Chapter 5: What the Old Man Saw
The parcel should have arrived by noon.
Ruby had tracked it on the app—out for delivery at 11:47 AM, delivered at 12:23 PM. Signed for by R. Sharma. Except Ruby had been home all afternoon, and no one had knocked, no one had called, and the sleek black box she'd been waiting for with a mixture of embarrassment and anticipation was nowhere to be found.
She checked the app again. Delivered. House number 14.
Ruby stared at the screen. House number 14. Her house was number 12. Number 14 belonged to Purshottam Sharma, the pint-sized tyrant who lived on the other side of the boundary wall, the man who had spent the last four years making her life a quiet, relentless hell of snide remarks and pointed stares.
Her jaw tightened.
The afternoon heat clung to the walls like a wet blanket as Ruby stepped out of her gate. She had changed twice before settling on the crimson cotton saree—the one with the border that sat so low on her hips it seemed to defy gravity. The fabric was thin, breathable, the color of crushed chilies. Her navel was fully exposed, a dark comma against the golden-brown of her midriff. The blouse was cut to showcase rather than conceal.
It was armor.
She knocked on Purshottam's gate with the flat of her palm. Three sharp thwacks that echoed in the narrow lane.
Nothing.
She knocked again, harder. "Uncle! Sharma uncle!"
A curtain twitched in the window. Then the door creaked open, and Purshottam Sharma appeared in the doorway like a reluctant ghost—a small, wizened figure in a frayed white kurta and brown trousers that had been hemmed at the knee.
He was holding her box.
The sight of it—that glossy black rectangle with the discreet lavender label—in his gnarled hands sent a fresh spike of fury through her. He hadn't just signed for it. He had opened it. The seal was broken, the flap slightly askew.
"Uncle," Ruby said, and her voice was steel wrapped in silk. "That's my parcel."
Purshottam looked at the box. He looked at her. His face was doing something strange—something she couldn't quite read. The usual sneer was absent. The disapproving squint had been replaced by something softer, more bewildered. He looked, Ruby thought with a start, almost shy.
"Yes," he said quietly. "It came to my house. By mistake."
"Then why didn't you send it over?"
He didn't answer. His thumb traced the edge of the box. His knuckles were knotted with age, the skin thin as paper. Behind him, the interior of his house was dark and still, smelling of old wood and loneliness.
"What is inside it?" he asked.
The question landed strangely. It wasn't accusatory. It wasn't lecherous. It was almost—curious. The way a child might ask about a locked door.
Ruby crossed her arms beneath her breasts. The movement was deliberate, a display of impatience. But something in his demeanor made her hesitate. The old man was looking at her like she was a puzzle he had spent his whole life failing to solve.
"Things a woman wears for her husband, uncle," she said, and her voice came out softer than she'd intended. "Nothing you would understand."
She expected the sneer then. The lecture. The inevitable commentary about modesty and shame and the moral decay of modern women. She braced for it, her shoulders tensing, her chin lifting.
But Purshottam did not sneer.
He did not lecture.
Instead, he looked down at the box, and then back at her, and his eyes—rheumy, tired, old—were wet with something that looked like grief.
"I opened it," he said. "I am sorry."
The words hung between them. Ruby's arms dropped to her sides. The afternoon heat pressed down, thick and humid, and somewhere in the distance a temple bell tolled the hour.
"You opened it," she repeated. Not a question.
"Yes."
"Why?"
The old man's jaw worked. He was short—so much shorter than her that he had to tilt his chin up to meet her eyes. His hands trembled slightly around the box. Ruby noticed, for the first time, that his fingernails were bitten to the quick, the cuticles ragged.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I saw the box. It said your name. I thought—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I thought it would be something. Something to prove what I always say about you. That you are—" He stopped again.
"Shameless?" Ruby supplied. "Immodest? A bad woman?"
Purshottam flinched. "Yes," he whispered. "I thought there would be proof."
Ruby stared at him. In the four years she had lived next door to this man, she had never heard him whisper. He was always loud—loud in his criticism, loud in his righteousness, loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear his opinions about her dresses and her hips and her godless, modern ways.
"And what did you find?" she asked.
Purshottam's thumb stopped tracing the box. He looked at her, and his face crumpled. "Lace," he said. "Black lace. Small enough to fit in my palm."
The silence that followed was enormous.
Ruby saw him—really saw him—for the first time. This dwarf of a man, this lifelong tormentor, this bitter creature who had made it his mission to shame her. She saw the way he stood there, shoulders hunched, box held before him like an offering. She saw the loneliness in the hollows of his cheeks, the hunger in his eyes—not for her, not exactly, but for something she represented. Something he had never allowed himself to have.
He had never in his life held anything beautiful.
The realization struck her with a force that made her breath catch. She thought of the afternoon, weeks ago, when a stranger had pressed against her in the spice market, his hands finding her body under cover of chaos. She had been ashamed and thrilled in equal measure, and she had told no one. That shame had sat in her chest like a stone for days.
But this was different. This was not desire for her body. This was desire for a life unlived.
