Chapter 7: Market Confessions
The house felt like a museum in the pale morning light, every surface holding the dust of yesterday. Josh showered under the weak, lukewarm stream, scrubbing at the smell of her that seemed to have seeped into his skin. It didn’t work. He dressed quickly, his mind a single, repeating track: the market.
Downstairs, his grandmother was arranging flowers in a vase. “You’re up early,” she said, not looking up from a marigold.
“Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d walk into town. See the market.”
She nodded, her attention on the symmetry of her arrangement. “Take money. And don’t eat from the street carts. Your London stomach will protest.”
The walk was a fifteen-minute gauntlet of humid air and honking scooters. The market announced itself long before he saw it—a swell of noise, a layered scent of diesel, frying oil, jasmine, and the underlying tang of ripe, decaying produce.
He found her by the potatoes.
She was at a corner stall, her back to him, haggling with a vendor in rapid-fire Bengali. Her usual braid was a dark rope down her back. She wore a simple, faded green salwar kameez. A large jute bag was slung over her shoulder, already half-full. She looked entirely of this place, practical and unshakeable. The memory of her on her knees, swearing into his sheets, felt like a hallucination.
He waited until the transaction was done, two kilos of potatoes deposited into her bag. She turned, and her eyes found him immediately, as if she’d sensed his presence. No surprise. Just a sharp, guarded acknowledgment.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said flatly, hoisting the bag.
“I’m just a tourist. Looking at vegetables.” He reached for the bag. “Let me carry that.”
She held on for a fraction of a second, a silent tug-of-war, before releasing it. “Fine. It’s heavy.”
He fell into step beside her as she navigated the chaotic aisle. The noise was overwhelming—shouted prices, the blare of a radio playing film songs, the sizzle of pakoras in hot oil. It was a good place to talk without being overheard.
“Last night,” he started.
“Is done,” she cut him off, stopping at a stall of gleaming purple brinjals. She began selecting them, her fingers probing for firmness.
“It’s not done for me.”
She didn’t look at him. “What do you want, Josh? A review? It was adequate.” Her voice was brittle.
He flinched. “That’s not what I mean. And you know it.”
She paid for the brinjals and moved on, walking faster. He kept pace, the weight of the bag digging into his shoulder. They passed a stall selling luridly colored sweets, the cloying smell of syrup hanging in the air.
“Why did you tell me you were coming here alone?” he asked, catching her elbow.
She stopped then, finally looking at him. Her dark eyes were pools of exhausted defiance. “I don’t know. A moment of stupidity.”
“Was it stupid?” The question hung between them, almost swallowed by the market’s din.
She turned away, heading towards a quieter alley where fabric stalls cast long shadows. The relative silence there felt charged. “My parents have finalised a match,” she said, the words dropping like stones. “A man from Gujarat. He’s forty-two. He owns a convenience store in New Jersey. He’s been married before. No children. He wants a ‘traditional, obedient wife’ to help with the business.” She recited it like a prison sentence. “They are sending the formal proposal next week. After that, it will be quick. Visa, marriage, gone.”
Josh felt the air leave his lungs. The heat of the alley seemed to press in, thick and suffocating. “You can’t.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “Can’t? What is my alternative? To stay here, cleaning your grandmother’s toilets until my back gives out? To read borrowed books in the dark? This is my alternative. It’s a transaction. He gets labour and companionship. My family gets his money, and the status of a daughter in America. I get… out.”
“Out of here, into another cage,” he said, his voice low and fierce.
“At least it will be my cage! Do you understand? Here, I am owned by everyone. By your family, by my family, by this town, by my caste. There, I will only be owned by him. It is an upgrade.” Her eyes glittered with unshed tears, not of sadness, but of furious resignation.
He couldn’t stand it. The calm acceptance in her voice. He grabbed her hand, ignoring her pull of resistance, and dragged her into the recessed doorway of a shuttered shop. The cool, damp brick wall was against her back. He caged her in, his hands flat on the wall on either side of her head.
The sounds of the market were muffled here, distant. Up close, he could see the faint gold flecks in her brown eyes, the slight tremor in her lower lip.
“I don’t like the idea of that,” he said, his voice rough, echoing his own words from the temple trip, a lifetime ago.
“It does not require your liking.”
He kissed her. It wasn't gentle or questioning. It was a clash, his mouth claiming hers, his tongue sliding in, tasting the chai she’d drunk that morning and the sharp, metallic edge of her despair. She kissed him back with equal fervour, her hands fisting in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer until their bodies aligned entirely. He could feel every curve of her through the thin cotton, the yield of her breasts against his chest, the frantic beat of her heart.
When he broke the kiss, they were both breathing as if they’d run a mile. A single tear had escaped, tracing a path through the fine dust on her cheek.
“Come with me,” he whispered, his forehead resting against hers. The words came out before he could weigh them, ridiculous and inevitable. “To London. Just come.”
She went very still. For a second, he saw it—a wild, terrifying hope flash in her eyes. It was there and gone, extinguished so completely it might have been a trick of the shadows. She let go of his shirt, her hands falling to her sides.
She pushed against his chest, not hard, but with finality. He stepped back, his arms falling uselessly.
“You are a child,” she said, her voice terrifyingly soft. “You have the luxury of grand gestures. What is your plan, Josh? Will I be your secret? Your dirty flatmate? Your family would disown you. Mine would disown me. I would have no papers, no rights, no money. I would be entirely dependent on your liking of me. And when that fades, as it will, what then? I become a maid in a different country, with no way home.”
“It wouldn’t be like that,” he protested, but the words sounded hollow even to him, drowned by the brutal practicality of hers.
“It is always like that.” She smoothed down her kurta, a gesture of reclaiming herself. “The water was just water. The room was just a room. Last night was just last night. It has no future. It was a… moment of mutual forgetting. That is all we can have.”
She stepped out of the doorway, back into the slice of harsh sunlight cutting into the alley. She paused, not looking back at him. “Give me the bag. The vegetables are needed for lunch.”
Numbly, he handed her the heavy jute sack. His shoulder felt light, unreal.
“Your grandmother will wonder where you are,” she said, and then she walked away, merging with the flow of people at the alley’s end, becoming just another figure in the crowd.
He stood in the cool darkness of the doorway, the taste of her and her words co-mingling in his mouth. The market’s chaos swirled on, oblivious. A vendor shouted. A scooter backfired. The sun climbed higher, heating the brick beside his cheek.
He had never felt more foreign in his life.