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before?’ Astha went on carefully, scratching and poking at the leather so hard, she could smell the car on her hands long afterwards.
    ‘Well, there was no point talking about things, until things got certain.’
    ‘Yes, but you might have told me that there was a possibility of your going away.’
    ‘You knew that‚’ said Rohan coldly, not looking at her. ‘I never tried to hide anything. There is no need for me to hide.’
    ‘No, no, of course not. That is not what I meant‚’ floundered Astha. ‘But you just mentioned once or twice, like people do, you know, about going abroad, and I didn’t know … Why, your results are just out, and you must have been trying since last year if you are going so soon.’
    ‘Sending applications is not something to make a song and dance about. I would look very stupid afterwards if I got neither admission nor funding.’
    Astha felt hopeless. She sat in silence, next to this boy whom she had thought she knew. The hands that he had used on her body were now clenched around her heart, slowly squeezing, slowly hurting.
    ‘What about us?’ she asked abruptly, drawing a deep breath.
    ‘We will see‚’ said Rohan briefly. He was waiting to take her home, waiting to get rid of her. He started the car, while Astha stared out of the window all the way to the edge of her colony.
    ‘Bye‚’ she said, closing the door carefully, feeling it would be her last time in the Vauxhall, which was just as well. Old cars were so ugly, so useless, so slow, why did anyone bother with them?
    ‘Bye‚’ said Rohan. ‘Be seeing you‚’ he added, a remark which her dignity threw back silently, with all the coldness and contempt her falling to pieces self was capable of.
    *
    ‘Where have you been? Dinner has been getting cold‚’ came her mother’s voice, as Astha tried her usual unobtrusive entrance.
    ‘Nowhere.’
    ‘Nowhere has a name or no?’
    ‘No‚’ said Astha, going to lock herself in the bathroom, free from voices, free from everything except the terrible things she was feeling, because Rohan didn’t love her, Rohan had lied to her. Rohan was what her mother had been warning her about since she was old enough to be warned, and how pleased she would be to know she had been right all along.
    *
    In the days to come Rohan neither called, nor sent the usual secret messages through her girlfriends.
    It was over. Over. Over.
    Astha entered her third year with a desire to get her education over as quickly as possible. Every day was painful to her. She was constantly reminded of Rohan, in the Coffee House, at the back gate, at their secret corner of the road, every evening at home. As for old black cars, they made her physically sick.

    Rohan went abroad and Astha enrolled in MA, bored and unenthusiastic. Three years of an Honours course in English Literature had given her all she wanted to know of the subject. Not for her did the excitement of intellectual discovery lie ahead, only more of the same. After two years were over she supposed she would drift into teaching, that is what women like her did. School or college, remained to be decided.
    All through third year her classmates had been busy preparing for competitive exams, or like Rohan, applying for higher studies abroad. Those not in this category had married and disappeared, to be heard of occasionally, moving around with husband, and later baby, stamped with the marks of confirmed adulthood.
    Now in MA, her friends were few.

Chapter II
    Astha was in her final year when the proposal came. The MBA, foreign returned son of one of the bureaucrats who lived in the larger houses bordering Lodhi colony, had seen her and wanted to meet her. His father dropped in on them, and acquainted the parents with their good fortune.
    ‘I don’t know him‚’ objected Astha when they told her the news.
    ‘He also doesn’t know you, Madam‚’ said the mother crossly. ‘That is why he wants to meet you.’
    ‘Give her the details,