She reached out and took the box from his hands. Her fingers brushed his, and he flinched as if burned.
"It is okay, uncle," she said softly. "Beauty is not a sin."
Purshottam's breath hitched. His eyes—wet, bewildered—searched her face. He opened his mouth, but no words came.
Ruby turned and walked back through her gate. Her hips swayed, the crimson of her saree catching the afternoon light, her bare midriff gleaming with sweat. She didn't look back. She didn't need to. She could feel his gaze on her like a physical thing—not predatory, not judgmental, but something else entirely. Something ragged and reverent.
When she closed her gate behind her, her hands were shaking.
Inside, she carried the box to her bedroom and set it on the bed. She opened it—fully this time, pulling back the tissue paper to reveal the black lace lingerie she had ordered from a boutique in Delhi. It was small, delicate, almost scandalous. She had bought it for Manoj, for one of those rare nights when he came home early and the heat between them wasn't extinguished by exhaustion.
She looked at it for a long moment. Then she closed the box and slid it under the bed.
That evening, Manoj came home at seven with sweat on his brow and a bag of samosas from the corner shop. Ruby had made dal and rice, and they ate at the small table by the window while the ceiling fan whirred overhead.
"You're quiet," he said, tearing off a piece of roti.
"Just tired."
"Sharma uncle was acting strange today," Manoj said. "I saw him standing in his courtyard this evening. Just standing there, looking at the wall."
Ruby's fingers tightened around her spoon. "Was he?"
"Yeah. He looked like he'd seen a ghost." Manoj laughed, oblivious. "Maybe he finally realized how much of a pain he's been."
Ruby didn't laugh. She pushed her rice around her plate and said nothing.
That night, she lay awake beside Manoj, listening to the ceiling fan click on each rotation. The window was open, and through it came the sounds of the neighborhood—a distant dog barking, the hum of a scooter, the creak of the old peepal tree.
And then, faintly, from behind the wall, she heard something else.
A soft sound. Almost like crying.
She held her breath. The sound stopped. Then it started again—a quiet, hitching sob that seemed to carry all the loneliness of sixty-five years.
Ruby stared at the ceiling. Her heart beat strangely in her chest.
Purshottam Sharma did not sleep that night.
He lay on his narrow bed in his narrow room, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. The fan was broken—had been broken for three years—and the heat pressed down on him like a living thing.
But he barely felt it.
His mind was elsewhere.
He saw her as she had stood at his gate—the crimson saree, the bare midriff, the dark curve of her navel. He saw the way she had looked at him, not with contempt, not with pity, but with something that had felt almost like kindness.
He had tormented her for four years. He had called her names, questioned her character, done everything in his power to make her feel small.
And she had taken his apology like a benediction.
He thought about the lace. Black lace, delicate enough to tear in his hands. He had never seen anything like it. He had never touched anything like it. In his whole life, he had known only the rough cotton of widows and the scratchy wool of monks.
He had opened the box expecting proof of her moral corruption.
He had found proof of her humanity instead.
He turned on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest. Tears burned behind his eyes. He did not know what he was feeling—desire, shame, awe, guilt—all of it tangled together into a knot he could not untie.
He imagined her wearing the lace. He imagined her standing in a room lit by candles. He imagined her looking at him the way she had looked at him today—softly, without judgment, as if he were something worth seeing.
The image made him gasp. He pressed his fist to his mouth to muffle the sound.
He would not sleep tonight. He would lie here until dawn, staring at the ceiling, being consumed by something he was too old and too afraid to name.
And in the morning, he would go back to being the bitter old man who yelled about modesty. But tonight—just tonight—Purshottam Sharma allowed himself to worship the woman next door from behind his wall.
It was the most sacred thing he had ever done.
Ruby woke at 3 AM to the sound of her own heartbeat.
She had been dreaming—something formless and warm—and when she opened her eyes, the dream was already dissolving. But the feeling of it remained. Not the spice market. Not the anonymity. Something quieter.
She turned her head. Manoj was snoring softly beside her, his body a heavy weight on the other side of the mattress. Ruby lay still and listened.
The neighborhood was silent. No dogs, no scooters, no sounds from behind the wall.
She let out a breath and closed her eyes. But sleep did not come. She kept seeing the old man's face—the wet eyes, the trembling hands, the way he had said 'I am sorry' like a confession.
She had meant what she said. Beauty was not a sin. But neither was loneliness, and she had never thought of Purshottam Sharma as lonely. She had only thought of him as cruel.
Maybe they were the same thing.
She reached under the bed and touched the edge of the box. The cardboard was smooth and cool against her fingers. She imagined the black lace inside, folded and waiting.
She thought: tomorrow, I will wear it for Manoj.
But even as she thought it, she knew it wouldn't be for Manoj. Not really.
She pulled her hand back and pressed it to her chest, where her heart was still beating too fast.
Beyond the wall, Purshottam Sharma cried himself to sleep. And in her bed, Ruby Dixit stared at the ceiling and wondered what she had started.