The humid night air in the single-room tenement was thick with the scent of cheap detergent and the terminal, white-hot pressure of a cramped life. Riya, just 18 and blooming with a D-cup frame that felt too large for the tiny space, moved through the shadows like a predatory ghost. Her plumpy, bee-stung lips were slick with a cheap gloss that caught the dim light of the streetlamp outside.

She was married to Madhav, 37, a man whose muscular, soot-stained body was a roadmap of hard labor and "kanjus" (stingy) living. Everything in their life was restricted—the food, the space, the clothes—but the unrefined hunger between them was the only thing that knew no limits.