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the St Francis Convent girls' hostel. Next to it was St Mary's Boarding, an orphanage for boys which housed a school and a hostel in the same compound. Orphans yes, but the boys did not lack for mischief. No boy could be well-behaved when about fifty girls lived within peeping distance just on the other side of the wall. The boys were initiated early into an awareness of the other sex.
    This awareness had been with Chandru for some time now. Life had been such a straightforward uncomplicated affair before these stirrings made themselves felt. Chandru was now passing through the Kusini Paracheri slum. He remembered how as a small boy he had taken the name to be pejorative. He later found it was the name used by those who lived there. This slum was the only fully Tamil-speaking locality in this predominantly Telugu city where Urdu was the second important language. But what Tamil! He found their dialect almost unintelligible. All the men here claimed to be butlers serving English people, barring a few who were car drivers. The men were not gregarious. Even when a group sat together over cards, they were never noisy, perhaps because of the customary restraint they had to practise in the English people's houses where they worked. The women compensated amply though for the men's reserve, conducting their quarrels for hours together, screaming at the tops of their voices, ever hovering near a climax but always stopping just short of violence. The men would be present throughout, sitting around smoking bidis, even dozing off. When they woke, if they found the women still belting it out, they redoubled their efforts at yawning. It was a place full of dirt and slime, onion peel and chicken bones, dogs and pigs. The reek of roasting meat and the screams of coarse, ear-polluting invectives filled the air. But even in this slum, there were a few girls whom Chandru noticed. Why, he'd even managed to find out the name of one of them. Pushpa.
    He was at Keyes High School now. This short stretch was indeed full of schools. Keyes High School was the biggest and the most prestigious girls' school in Secunderabad. A variety entertainment by the girls with tickets sold to the public was an annual ritual here. Plays, one in Tamil, one in Telugu, some group and solo dances, a few jokes, a brief address by the headmistress followed by an elaborate one by the chief guest—Chandru had seen it all nearly every year since one or the other of his sisters, older or younger, was sure to be a pupil there. The last time he attended this school entertainment, however, he felt self-conscious, something he had never felt before. Nervous, shy, expectant, glad and aroused, he had been in the grip of an unsettling mix of emotions. A change had indeed come over him, making him a little like the boys in the boarding school.
    Chandru kicked the ground. For some time he had been aware of these new stirrings that were crowding out the old thoughts. This state of mind was brought on by a woman, but a woman with no individual identity. She was a mere she, female. Any girl he saw on the street merged with this she and set up a tumult in his mind. The list of his women tormentors was by now rather long, from Pyari Begum next door to Pushpa in the Pariah settlement. There was also the brigade of those whose names he didn't know, like Nasir Ali Khan's sister. Now wait. Could it be that he'd gone to cricket practice today for her sake?
    Chandru kicked the ground viciously with his unshod foot—not a wise move, especially when you had a bicycle alongside. He bruised his big toe. It began to bleed. Ah! That was some relief. The sight of blood, he found, was soothing to one's mind. This cruel streak was a recent development. The wild thrashing he had given the buffalo that evening had been part of this compulsion. It was only now, after all these hours that Chandru realised how cruel he had been to the animal. He felt it all the more due to the blows he had himself received.