Issue — November A robot is giving Jasbir the whitest teeth in Delhi. It is a precise, terrifying procedure involving chromed steel and spinning, shrieking abrasion heads. He read about the Glinting Life! In double-page spread it looked nothing like these insect-mandibles twitching inside his mouth. But he closes his eyes as the robot reaches in and spinning steel hits enamel.
Now the whitest teeth in Delhi dart through the milling traffic in a rattling phatphat. He feels as if he is beaming out over an entire city. The whitest teeth, the blackest hair, the most flawless skin, and perfectly plucked eyebrows. Jasbir notices the driver glancing at his blinding smile. He knows; the people on Mathura Road know, all Delhi knows that every night is great game night.
They pour over the edge of the platform to their holes and hides in a wave of brown fur as the robot train slides in to the stop. Jasbir always stands next to the Women Only section. There is always a chance one of them might be scared of the monkeys—they bite—and he could then perform an act of Spontaneous Gallantry. The women studiously avoid any glance, any word, any sign of interest but a true Eligible Boy never passes up a chance for contact. But that woman in the business suit, the one with the fashionable wasp-waist jacket and the low-cut hip-riding pants, was she momentarily dazzled by the glint of his white white teeth?
But Jasbir Dayal knows he is a white-toothed Love God and this, this will be the shaadi night he finally finds the wife of his dreams. Its seed germinated in the last century, before India became Tiger of Tiger economies, before political jealousies and rivalries split her into twelve competing states.
A lovely boy, was how it began. A fine, strong, handsome, educated, successful son, to marry and raise children and to look after us when we are old. Divide by the ability to determine sex in the womb. Add selective abortion. Run twenty-five years down the x-axis, factoring in refined, twenty-first century techniques such as cheap, powerful pharma patches that ensure lovely boys will be conceived and you arrive at great Awadh, its ancient capital Delhi of twenty million and a middle class with four times as many males as females.
