Chapter 2: The Ball in the Enemy's Yard
The ball disappeared into the dust of Purshottam Sharma's courtyard with a sound like a slap.
For a moment, nobody moved. The children—five of them, ranging from a lanky boy of twelve to a chubby-cheeked girl of maybe six—stood frozen in the middle of the lane, their bats and wickets abandoned. The afternoon had that particular quality of stillness that comes just before a storm, or just after a disaster.
Ruby watched from her kitchen doorway. She'd been drying her hands on a cloth, the smell of burnt onions still lingering despite Manoj's best efforts at salvaging dinner. The dal had been rescued. The rotis had been made. The kitchen had returned to some semblance of order.
But the lane outside had erupted into silent panic.
"Oi," the lanky boy whispered, his voice carrying across the street like a prayer. "Who's going to get it?"
Nobody volunteered.
The smallest girl—Ruby recognized her as Choti, the daughter of the vegetable seller two houses down—had tears welling in her eyes. Her lower lip trembled. She was clutching a wicket like it was a shield.
Ruby set down the cloth.
She stepped through the archway, her bare feet meeting the warm stone of the threshold. The evening light had turned golden now, softening the edges of everything—the cracked walls, the peeling paint, the dust that hung in the air like suspended memory.
Her saree was pale green today. Cotton. Simple. It sat low on her hips the way all her sarees did, the fabric gathering in soft folds at her waist, leaving a precise triangle of skin exposed from navel to the first hint of hipbone. The gold ring glinted in the fading sun.
"Ruby," Manoj called from inside. "Where are you—"
But she was already walking.
The children noticed her approach and their faces shifted—relief and fear mixing in equal measure. They knew who she was. Everyone in the colony knew who Ruby Dixit was. The woman who wore her sarees too low and her opinions too loud. The woman whose husband didn't beat her. The woman who'd once told the temple priest to his face that God didn't care about the length of her blouse.
"Behenji," the lanky boy started, "the ball—"
"I saw," Ruby said.
She kept walking.
Purshottam Sharma's house stood at the end of the lane like a stubborn tooth. It was older than the other houses, built before the colony had proper drainage, and it showed. The walls had that particular shade of gray that came from decades of monsoon damage. The front gate hung crooked on its hinges—it had been like that for as long as Ruby could remember, and Purshottam had never fixed it, as if the brokenness itself was a point of pride.
The courtyard stretched beyond the gate like a forgotten graveyard. Two crumbling chhatris flanked the entrance, their stone pillars worn smooth by decades of wind and neglect. The paint had peeled so completely that you could see the layers beneath—ochre, then white, then something that might have been blue once. The neem tree that dominated the center of the yard had grown wild, its branches reaching over the wall like it was trying to escape.
And there, half-buried in the dust near a rusted water pump, was the ball.
A tennis ball, actually. Green and fuzzy, the kind that cost fifteen rupees from the shop near the bus stand. It sat there in the open, mocking the children with its accessibility.
Ruby stops at the gate. Her fingers curled around the crooked iron bars, the rust flaking off against her palm.
"Sharma uncle," she called out, her voice carrying into the dark interior of the house. "The ball?"
Silence.
The marigold plant beside the pump had given up on life weeks ago. Its petals were brown and brittle, fallen into the dust like tiny corpses. The scent of neem hung heavy in the air—that bitter, medicinal smell that Ruby had always associated with old women's remedies and old men's grudges.
"Sharma uncle," she called again, her tone shifting. Still polite. Barely. "I know you're home. Your door was open a minute ago."
The front door of the house was dark. A void cut into the weathered wall. Ruby could feel eyes watching from that darkness, old and rheumy and filled with something that had curdled long ago.
"I'm not leaving without the ball," she said.
A sound from inside. The shuffle of feet on stone. The click of a tongue against teeth.
Then Purshottam emerged.
He came out slowly, deliberately, like a tortoise testing the temperature of the world. His white kurta was the same one from earlier—yellowed at the collar, stained at the hem. His dhoti hung loose around his thin legs, and his rudraksha beads clicked together with every shuffling step.
In his gnarled hand, he held the tennis ball.
He stopped at the edge of his doorway, just inside the shadow, and looked at Ruby standing at his gate. The contrast was almost theatrical—her in that pale green saree, the evening sun painting her skin gold, and him in his darkness, his face a mask of old indignation.
