[FICTION][05/20/2026]Five Rupee Purification
by Ayoung Kim
She rejected the coin and pushed past him, refusing to make eye contact. No.
No? I can’t five rupee you? His younger brother, eight, sneered and made her feel lewd.
He’d tried to get her to stop the day before by saying Stop. Please Stop! It was the same junction where two boys had lured her in by waving their phones—You like? You like? She thought they were asking for help. Instead, they shoved phone-porn in her face. Twenty-four hours later she came up with the retort: Is that your family reunion?
Recognizing this junction transformed wholesome boys into wolves foaming at the mouth, she did not Stop.
He guessed where she was headed and throttled his motorbike in the opposite direction. By the time she reached her front gate, his form materialized in a dust cloud of hormones. Hi, he said, as she locked the gate behind her.
The Boy on a Motorbike spotted her the next day. He had memorized her route and knew that in the mornings she passed in front of Raja’s shop, trudged between twin garbage heaps where dogs sprawled like dogs, and petted a coconut-eating cow before continuing on to Shiva Road.
He nearly speared her with his motorbike, veered so close she leapt into the gutters of India. The gutters were indistinguishable from the not-gutters-of-India—they both contained cow shit and beggars.
Jump on, I’ll take you to the ashram, he said.
She shook her head.
Please, jump on. Me. Jump on me, he wanted to say.
She wouldn’t look at him and hid her foreign face behind the brim of her foreign hat. They were approaching Shiva Road, where Shiva would protect her. Bye, he squeezed her arm before speeding away.
He touched when he shouldn’t touch. She rubbed her arm as if to scrub his impression away. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and strolled along Shiva Road, dropping coins in front of some sadhus.
He discovered her walking that night. In the beam of his lights, her layered gauzy skirt and scarf hinted at a secret world, hidden and tantalizing.. Encouraged, he swerved with a sharp U-turn and nearly rammed into her. He touched his finger to her cheek.
Just one kiss.
The Boy on a Motorbike had her pressed up against the bushes, pressing her cheek as if to check the bounce of a freshly baked cake. Please, just one kiss.
She escaped the bush, turned the corner only to run into another one: Lover of Cake. His mouth watered. They were everywhere, these boys, they wanted Cake, they wanted a kiss, they wanted to check her bounce. They wanted a family reunion with her like the ones on their phones.
Ashram bells rippled through the village’s arteries, vibrated dirt alleys and roused napping sadhus. She sprinted toward the bells for evening puja, where she prayed for purification.
The next morning, she changed her route: she would distribute chocolates to some beggars. She found one who looked like a tree, scraggy with desiccated leaves for skin. He sat crouched with head down and hand upturned. The moment the chocolate slid into his palm, his eyes snapped open: I want to five rupee you.
The tree shuddered, unleashing coins in an avalanche, pelting the woman. They cracked her skull and split her lip. They tangled in her hair and one became emblazoned between her eyes. Nearly suffocating, she crawled out of the mound of coins. She lost her sandals, her scarf, her mind.
The woman wandered down the road unmolested. No one wanted her to Jump on. No one tried to penetrate her with a motorbike. Buses, rickshaws, and bullock carts parted around her as she walked barefoot on the scorching road.
She sat cross-legged at the base of a banyan tree. An orange-robed sadhu approached and placed a package of biscuits in her hand. She munched on a cracker and erupted, crying so hard she laughed, or did she laugh so hard she cried? An emaciated dog trotted past and she chased after it, biscuits in her outstretched hand. Five rupee coins tumbled and jangled in her wake, a baptism in motion.
AYOUNG KIM is a writer and artist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Good Life Review, The ManifestStation, Khora, and Best Travelers’ Tales, among others. She is originally from San Francisco.