Himanshu was already there.
He was Vivek’s friend from PG, looser in the mouth, quicker to laugh, the kind of man who enjoyed carrying another man’s legend. They ate first — dum aloo, roti from a packet, too much pickle. Then the bottles came out. Beer. The three from the gali looked at one another the way they had looked at the admission list. Keshav took the first sip as if it were a test. Rohan made a face and then a second sip. Kabir drank without theatre. The bitterness sat on the tongue and then warmed the chest. For a while it was only that: food, drink, first-year stories, Vivek correcting a sentence here, smiling there, Himanshu filling every silence with campus gossip.
The gossip turned, as it always did, toward Vivek.
“Campus ki ladkiyan pagal hain iske peeche,” Himanshu said, pointing with the bottle. “Third year, hostel, day scholar — farak nahi padta. Sab Bhaiya Bhaiya karti hain.”
He warmed to it. Nearby shopkeepers. Canteen wale. The man at the photocopy shop who gave Vivek pages without taking the full count. Professors who nodded when he entered, not because he asked, but because he had already given them a reason. On the faculty roads his name travelled ahead of his bike. Even men who did not like him made space.
Keshav listened. Rohan laughed too loudly. Kabir watched Vivek, who did not deny any of it and did not decorate it either. He sat as if the praise were weather.
Then Himanshu lowered his voice, though the flat had no one else in it.
“Gray shade bhi hai, chote. Sirf class topper nahi hai yeh.”
He used the English word first, as if the word itself were a door.
Gigolo.
The three of them did not understand it. The beer had made their faces open and their knowledge still small. Himanshu laughed, not unkindly, and looked at Vivek.
“Bataiye Bhaiya, ya main dikhau?”
Vivek’s eyes moved over them once. Then he nodded, barely.
The phone came out. Pictures first. Then a video, sound low. Not campus photographs. Rooms that did not look like BHU. A hotel corridor. A woman’s hand, older than a classmate’s, on a shirt they recognised. Another still — Vivek in a mirror that did not belong to any hostel. Himanshu explained without poetry. Not a boyfriend. Not a love story. A man some women in the town called when they wanted presence, discretion, a body that already knew how to enter a room and leave it without leaving a name on a gate. Married women. Women whose husbands travelled. Women who could not buy scandal and could buy him. In Banaras the word travelled in a narrower lane than the university roads, but it travelled. Best asked. Highest priced. Same man who submitted papers on time.
The flat became very still. A fan cut the heat. Somewhere outside a cycle bell passed and faded.
Keshav set his bottle down.
“Matlab… paise leke?”
Himanshu shrugged.
“Kabhi paisa. Kabhi aur cheez. Market hai, Bhaiya us market ke top pe hain.”
Rohan’s voice came out thinner than he wanted.
“Aur college ki ladkiyan?”
Vivek spoke at last, calm, as if two lives could sit in one mouth.