"You want this?" he asked. His voice was like gravel being stirred in a rusted pot.
"Yes."
"Come and get it."
Ruby didn't move. "That's not how this works, uncle. It's the children's ball. Just toss it here."
Purshottam looked at the ball in his hand. Turned it over. Examined it like it was a piece of evidence in a crime he was still building.
"The children," he repeated, drawing the word out. "The children who play in the street from morning to evening. No lessons. No discipline. Just noise and dirt and—"
"They're kids," Ruby said. "They play."
"In my time—"
"I know." Ruby's voice was flat. "In your time, children worked in fields and women covered their heads and everyone was miserable. You've told me. Multiple times."
The old man's jaw tightened. His fingers squeezed around the ball.
"You think you're clever," he said. "Standing there with your—your—" He gestured vaguely at her midriff, at the exposed skin that seemed to offend him on a cellular level. "You think this is some kind of joke."
"I think," Ruby said, "that you're holding a fifteen-rupee ball hostage because you want to teach me a lesson I've never asked for."
"I want you to cover yourself."
"I want you to fix your gate."
They stared at each other. The children watched from across the lane, their breath held collectively.
Purshottam took a step forward. Out of the shadow and into the fading light. He was even smaller in the open—a shriveled man whose head barely reached Ruby's chest. The ball looked absurd in his hand, like a piece of fruit he'd stolen from a vendor.
"Shameless," he said quietly. "That's what you are. Absolutely shameless."
"Because I won't wrap myself in a bedsheet to fetch a ball?"
"Because you walk around like—like—" He sputtered, searching for the word. "Like you want to be looked at."
Ruby tilted her head. "Maybe I do. Maybe I spent twenty-five years being told I was too dark, too fat, too loud, too much. And then I decided that was someone else's problem, not mine."
The old man's face twisted. "Your husband should—"
"My husband," Ruby cut in, "is the only man in this colony who treats me like a human being instead of a decoration or a warning sign. So I'd choose your next words carefully, uncle, because you're insulting him too."
Purshottam's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
He looked, for a moment, genuinely confused—like a man who'd been following a map his whole life and suddenly discovered it was upside down.
"You don't respect anything," he finally said. "Not traditions. Not elders. Not—"
"I don't respect people who don't respect me," Ruby said. "That's different."
"I am an elder—"
"You are a neighbor. Elders earn respect. And you've spent thirty years making sure nobody in this colony has a kind word to say about you."
The ball dropped from Purshottam's hand. It hit the dust and bounced once, twice, rolling to a stop near the marigold corpse.
Ruby didn't move to pick it up. Neither did he.
"You think I care what people say about me?" Purshottam's voice had gone thin. Wounded. "You think I don't know what they whisper? The old dwarf. The backward one. The man whose son ran away to Delhi and never calls."
Ruby felt something twist in her chest. Unwanted. Unwelcome.
"Then why do you make it so easy for them?" she asked. "Why do you stand at your gate every evening, waiting for someone to criticize? Why do you—"
"Because it's better than nothing!" The words exploded out of him. "Because if I'm not the one talking, then I'm the one being talked about! And at least when I'm the one—"
He stopped. His chest heaved. The rudraksha beads rattled.
The silence that followed was different from before. Heavier. The children had crept closer, drawn by the drama despite their fear. Even the bicycle repair wallah, who'd been working two doors down, had stopped hammering.
Ruby looked at the old man—really looked at him. At the loneliness etched into every line of his face. At the way his hands trembled, not from age but from something deeper. At the dust that had settled into the grooves of his kurta like it had given up on ever leaving.
"You're right," she said quietly. "I don't respect you. Not because you're old or traditional or any of that. Because you've never given me a reason to."
Purshottam blinked.
"But the children haven't done anything to you," Ruby continued. "They just wanted to play cricket. And you—"
"Sharma ji."
The voice came from behind Ruby. Calm. Steady. The voice that had been singing Kishore Kumar songs in the kitchen an hour ago.
Manoj walked past her—not pushing, not posturing, just walking—and stopped at the gate. He didn't raise his voice. Didn't clench his fists. He simply stood there, in his rumpled office shirt and dusty sandals, and looked at the old man with a quiet that was somehow more intimidating than anger.
"Give the children their ball," Manoj said.
It wasn't a request.
