‘Yes, good job,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like that photo, either.’
Saugandhi slowly approached him. ‘You didn’t like that photo?’ she repeated. ‘Why would you — is there anything likeable about you? You and your circus nose, you and your hairy forehead, you and your donkey nostrils, you and your twisted ears, you and your bad breath, you and your dirty body? You didn’t like your photo? Yuhkk! It hid all of your blemishes. You know, these days you’re supposed to be proud of your flaws!’
Madho shrank back further. When he reached the wall, he yelled, ‘Look, Saugandhi, it seems like you’ve started working again. Now for the last time I’m going to say …’
Saugandhi interrupted him. ‘If you start to work again,’ she imitated him, ‘well, then our relationship is over. If you let any guy sleep here, I’ll grab you by your hair and throw you out. I’m going to send you a money order for this month’s expenses as soon as I get to Pune. What’s this room’s rent?’
Madho was aghast.
‘I’ll tell you,’ she answered herself. ‘Fifteen rupees. Fifteen, and I charge ten. And, as you know, two and a half go to the pimp. The remaining seven and a half — seven and a half, right? — are mine. And for those seven and a half rupees, I promised to give you things I couldn’t, and you came for things you couldn’t take. What was our relationship? Nothing — just these ten rupees. We pretended, saying things like, “I need you and you need me.” At first it was ten rupees, and today it’s fifty, and you’re eyeing it and I’m eyeing it. And what have you done to your hair?’
With one finger, Saugandhi flicked off Madho’s hat. He didn’t like this at all.
‘Saugandhi!’
Saugandhi took out a handkerchief from Madho’s pocket, smelled it, and threw it on the floor. ‘This is a rag, a rag! Aghh, it smells awful! Pick it up and throw it outside.’
‘Saugandhi!’
‘No — fuck off with your “Saugandhi this and Saugandhi that”! Does your mother live here that she’s going to give you fifty rupees? Or are you some young, handsome stud I’ve fallen in love with? You son of a bitch! Are you trying to impress me? Am I at your beck and call? You fucking bum, who do you think you are? I’m asking you, “Who the hell are you? A fucking burglar? Why exactly have you come here in the middle of the night? Should I call the police? Who cares if there’s really a police report against you in Pune — maybe I’ll file one against you here.” ’
Madho was terrified. ‘Saugandhi, what’s happened to you?’
‘Go fuck your mother! Who are you to ask me that? Get out of here — or else!’
When Saugandhi’s mangy dog heard her yelling, he rose agitatedly from beneath the bed, turned in Madho’s direction, and began to bark. Saugandhi laughed loudly. Madho was scared. He bent down to pick up his hat, but Saugandhi yelled, ‘Hey, don’t touch that! You — get out of here. As soon as you get back, I’ll parcel-post you your fucking hat.’
Then she laughed even louder. She sat down on the cane chair, and her dog chased Madho out of the room and barked him down the stairs.
When he came back, he was wagging his powerful tail. He sat next to Saugandhi’s feet and shook his head, flapping his ears against his cheeks. Saugandhi suddenly felt the frightening stillness that surrounded her, something she had never before felt. It seemed as though a train full of passengers had emptied station by station and now stood desolate beneath the last tin awning. It was a painful hollowness. Saugandhi tried to dispel this feeling, but she couldn’t. All at once a rush of thoughts passed through her mind, but it was as though her mind were a strainer and all her thoughts caught inside it.
For quite a while she stayed in the cane chair, but even after thinking things over, she couldn’t find any way to soothe herself, so she picked up her mangy dog, put him on one side of her wide teak bed, lay down next to him and immediately fell asleep.
SMELL
IT was a monsoon day just like today. Outside the window the leaves of the peepal tree were glistening in the rain, just as they were now. On this very teak bed, now pushed back a little from where it used to rest next to the window, a ghatin girl was nuzzling against Randhir’s side.
Outside the window, the leaves of the peepal tree were shimmering beneath the overcast night sky just as if they were flashy earrings, and inside the girl was trembling and holding on to Randhir. Earlier, after reading each and every section of an English newspaper (even its ads) throughout the day, Randhir had gone out onto his balcony to relax a little as evening approached. The girl, probably a worker at the neighbouring rope factory, was then standing under the tamarind tree to escape the rain. Randhir had cleared his throat to get her attention and then signalled with his hand for her to come up.
He had been very lonely for a number of days. On account of the war, almost all the Christian girls in Bombay, ones he was used to getting cheap, had been conscripted into the Women’s Auxiliary Forces. Many had opened ‘dancing’ schools in the Fort where only British soldiers were allowed. Randhir was depressed. He could no longer get these Christian girls. Even though he was more cultured and attractive than the soldiers, he wasn’t allowed into the Fort’s whorehouses, simply because he wasn’t white.
Before the war he had slept with many Christian girls, both in Nagpada and in the area around the Taj Hotel. He knew he was far more familiar with the intricacies of such relationships than the Christian boys with whom the girls pretended to be in love, only to lure one of those fools into marriage.
To be honest, Randhir had called the girl up to his room just to take revenge on Hazel for her new and arrogant indifference to him. Hazel lived in the apartment beneath his, and each morning she would put on her uniform, place her khaki hat crosswise over her military-style haircut, and go outside to strut down the pavement as though she expected everyone in front of her to fall to the ground, sacrificing their bodies to provide her with a carpet to walk across.
Randhir wondered why he was so obsessed with those Christian girls. Of course they were good at showing off all their assets, they talked about their periods without hesitating at all, they talked about their past love affairs, and they loved dance music so much that they started tapping their feet whenever they heard it. This is all true enough, and yet other women could be like that too.
When Randhir motioned for the girl to come up, he didn’t imagine that he would go to bed with her. But when she entered his room, he saw her soaked clothes. He feared that she might get pneumonia, so he said, ‘Take those off. You’ll catch cold.’
She understood, and her eyes flashed with shame. When Randhir took off his white dhoti and offered it to her, she hesitated a moment and then unwrapped her dirty kashta sari, placed it to the side and quickly flung the dhoti over her lap. Then she began trying to remove her skin-tight bra that was tied together in a knot stuck between her cleavage.
She kept trying to loosen the knot with the aid of her nails but the rain had tightened it. When she got tired of this and admitted defeat, she turned to Randhir and said in Marathi, ‘What can I do? It’s stuck.’
Randhir went to sit by her and try his luck with the knot. After vainly trying for some time, he grabbed one edge of her bra’s neckline in one hand, its other edge with his other hand, and yanked roughly. The knot broke. Her breasts sprung out, and for a moment he imagined himself as a skillful potter who had shaped her breasts from finely kneaded clay.
Her breasts were firm and fresh like a potter’s newly turned vessels. A shade darker than tan, they were completely unblemished and imbued with a strange radiance: just beneath the skin there seemed to be a layer of faint light giving off a spectral glow like a pond radiates light from beneath its turgid surface.