Ram Lal walked ahead and said something to the men in the car. Saugandhi reached the car, and Ram Lal moved aside and said, ‘Look, here she is. She’s a very good girl. She’s just started working.’ Then he turned to Saugandhi. ‘Saugandhi, come over here. The boss wants to see you.’
Saugandhi lifted up the edge of her sari in her hand and stepped up to the car’s door as the man shone a flashlight on her. The light dazzled Saugandhi’s sleepy eyes. But then she heard the click of a button, the light went out, and the man said, ‘Yuhkk!’ Instantly, the engine jumped to life and the car took off down the alley.
Saugandhi did not have any time to react. She still felt the glare of the flashlight in her eyes and hadn’t even been able to see the man’s face. What had just happened? What was this ‘yuhkk’ echoing in her ears?
‘I guess he didn’t like you,’ Ram Lal said. ‘All right then, I’m leaving. I’ve wasted two hours for nothing.’
Saugandhi had to fight off a desire to do something violent. Where was that car? Where was that man? So that ‘yuhkk’ meant he didn’t like me? That bas.…
She caught herself. The car was already gone, and its red tail-lights were fading into the darkness of the night’s empty market. But this red-hot ‘yuhkk’ was piercing her chest! She wanted to shout out, ‘Hey, you rich fuck, stop the car! Come back here for just a minute.’ But fuck that asshole — he was already too far away!
She stood in the deserted market. Her flowery sari, which she wore on special occasions, was rippling in the breeze and seemed to be saying, ‘Yuhkk, yuhkk.’ How she hated that sound! She wanted to tear her sari apart and fling its scraps into the wind!
She recalled how she had put on lipstick and powdered her cheeks to make herself more attractive, and now she felt so ashamed by this that she began sweating. She rationalized her feelings, ‘I didn’t dress up for that pig! It’s my habit — not just mine but everyone’s. But at two in the morning, and Ram Lal, and this market, and that car, and the flashlight!’ And as she thought all this, the streetlamps started flickering on all around her, and again she thought she could hear the rumbling of a car’s engine.
She was sweating, and the balm on her forehead was seeping into her pores. Her body felt distant, and she felt as though her forehead didn’t belong to her. A gust of wind blew across its sweaty surface, and she felt like someone had cut up a piece of satin and stuck it to her forehead. Her head was still throbbing, but the internal noise of her thoughts had drowned out the pain. Saugandhi wanted the pain to engulf her body — she wanted pain in her head, in her legs, in her stomach, and arms too, the kind of pain that made it impossible to think. Thinking this, she noticed a sensation in her heart. Was it pain? Her heart contracted and then returned to normal. What was that? Damn, that was it! That ‘yuhkk’ was messing with her heart!
Saugandhi turned towards home, then stopped to think. Ram Lal said the man thought I was ugly. But, no, Ram Lal didn’t say that. His actual words were, ‘I guess he didn’t like you.’ But maybe he … but maybe he … did dislike the way I look. But if he thought I was ugly, so what? I think a lot of men are ugly. The last new moon, that john was really bad. But did I scrunch up my nose in disgust? When he climbed on top of me, wasn’t I revolted? Didn’t I just stop myself from throwing up? But, Saugandhi, you didn’t kick and scream. You didn’t turn him away. This rich guy in the car spat in your face. ‘Yuhkk!’ What could this ‘yuhkk’ mean?
1) ‘What a joke! This girl’s so ugly even her mother can’t bear looking at her.’
2) ‘I wouldn’t let this bitch shine my shoes.’
3) ‘Ram Lal, where did you unearth this specimen?’
4) ‘Ram Lal, you went out of your way to praise this girl? Ten rupees for this? A cow’s asshole would be better.’
Saugandhi was seething from head to foot. She got angry at herself and then at Ram Lal, but she quickly exonerated them and began to think about the man. With every bone in her body, she wished to see that man once more. She wanted to redo the scene once more, just once more. It would happen like this. She would stroll up to the car, a hand would emerge with the flashlight, it would flash in her face, and she would hear that ‘yuhkk.’ But this time she would leap on him like a wild cat and furiously scratch at his face. With her long fingernails, she would tear into his cheeks. She would grab him by the hair, drag him outside, and pummel him without mercy. And when she got tired, she would cry.
She thought of adding the crying part only because three or four tears were already welling in her eyes — she felt that angry and helpless. She asked herself, ‘Why are you crying? What’s wrong with you?’ Tears continued to swim in her eyes. She blinked and her eyelashes became wet, and Saugandhi stared through her tears in the direction where the man’s car had gone.
Suddenly she heard a noise—phar, phar, phar. Where was it coming from? Saugandhi looked around but didn’t see anyone. Then she realized what it was — it was her heart that was racing and not the sound of a car! What was going on? Why would it be going along fine and then suddenly begin to pound? It was like a needle catching on a worn-out record, and the music’s natural flow, ‘The night passed while I counted stars …’ turning into a one-word echo, ‘stars, stars, stars …’
The sky was filled with stars. Saugandhi looked up and exclaimed, ‘How beautiful!’ She wanted to think of something else, but their beauty only served as a nasty reminder and she thought to herself, ‘Stars are beautiful, but you’re ugly. Did you forget already how that man insulted you?’
But Saugandhi wasn’t ugly. She remembered all the recent times she had looked in the mirror, and while there was no doubt she didn’t look the same as she had five years earlier when she was living with her parents and free from all worry, in any event she wasn’t ugly. In fact she was the type of woman that men stare at. She had all the bodily attributes that men want in a woman, and was young and had a good figure. Sometimes when bathing, she would see with pleasure how round and firm her thighs were. She was also polite, friendly, and compassionate, and so it was hard to imagine that she ever disappointed any of her customers.
She remembered the year before when she had been living in Gol Petha over the Christmas season. A young man had spent the night, and when he got up the next morning and went into the next room to take his coat off the hook, he discovered that his wallet was missing. Saugandhi’s servant had stolen it. The poor soul was very upset. He had come on vacation from Hyderabad and didn’t have enough money to get back. Saugandhi felt so sorry for him that she gave him his ten rupees back.
‘What have I ever done wrong?’ Saugandhi addressed everything around her — the darkened streetlights, the iron electricity poles, the pavement’s rectangular stones, and the street’s gravel. She looked at her surroundings and then lifted her gaze to the sky, but there was no answer.
She knew the answer herself. She wasn’t bad at all but good, and yet she wanted someone to praise her, someone to put his hand on her shoulder and say, ‘Saugandhi, who says you’re bad? That person’s the bad one!’ No, there wasn’t any special need for that. It would be enough if someone said, ‘Saugandhi, you’re really good!’
She thought about why she wanted someone to praise her, as she had never before felt such a strong need for this. Why did she turn even to inanimate objects, asking them to confirm her worth? And why did she feel in her body such an overwhelming desire to give comfort? Why did she want to take the world onto her lap? Why did she want to cling to the streetlamp, putting her hot cheeks against its cold iron?
Then for a moment she felt as though everything was looking at her with sympathy — the streetlamps and the electricity poles, the paving stones, everything! Even the star-filled sky that hung above her like a milky sheet in the growing light seemed to understand her, and Saugandhi in turn felt she could understand the stars’ twinkling. But what was this confusion inside her? Why did she feel so unsettled? She wanted to get rid of the bad feelings boiling inside her, but how could she do this?