Purshottam's mouth worked. He looked at Manoj, then at Ruby, then at the small crowd of children who had gathered at the edge of his property. Choti was crying silently. The lanky boy had his arm around her shoulders.
For a long, suspended moment, nothing happened.
Then Purshottam bent down—slowly, painfully, his knees cracking—and picked up the ball. He turned it over in his hands one last time, like he was saying goodbye to something.
Then he threw it.
The ball arced through the air—clumsy, wobbling—and landed at Manoj's feet. The lanky boy darted forward and scooped it up, holding it to his chest like treasure.
"We'll be going now," Manoj said. He didn't smile. Didn't gloat. Just turned and put his hand on Ruby's lower back, the same way he had in the kitchen.
Ruby didn't move immediately. She looked at Purshottam—at the old man standing alone in his dusty courtyard, surrounded by crumbling walls and dead marigolds and decades of accumulated bitterness.
"I meant what I said earlier," she told him. "About dinner."
Purshottam's face contorted—something between rage and confusion and that raw, wounded thing she'd glimpsed earlier.
"I don't need your pity," he spat.
"It's not pity," Ruby said. "It's a roti and some dal. The offer stands."
She turned before he could respond. Manoj's hand was warm on her back, guiding her away from the gate.
The children surrounded her immediately, their voices overlapping in a chorus of excitement and relief.
"Behenji, that was amazing—"
"Did you see his face—"
"I thought he was going to hit you—"
Ruby knelt.
The dust was warm against her knees, seeping through the thin cotton of her saree. She found herself at eye level with Choti, the smallest girl, who was still sniffling but had stopped crying.
"Aunty," Choti whispered, her voice barely audible above the others. "You're not scared of him?"
Ruby reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind the girl's ear. Her fingers were gentle. Her smile was softer than anything Purshottam had ever seen from her.
"Fear is a choice, beta," she said. "So is kindness. I choose both."
Choti's eyes went wide—like she'd just been handed a secret too big to hold.
"Both?"
"Both." Ruby stood and dusted off her knees. The green saree had picked up a patch of brown at the hem, but she didn't seem to notice. "Now go play. The sun's setting. You've got maybe an hour left."
The children scattered like birds, laughing and shouting, the cricket resumed within seconds. The lanky boy hit the first ball with a satisfying crack, and Choti shrieked with joy as she ran for the wickets.
Ruby watched them for a moment. Then she turned.
Purshottam's gate was still open. The old man was gone, retreated back into the darkness of his house, but she could see a flicker of movement behind one of the dusty curtains.
She didn't wave. Didn't smile. Just looked, long enough for him to know she knew he was watching.
Then she walked home, her husband at her side.
Manoj didn't speak until they were through their own gate, standing in the narrow courtyard that separated their house from the street. The tulsi plant in the corner needed watering. The evening had cooled the air just enough to make breathing feel possible again.
"You offered him dinner again," Manoj said.
"I know."
"He won't come."
"I know."
Manoj sighed—a long, slow exhale that carried the weight of nine years of watching his wife do things he didn't fully understand but had learned to trust.
"Ruby—"
"He's alone, Manoj." She turned to face him. "His son doesn't call. His wife died twelve years ago. He sits in that house every night and eats silence for dinner. And I can't—"
She stopped. Swallowed.
"I can't just let him rot in there. Even if he's a piece of shit. Even if he's spent years making my life miserable. I can't."
Manoj looked at her. The evening light had caught in her earrings, little gold specks that glittered when she moved. Her jaw was set the way it always was when she was fighting something—whether it was the world or herself.
"You're remarkable," he said.
"I know."
He laughed—that same deep, watery laugh from earlier.
They stood in their courtyard as the sky deepened from orange to purple to something closer to ink. The children's voices faded one by one as mothers called them home for dinner.
And across the lane, in the dust of Purshottam Sharma's courtyard, a dead marigold plant caught the last light of day.
The old man's door remained closed.
But the ball was gone from the dust, and somewhere in the dark house, a limp figure sat at a cracked table, staring at a photograph he hadn't looked at in years.
The photograph was of a family. Three people. A man, a woman, and a boy of maybe ten.
They were smiling.
The man in the photograph was tall.
Purshottam Sharma set down the photograph and stared at his hands—small, wrinkled, useless—and wondered, for the first time in a very long time, what it might be like to eat dinner with someone who wasn't a ghost.