his gaze on her face. A while later, the watchman delivered five packs of Classic Milds.

She finished smoking a pack as she waited for her roommate. She opened the second one only after the roommate returned.

“My efforts bore fruit. He won’t be back.” She washed down the sudden hitch in her throat with a gulp of water.

“But why did you do that after all?”

“He should be at home, with his parents. He owes them his life. He didn’t owe me anything. In any case, staying with me means a lifetime of tears.” She rested her head on her roommate’s shoulder and spoke in a tired voice, “I’ve known him since childhood. He won’t change. And you see how I’m changing every minute, so rapidly. If he can’t put up with me, he’ll berate me. Cry. Scream. I accept his going away, not becoming fed up and leaving me.” She kept speaking monotonously, as though succumbing to the slow intoxication of the cigarette.

“You could have gone with him. He wasn’t going to some unknown city,” her roommate noted for some reason.

“A city isn’t unknown or familiar. We make it ours or don’t,” the girl said, getting up from her roommate’s side to leave.

“Didn’t you love him?” was the roommate’s last question. Sitting on the floor, looking into the eyes of the girl now standing next to her, she posed this tough question.

“I did. I do. That’s why I didn’t go with him.” Saying this, the girl took the cigarette from her roommate’s hand to take a final deep puff and went into the bathroom to wash her hair with beer.

“The Last Puff of Cigarette” excerpted with permission from The Blue Scarf and Other Stories, Anu Singh Choudhary, translated from the Hindi by Kamayani Sharma, HarperCollins.