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entertainment and no one else would know. He had felt the same way after Rashmi’s death, when—to escape the smirks of seepage on the walls of his parent’s house—he had taken to strolling through crowded marketplaces for the comfort of anonymity, ducking through a maze of bodies. But soon he realized that his face drew people’s attention. There was something about the pleasant calculus of muscle and gravity and tension accumulated beneath the surface of his skin that attracted both sexes and he began to enjoy their looks, their looks not of envy but a sort of buried awe, an unconscious empathy. He began to long for that empathy. He began to alter his expressions to arouse that empathy. He began to perform for himself . Rakesh and the girl circled the flames and were married.

DEMOCRACY ROCKS
     
    I N SCHOOL, Arjun was mercifully distracted from thinking about his parents’ sex life. He was a rock star; that was his revelation; he shared it with his friend Ravi. The words themselves were somewhat humbler: “Dude yaar, let’s start a band. I’m getting a total feeling yaar. Want to blow some amps, man.”
    Ravi said, “Did I tell you what happened to me yesterday?”
    This was a typical Ravi response. He was a stooping, sardonic-looking boy with wide shoulders. He was shaped like a coffin. He scratched his atrocious wild stubble when he talked and he liked to talk: something crazy was always happening to Ravi.
    Arjun listened as Ravi narrated an unlikely story involving his father’s new Hyundai Santro, a monkey, and a dog.
    “Then?” asked Arjun.
    “Then I ran over the dog and honked at the monkey.”
    Another Ravi theme: emerging victorious.
    “Cool. Want to be in a band?”
    “Okay,” he said.
    “Good. I’m—”
    “Let’s clear up some fine points first. Are we going to be an alt-rock, alt-country, indie, electro, electroclash, raprock, hard rock, or metal band?”
    Ravi was obsessed with details and planning. He had found a way to turn this to his advantage. For example, he started studying for exams months before they were scheduled, thus ensuring that he was relaxed and could even get in a few games of tennis the week before the exams began; Arjun hated that. He also came first in school, always had; Arjun hated that too. On top of this he was an excellent drummer. He practiced and practiced and practiced till he sounded spontaneous.
    “We’ll play rock, man. Fucking rock,” said Arjun.
    “Yaar. This fucking rock only exists in your fucking mind.”
    “Hard rock yaar. Hard fucking rock.”
    Even this was not enough for Ravi. “Okay. Seventies’ hard rock, like Rolling Stones, or eighties’ rock like Springsteen, or nineties’ rock like Oasis—”
    “Rock like your mother.”
    “That makes no sense,” Ravi said. “Explain that to me.”
    “Oye shut up—”
    Ravi laughed. “Okay. Let’s do this band thing. I’ll put this on my U.S. college applications. Harvard will eat it up. You know Natalie Portman checks all the applications.”
     
     
    Together they approached Anurag and Deepak in the break period.
    They were far less responsive. “A band? Who’s going to study for the exams? Your dad? We don’t all have connections to get us passed,” said Deepak with a broad grin.
    “Oye—listen at least yaar,” said Arjun. “I’m not just starting a band for bloody time-pass. My dad said, if we want, we can perform at the Indraprastha Flyover inauguration. Next month it’s happening. I thought I’d ask you first. If you say no, no problem. I only asked you because you have no other friends except me. I thought, yaar, if you guys aren’t in a band, how will you pick up babes?”
    “Interesting,” drawled Deepak. “So now you’re pursuing charitable work, is it? And uncle just happened to say, okay son, I want you in a band? He’s finally realized you’re a duffer in all other departments?”
    Anurag said, “Duffer in all other departments!”
    Anurag was Deepak’s