The afternoon sun blazed over the narrow lanes of the village, turning the mud walls golden. Reema, barely twenty, stepped out of her modest hut carrying an empty brass pot. Her thin cotton salwar clung to her curves, the dupatta slipping off one shoulder. Across the lane, two young men watched her every move.

Shivraj and Shekhar, the neighbor's sons, had returned from the city last week. Both in their mid-twenties, broad-shouldered from farm work, they had grown up teasing Reema. Today their eyes held something hotter.