Two Glasses

Vyshnavi’s verandah faced the lane.

That meant the lane faced the verandah.

A step, two pillars, a wet patch of red earth where the roof dripped. From there you could see the stall, the bend toward Rao’s gate, the boy who always found a hen to ask about.

Anasuya sat on the step with a steel glass.

Same morning saree. Mud wiped off the hem, not off the day. When she sat, the cotton went tight under her. Her ass took the wood, full, spreading, the late weight settling in two stages the way it settled on every bench in Vellamuru. She pulled the pallu over her breasts. It slipped off the right one first, then the left. The blouse held them. Barely. Full. Heavy. The neckline had not recovered from the shelf.

Vyshnavi looked once, the way a friend is allowed.

Then she looked again, because she was a woman of this village too, and facts are facts.

“That blouse is a problem.”

“It is an old blouse.”

“Old blouse, new meeting. Every man from here to the bus stand is in a meeting.”

Anasuya drank. Too sweet.

“Let them work.”

“They are working.” Vyshnavi pointed with her chin, not her hand. A man tying a sandal that was already tied. Another man who had come to ask about a hen and forgotten the hen. A third at the stall who had turned his whole stool. “You sit, they forget why they came. You stand, they remember your ass. You walk, they forget their wives.”

She said ass the way she said salt. Normal.

“Don’t.”

“Why. You think I am Rao.”

The name sat between the two glasses.

Anasuya’s thumb rubbed the steel.

“He told me Ravi spoke.”

Vyshnavi’s glass stopped halfway.

“Spoke what.”

“My name. And dirt. Rao put the dirt in Ravi’s mouth. Said Ravi said I have the best ass in the village.”

Vyshnavi stared at the red lane.

A buffalo shouted. Someone called paalu. Drip from the tiles.

“Ravi talked dirty with you,” Vyshnavi said. “That I believe. Ravi was not a shy man in a room. Ravi talking dirty to Rao on a bad line so Rao can stand in your breasts and say it — that I do not believe.”

Anasuya looked at the stall, not at her friend.

“He will come.”

“I didn’t say he won’t.” The voice went flatter. “I said Rao is not a postman. He is a mouth. He puts other men’s words where his hand wants to go.”

They sat.

The sandal-man finished not tying the sandal. He stared at Anasuya’s chest until Vyshnavi clicked her tongue like a whip. He found a different wall.

Vyshnavi leaned in.

“They have two names for you. Hear both from me. Not from a boy who wants to see if you cry.”

Anasuya closed her eyes.

“Big-seat lady. That one you already hear. That one is your ass. They will die saying it.”

“The other.”

“President’s woman. Sometimes they don’t say woman. Shankar’s people say it to dirty you. Rao’s people say it to own you. You walking to his gate with that blouse makes both jobs easy.”

Anasuya opened her eyes.

She did not pull the pallu.

It lay on her thigh. One breast-line showed at the blouse edge — brown, full, the inner curve a public fact on a friend’s step. A man at the hen-wall took it and stored it.

“If I cover, they still talk.”

“Yes.”

“If I stay home, they still talk.”

“Yes.”

“Then I will walk.”

Vyshnavi laughed once. Short. Dirty. Loyal.

“Walk. But hook the blouse when you go back to him. Or don’t. If you don’t, know what you are doing. That man looked after you when you had no house. Now he looks at you like the house was a long payment. Don’t give him the payment and call it rain.”

Anasuya drank the last of the tea. When she swallowed, her breasts moved. Vyshnavi saw. The lane saw. Nobody pretended otherwise.

Rangaiah passed on the lane with a sack of rice on his shoulder. Rao’s rice. Rao’s servant. He heard blouse and ass and Ravi and did not stop. Servants who stop on women’s verandahs become a third name.

Vyshnavi saw him and did not lower her voice.

“Tell your President the rice can come. The hands can stay at his gate.”

Rangaiah looked at the mud. Kept walking. The sack hid his face. It did not hide that he had heard.

Anasuya said, quieter, only for the two glasses,

“He will come, Vyshu.”

Vyshnavi looked at her friend’s mouth. Then at the empty place on the step where a husband should have sat after four years. Then at the blouse that would not stay decent.

“Then let him come and see what this village did with his wife’s name. And what Rao did with his voice.”

Anasuya stood.

The standing was a full show and neither woman pretended it was not.

Ass first. Heavy. The saree catching up, the shake, the wood of the step suddenly empty and still shaped like her. Waist. Then she turned and her breasts moved in the blouse, one slow shift, the unhooked trouble worse for the stand, and the hen-man remembered he did not have a hen.

Vyshnavi said, not unkind,

“Hook it.”

Anasuya did not hook it.

She stepped into the red lane with her breasts in the light and her ass late behind her and both names on her back.

The hen-man went home with no hen.

Vyshnavi sat with two empty glasses and watched the lane eat her friend the way it ate every beautiful thing that did not leave.