Chapter 1: The Woman in Blue

At night, while driving my taxi through Delhi’s tangled lanes, I picked up a woman in a blue dress.

The humid air pressed in, thick with the leftover scent of frying pakoras from a roadside stall. The faint whine of an auto rickshaw drifted away as I pulled up near the main bazaar. She stepped in, her blue dress hugging her figure and ending just above her knees—bold for this part of Delhi, the yellow streetlights making the fabric shimmer. For a moment, it felt like even the city held its breath.

I tugged at my shirt collar, wishing I’d worn something less faded. Sweat prickled at the back of my neck, not just from the sultry Delhi night but from the way her silver payal jingled as she crossed her legs, the sound sharp in the cramped taxi. God knows, women like her don’t usually get into cabs driven by fellows like me.

She seemed to be in a foul mood.

She kept staring out of the window, arms folded, lips pressed into a thin line. When my phone pinged with a missed call from Amma, I hurriedly silenced it—didn’t want her thinking I was distracted. Every so often, she muttered something under her breath, her nails tapping impatiently against the seat, her anklet’s jingle cutting through the silence.

After telling me to drive to a small grove near the outskirts of Rajpur, she began undressing herself.

I blinked, startled, glancing in the rear-view mirror to check if this was some sort of prank. But she met my eyes with a look that brooked no nonsense. Before I could process anything, she started unbuttoning her dress. My heart pounded louder than the bhajan playing faintly on the radio.

I kept glancing at her in the rearview, expecting her to change her mind or laugh. Instead, her eyes held mine—daring, unreadable. My hands shook as she leaned forward, and for a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming or if Delhi nights really did turn mad sometimes.

It was the kind of madness you hear about in cheap pulp novels—the sort that leaves you breathless and guilty. Afterwards, she simply adjusted her hair, slipped on her dress, and slipped out into the darkness, her perfume lingering like an unanswered question. For a long time, I just sat there, listening to the city’s silence and the echo of her anklet.