Dangerlok

Rina Ferreira, middle-aged and single, lecturer in English literature, tentative poet, owner of two parrots and a flat in Queen’s Diamonds building. Daily she comes across some ‘dangerlok’: autorickshaw-walas who clog her lane; the neighbour who objects to the kept woman in the flat below hers; students who wonder if she has any friends; people who ask if she’s Indian. Fortified with cigarettes and junglee tea, Rina observes them all, and dashes off letters brimming with the details of her Bombay-life to an old flame who calls up to talk about his girlfriends when sober and to profess his love for her when drunk.