“Because staircases were more than fire exits once.”
- Mayank Austen Soofi
In his final year of B.Tech, Krishna dreams of being a Venetian gondolier. It’s how he’d afford his own expenses without asking his parents, but more than that, he’d know the sinking city by the time he finished a two-year grad program in mech. Then he’d start a travel agency exclusively for newlyweds and retired couples; even better: Indian grandparents honeymooning in Italy. Those who had arranged marriages eventually found love, just thirty years later. He had seen queues of them circling the travel agency in Malkajgiri’s Char Rasta, and a second one opened recently beside Anutex Mall. He could work with such companies as the Italian counterpart. After a few years of running his own business, he’d marry Rohini, and with whatever dowry her father offered, he’d start an Indian restaurant, maybe one on a large boat floating along the Canalazzo and serve desi-style pasta and Neapolitan biryani. Both cultures, bastardized. Fused. A solid, romantic endeavor. If he could be honest, he’d share all that in his statement of purpose.
‘My dad won’t give you a dowry.’ Rohini texts him. She adds a rolling-eyes emoji, but she doesn’t need to. He can see her expression without even looking at her.
They’re sitting across from each other in the college library, finishing their grad school applications. She’s staying in India and he’s looking for a way out.
‘But it’s expected,’ he types. ‘NRI premium.’
‘I won’t marry you then,’ she dares to whisper.
There’s a strict no noise policy, but silence is its own terrible, lousy disturbance. No sign or warning can shut up the black flies zooming above their heads. If the librarian could ban the whoosh that happens at the turn of a page—as if the book exhales a breath—she would stifle that sound, too. Even the tick of a clock is too much. And yet, this is the place where Rohini insists they spend time together as long as they can.
He wraps his legs around hers under the table and squeezes her thick, hairy calves. He’d never admit he noticed them first before her fish-shaped eyes, her thick braid, her nose ring. She has slender shoulders which shiver as she speaks; her curly hair falls to her elbows, in thick, stubborn ringlets. Recently, one of her younger sisters introduced her to lipstick; it now distracts from the pimple sprouting on her chin.
She continues to write, her pace undisturbed by his presence. “We can’t leave, Kris. I’m not done.”
“You know why the gondola is romantic?” he says.
“Because it gives the guy an excuse to fall on the girl?”
“Because it goes under bridges, and for a moment, we escape the eyes of God.”
She grimaces. It’s her go-to expression when she doesn’t want to show she’s amused.
“Ti amo,” Krishna says. “It means I love you in my future language.”
“You won’t need that in Venice,” she says, freeing her legs.
“What if some Italian belle says it to me.”
“If you can get a visa, I can get one, too.”
A fly lands on her arm. He tries to catch it—for the sake of the silence, of course—but he misses. His hand accidentally falls on hers.
The visa agent flips through Krishna’s college certificates. If only earning each had been that fast and easy. His cheeks stifle a yawn. A coif that had more gel than hair defies gravity, adding an extra two inches to his overall height. Hair, the man’s heels.
Then he turns to a list of questions in a binder labeled ‘Basic Engineering Principles’.
“Tell me,” the visa agent says. “Why are LPG cylinders cylindrical in shape?”
“Because.” Reddit users say to speak in full sentences at interviews; otherwise they’ll think you don’t know English. “LPG cylinders are cylindrical in shape because.”
“Why are PVC pipes spherical?”
“All pipes are spherical.”
“What is a nozzle’s function?”
“To control the release of gas and liquid.”
“Control what aspect of the release?”
“All aspects. The nozzle’s function is to control all aspects of the release of gas and liquid. All aspects include pressure, velocity, and direction.”
“Where is fuel stored in an aircraft?”
“A fuel tank.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,” Krishna smiles. A gondola doesn’t require gas. “I hope so.”
“So, I see you have received admission from the Sapienza Università di Roma for Aerospace Engineering. Aero. Space,” the visa agent says, flipping to another section in the binder. “What is aerodynamics?”
