Girls Who Stray: Exploring Sexual Agency & Lives Of Modern Indian Youth

'Girls Who Stray' is the story of an unnamed girl of 23 who finds herself elbow-deep in an affair with a property developer and subsequently in a double murder. Caught between the warmth of a nostalgic past and the encroaching tension of a dystopian future, this novel explores the intimate lives of modern Indian youth. It also explores sexual agency while painting a picture of Delhi’s vibrant urban landscapes.

Girls Who Stray: An Excerpt

And men are everywhere, everywhere, twenty thousand men bow in the courtyard of the Jama Masjid as the azaan beams to the pink sky, a crown of pigeons takes flight, an army of pandits declaring their staunch piety to all from mandirs across the city. And men are bulging into the women’s compartment in the metro, craning their necks, standing on tiptoes to look inside. And men are on the roads – driving autos, cabs, cycle-rickshaws and Lamborghinis, whistling and hooting, smacking cards on the grass in the lull of taash-filled afternoons. 

Lying on the streets, in a drunken heap. On motorbikes, humming an old tune as I try to cross the street, a stray pinch on the thigh, a graze of my nipple, turning over his shoulder to look at me like a lovesick puppy as he drives past. Men on the covers of Forbes magazine, lining up in the corridors of power in the capital – Krishi Bhawan, Sena Bhawan, Sanchar Bhawan – controlling the reins of the city.

But scattered amongst the monuments and tombs of the lives and times of the great and powerful of this city are those of women – an empress, a wet nurse, a whore. Randi ki Masjid. I go to her to share my grief, to hear her own, to know we are akin. I go to the masjid of the nautch girl too ambitious for her time. Mubarak General Begum, thirteenth and favourite lover–wife of a British general gone native, once dancing to his hookah smile. I go here to the far north of the city, to the shrine caked with red earth, with loudspeakers blaring prayers from pious men.

But here too a woman must stay out, so I wait outside as the men kneel to pray at the feet of the whore, doomed in her rising power. A time of retreating showers. I climb the stone slabs gingerly, edging green with moss and decay, sharp rock jutting out, and watch people traipse up and down to the glory of Humayun and his entourage, turn to the warrior Isa Khan’s enclosure, saunter to the far end – the venerable barber’s resting place. But I stay here, where only a stray bat wanders, on the star-shaped platform at the centre of which lies the cenotaph of Bu Halima – naked, exposed, without a tomb to enclose her. And on my knees, I trace the outline of all that remains of this woman from a distant land whom no one remembers, to whose breasts the emperor once clung. A gust of wind, the pale grass shivers, ashen leaves lift to the sky. A sudden afternoon storm. She lifts her niqab and whispers a secret in my ear – dust is always the destiny of all.

Roshanara Bagh – in the pleasure gardens fountains spring out of the pavilion, couples steal kisses, girls blush and boys croon, birds leave bright plumage in flight, squirrels dash in and out of sight. I curb a passing memory at the throat and in my tightened chest as I wander further through the gates of this earthly paradise. Outside, marching in solidarity, the city is boiling, men and women, children and the old, all castes and races shout at India Gate, spilling across to Raisina. A young girl jumps on a combatant, claws his arms, another bites his shoulder and is finally shaken free. Ten girls chain themselves to the wheels of a car screaming for justice. A young man rises from the spray of a water cannon, pushes a soldier to the ground.

A river of flames around India Gate all night, every night. Protests erupt around the country as Nirbhaya – the One Without Fear – is martyred for the motherland. Men grow defensive and wary. Real men don’t rape resounds through gallis and mohallas, women are set ablaze. The whole city, the whole country, now conscious that it has bitten itself raw, that it is at its very core – a primordial moment of its history. Hamara Inam, Mahila Samman in tri-coloured brushstrokes at the back of an auto. I hail him down, get inside warily. There’s a morcha for Nirbhaya bitiya at Jantar Mantar tonight, aren’t you going? I’m taking my daughter and my son too, he says proudly.

We’re signing a petition and putting it up on Facebook tonight, three young girls in the metro, I’ll email the draft to you soon. A boy pushes through the crowd as the train stops at Rajiv Chowk, cuts conversations and cries above the voices – rapists should be hanged till death! Urges us all to join the vigil at Pragati Maidan on Friday night, flings pamphlets and is out of the coach as the doors ping shut. She has become the city’s daughter, India’s own. Claimed by everyone, everyone fighting for a stake of her. Details of that night on the bus – on the internet, the TV stations dissecting it all – inflame the city. Where she studied, what movie she was going to watch, which bus she was on, who her boyfriend was, the route the bus was taking.

How many times she was penetrated, by which of the six gang rapists, the iron rod that bore in from behind, a frenzied hand that thrust inside and pulled out something pulpous, something wet – her intestines that seemed to have no end. Fear. Kicked off the bus into a ditch by the side of the highway, because she was dead anyway and there was no real pleasure in raping a corpse. Not really. But wait, kicked her half-dead face again, kicked, kicked till she had no eye or mouth or nose, tore her hair out, bit her breast, for a woman running loose with a man in the circus of the night in a city like this did not deserve her womanly blessings.

All these details and more to feed the anger, the protests, demands for corrective litigation – women’s tribunals, women security personnel on the streets, a militia of women to drive our taxis and autos. The Indian media, the foreign stations, swoop down, broadcast reports across the world. On these nights Delhi becomes the eye of the storm, the cynosure of the whole world. The city runs riot with its ancient wrath, out on the streets every seething repression runs wild.

Excerpted from Girls Who Stray, written by Anisha Lalvani; published by Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd.