Single, mingle, what?

Life in small town India is not much different from life in a big town like Delhi. And I am not talking public transport system, drainage system or any of the other systems, ya? I am talking about things that actually make up 'life'.

Like the many familiar strangers you recognise daily on your way from home to work, perhaps even smile at... but who you would never speak to in a lifetime. Like that man on the bike at the red light every morning. You could only see his eyes from under his black Thunderbird helmet, with his denim jeans stretched tautly across his footballer-legs and those perfectly shaped calves that always seemed to ask me just run my hands over them. Each day at the Sadar Bazar redlight for two years of college, he would stop his bike waiting for the light to turn green, adjusting his sideview mirrors to look at me sitting on the rickshaw, waiting for the green as well. He preferred wearing denim shirts too, a particularly faded blue, almost the blue of the Marlboro man. I don't think he smoked for most small-town studs on bikes always lit a cigarette if they saw a pretty girl checking them out. I am very pretty.

One day I wore a skirt and as his bike came and stopped next to my rickshaw, I hitched the skirt slightly, letting it ride up my knee a little. I was wearing my cute Calven Klain (a local brand) string bikinis under the skirt. He of course did not know that; but I was secretly pleased that I was all sexy as he looked at me. As more of my knee was visible, he looked at me directly and not through the mirror; it was a first and I could make out from his crinkling eyes that he was smiling. As the light turned green and he kick-started the bike, he put his helmet visor up, brought the bike closer to the rickshaw and to my utter and pleasant shock, ran a leather-gloved finger from my left ankle, up my left calf and stopped in a caress under my knee. I had not moved, couldn't, I was creaming... Then he grinned somemore – his eyes crinkled more – and he said, ''Maybe we should meet up somewhere private sometime?''

With that he drove past, jumping the still-red light. I had not moved. I had noticed his forearms were nicely hairy and wondered if his chest was hairy too. I would soon find out, perhaps...