“Technical definition?” Krishna burps in the middle of his explanation. Then, gasps for air. And with that embarrassment hovering between them, continues.
“Your degree is in mechanical engineering. Why do you want to switch?”
“I want to apply my mechanical background to—” Indo-Italian recipes. “To design more fuel-efficient aircraft.”
“What are your post-degree plans?”
Gondola. Instead he says, “Aviation design, I hope.”
“Why Italy?”
“The three best inventions: Maserati, Lamborghini, and Ferrari.”
“None of those companies have planes.”
“I know,” Krishna says. “But they make Italy cool.”
The visa agent hands Krishna back his material and ends the session with a tight smile.
If approved, Krishna can expect to hear back within ninety days.
It’s been fifty-two days.
When anxious, he messages Rohini: ‘What if I’m there and your father finds someone else for you?’
He wants her to force him to stay. Choose her. Choose India. He can reject anything for her.
She mutes her notifications when asleep.
Hours later, she replies: ‘Come back if they do that.’
‘What if I can’t?’
‘I’ll come to you. Whatever. This isn’t a real issue.’
She says that but it’s not comforting. Rohini won’t marry just anyone. She’s the granddaughter of a Rajasthani health minister, and her Rajput ancestors burnt down their palaces and melted down their gold jewelry before the British could loot them. She comes from that blood and carries a certain pride in her shoulders. For her and her parents, the son of a nurse and a soap maker from Malkajgiri won’t be enough.
Right now, she might tolerate meeting him on the terrace or the corridor of a middle-class apartment complex, where the stench of desperation, judgment, and fear of poverty wafts around them, invading their moment as they exchange quick promises and kisses. But he knows how often she dreams of dinner dates in five-star restaurants. She wants to live in Banjara Hills where all the cinema actors and actresses have bungalows and bodyguards and Benzes. She wants him to want those things, too.
Dream Enclave Apartments are the noisiest on Saturdays when the boys play vertical cricket in the small ground floor parking lot with plastic bats and balls. One keeps score. A runner is placed on each floor’s open corridor where the ball might be tossed, caught and thrown back down to the patch of dirt where everyone’s playing. The higher the ball reaches, the more runs for the team. But naturally, the ball never makes it to the fourth floor, even when a steady breeze blows it further than it would’ve gone; so, Krishna, positioned there, keeps refreshing his admission email and occasionally, yells down for the score and reminds everyone he’s still there by heckling the next batter.
The boys could’ve played in the ground behind the compound, but it’s a plastic wasteland. Other apartment complexes with access to that kind of land might’ve organized a fund and constructed a swimming pool. Or a library for students and their tutors to gather. Perhaps a gym with treadmills and elliptical trainers and employed someone like Krishna to maintain separate timings for men and women in the complex. But all that seems impossible as soon as he witnesses a maid, leaving an apartment, emptying a dustbin over the railing. The contents, mostly hair and polythene bags and rotting banana peels, float to the bottom of the building and slowly pile into trash mounds.
The astrologer who runs a business out of his living room is on his smoke break from the future and yet, he reads Krishna’s face as if it’s a simplified emoji.
Out of pity and an acute confidence, the astrologer offers to reveal Krishna’s fortune for free. Usually, he requires parental supervision and charges five hundred rupees—the crisp bank note clears his vision.
But under the beaming sun on the terrace, the astrologer reads Krishna’s palms. “When we stride forward, our hands are the parts of our body that experience the future first.”
Dusk falls around them like a heavy, bored eyelid. The astrologer promises change is on its way.
Rohini’s father collects antique rifles. No one knows how well they work anymore. On day seventy-three, she shows Krishna the hollow neck of an empty barrel. “I know how to load it,” she says. “So don’t you dare ignore my texts.”
She’s actually at the apartments to celebrate her admission to a master’s program in IIT-Goa. He’s happy for her. He is. Even if he can’t text her like he used to.
To escape the noise of the cricket game, they duck into a staircase in the far corner to talk. No one ever used it after dark. The naked bulbs are burnt out and the stairs are unevenly laid. Fireworks release a thin line of smoke. A wedding band plays a sentimental tune. A Buddhist ashram atop a hill blends into the rocks—the very ones that protect the city from monsoon flooding. On the opposite side, the skeletal dome of a metro station hangs in the air like progress; even though logic says there must be concrete pillars holding it up, high above traffic, he can’t see them from where he’s standing.
“You can apply again,” she says, “if you get rejected.”
“When,” he says.
“Next year.”
“What am I supposed to do until then?”
“Come to Goa. They have boats there, too.”
She’ll probably ditch the library, the flies, and study on the beach. On a bench, sipping coconut water. She’ll send him pictures of pink sunsets and boomerang videos of the waves creeping onto the shore, froth kissing her feet, running up her ankles. Red painted toenails.
The rejection means nothing if he dreams beyond it, and everything if he can’t.
When Rohini returns to Hyderabad for the long holidays, she still visits his apartment building but on Sunday afternoons. She knows the boys play cricket on Saturdays and Krishna has too many opportunities to avoid her among that commotion.
Her two younger sisters cover her absence by acting extra curious and helpful around their mother. Later, she bribes them with tickets to movies and smuggled menthols. As they smoke in their shared room, the youngest sister says, “If he hasn’t been down on you yet, does he really love you?” “He’s too scared of getting caught,” the middle sister says in his defense. “Where would we do it anyway,” Rohini wonders. “Too many people around.”
Her sisters are the angel and the devil on each of Rohini’s shoulders, she tells Krishna as a joke, but he only hears their judgments.
Rohini’s parents are already dropping names of engineers and doctors working in the UK, US, Australia, Singapore.
She brings oily pakoras to eat in their staircase, the same place between the fourth floor and the terrace. It’s almost the end of the year. In the spring, he can reapply for another European university. In another country. He doesn’t have to report the first rejection or the agent’s unfair note about his character on his application.
Germany: Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, and Mercedes. Rohini prefers German brands anyway.
“What do you want me to tell you?” he says, arms crossed.
“What would you tell my dad if he caught us right now?” she says.
“Hello, Sir. I’m Krishna. I don’t live abroad and probably never will. But I will inherit my mother’s flat. It’s a two-bedroom, two-bath. Will that be big enough for you and your daughter?”
“That’s not funny,” she says. She could’ve told him that’s perfect instead.
The weather isn’t right for hot spicy food, so the snacks grow dry and stale in the aluminum foil until Krishna tosses the paper down four floors into the trash pit.
“You need a new plan,” she says.
“You plan. You will be fine,” he says.
“Our plans. We will be fine,” she says.
“We will be fine,” he repeats.
Years later, lying in his childhood room beside his new bride, he’d wonder innocently where Rohini’s plans had taken her. A little creative stalking on Instagram would find her in Florida, married to a doctor who posts information about AI and cryptocurrency trends. His face certainly doesn’t have “high criminal potential” or “risk for terrorism,” instead it’s soft, hairless, and his two cheeks—which Rohini must be kissing—have deep-set dimples. He could never picture her locking lips with anyone else.
But that afternoon, with pakora on her breath, she steps closer to Krishna. She says, “Ti amo.”
He turns away. He likes rejecting her—it’s not something he’s proud of, the joy he feels at the number of missed calls and texts from her.
She follows him up the stairs, corners him like it’s a game she will always win, and kisses him hard, so hard he can feel their teeth grating together, like a punishment. Then, she makes him kneel in front of her and lifts her skirt. She’s shaved for the occasion, so she must’ve planned for something like this to happen. He can feel all the places she’d cut herself with a razor. Constellation of scabs. Clumps of hair on her thighs that survived the blade. He presses her lips there first. She won’t be rejected.
When she’s gone, he stands there—exactly where he’ll be—staring at the sparrow daring to clog the drainpipe with its nest.
Contributor Notes
Dini Parayitam is a writer based in Iowa City. She is at work on her debut novel.
