He thought back to his childhood and how a lady who lived next door would call to him, ‘Khushiya, honey, run and fill up this bucket with some water.’ He would fill up the bucket and return. Then from behind a dhoti’s makeshift curtain she would say, ‘Come and put it over here. My face is covered in soap, and I can’t see a thing.’ He would push aside the curtain and put the bucket down next to her. He would see her naked body covered in soapsuds, but he never got aroused.
‘Come on, I was only a kid then — I was so innocent!’ Khushiya thought. ‘There’s a huge difference between a boy and a man. Who worries about purdah with boys? But now I’m twenty-eight. Not even an old woman goes nude in front of a twenty-eight-year-old.’
What did Kanta think he was? Wasn’t he still a young man filled with a young man’s desires? Of course, seeing Kanta nude so unexpectedly had flustered him. But with stolen glances, hadn’t he checked her out and found her womanly assets in good condition? What surprise was there that he thought Kanta was well worth ten rupees and that the bank clerk was an idiot, the one that walked away last Dassehra when he was refused a two-rupee discount? And above all, hadn’t he felt a strange tension ripple through his muscles, a tension that made him want to stretch his limbs and yawn? Why didn’t this sexy girl from Mangalore respect his manhood but considered him just Khushiya and so let him see her naked body? He angrily spit the paan juice on the pavement, making a messy mosaic there. Then he rose and boarded a tram home.
At home he washed up and put on a new dhoti. In his building there was a hair salon, and he went in and combed his hair in front of the mirror. Then suddenly something occurred to him. He sat down in a chair and sharply told the barber he wanted a shave. It was the second time he had come in that day, and so the barber asked, ‘But Khushiya, did you forget? I shaved you just this morning.’ Khushiya ran a hand over his cheeks. ‘There’s still some stubble.’
He got a good shave and had powder applied to his face. Then he left the salon. There was a taxi stand right in front of the shop, and he drew the attention of a driver in the style of Bombay by saying, ‘Chi, chi!’ and signalling with his finger to the driver to bring the taxi around. When Khushiya was seated in the taxi, the driver turned around and asked, ‘Where to, sir?’
These three words, especially the ‘sir’, pleased Khushiya. He smiled and in a friendly manner said, ‘I’ll tell you soon enough, but first go towards the Paseera House by Lamington Road, okay?’
The driver set the metre by pushing its red lever down. He started the engine, which rumbled to life, and then turned the taxi toward Lemington Road. They travelled along the road and had nearly reached its end when Khushiya said, ‘Turn left.’
They turned left and before the driver could shift into a higher gear, Khushiya said, ‘Please stop in front of that pole there.’ The driver pulled up right next to the pole, and Khushiya got out. He went up to a paan stall and bought a paan. He talked to a man standing next to the stall, and they both returned to the taxi. When the two were seated, Khushiya instructed the driver, ‘Straight ahead!’
The route was rather long, but the driver went wherever Khushiya signalled. After passing through many crowded markets, the taxi entered a half-lit alley devoid of almost all traffic. Some people were lying on bedding in the street, and others were getting massages. The taxi passed these people and reached a bungalow-like wooden house. Khushiya said, ‘Okay, stop here.’ The taxi stopped, and Khushiya whispered to his companion, ‘Go. I’ll wait for you here.’ The man gave Khushiya a bewildered glance and then left for the wooden house opposite.
Khushiya stayed seated. He crossed one leg over the other, took a bidi from his pocket and lit it. After several drags, he tossed it onto the street. He was anxious, and his heart was beating so strongly that he thought the taxi driver hadn’t switched off the engine. He imagined the driver was running up the bill, and so he said sharply, ‘If you keep the engine running like this, how many more rupees will you earn?’
The driver turned around. ‘Sir, the engine’s off.’
When Khushiya realized his mistake, his anxiety grew further. He said nothing but bit his lips. Suddenly he put on the black, boat-like hat he had been holding. He shook the driver’s shoulder and said, ‘Look, a girl’s going to come out. As soon as she gets in, start the engine, okay? It’s nothing to worry about — it’s no monkey business.’
Two people emerged from the wooden house. Khushiya’s friend led Kanta, who was wearing a bright sari.
Khushiya moved to the side of the taxi partially in shadows. Khushiya’s friend opened the taxi’s door. Kanta sat down, and this man closed the door behind her. Immediately she cried out in astonishment, ‘Khushiya! You?’
‘Yes — me.’
‘But you got the money, right?’
In a husky voice Khushiya addressed the driver, ‘Okay, Juhu Beach.’
The engine rattled into life, making whatever Kanta was saying inaudible. The taxi lurched forward, leaving Khushiya’s friend standing startled in the middle of the street as the taxi disappeared down the half-lit alley.
And never again did anyone see Khushiya sitting on the stone platform in front of the auto supply store.
TEN RUPEES
SHE was at the corner of the alley playing with the girls, and her mother was looking for her in the chawl (a big building with many floors and many small rooms). Sarita’s mother had asked Kishori to sit down, had ordered some coffee-mixed tea from the tea boy outside, and had already searched for her daughter throughout the chawl’s three floors. But no one knew where Sarita had run off to. She had even gone over to the open toilet and had called for her, ‘Hey, Sarita! Sarita!’ But she was nowhere in the building, and it was just as her mother suspected — Sarita had gotten over her bout of dysentery (even though she hadn’t taken her medicine), and without a care in the world she was now playing with the girls at the corner of the alley near the trash heap.
Sarita’s mother was very worried. Kishori was sitting inside, and he had announced that three rich men were waiting in their car in the nearby market. But Sarita had disappeared. Sarita’s mother knew that rich men with cars don’t come around every day, and in fact, it was only thanks to Kishori that she got a good customer once or twice a month because otherwise rich men would never come to that dirty neighbourhood where the stench of rotting paan and burnt-out bidis made Kishori pucker his nose. Really, how could rich men stand such a neighbourhood? But Kishori was clever, and so he never brought men up to the chawl but would make Sarita dress up before taking her out. He told the men, ‘Sirs, things are very dicey these days. The police are always on the lookout to nab someone. They’ve already caught 200 girls. Even I am being tried in court. We all have to be very cautious.’
Sarita’s mother was very angry. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, Ram Dai was sitting there cutting bidi leaves. ‘Have you seen Sarita anywhere?’ Sarita’s mother asked her. ‘I don’t know where she’s gone off to. If I find her, I’m going to beat her to a pulp. She’s not a little girl any more, and yet she runs around all day with those good-for-nothing boys.’
Ram Dai continued cutting bidi leaves and didn’t answer because Sarita’s mother usually went around muttering like this. Every third or fourth day she had to go looking for Sarita and would repeat these very words to Ram Dai where she sat all day near the stairs with a basket in front of her as she tied red and white strings around the cigarettes.
In addition to this refrain, the women of the building were always hearing from Sarita’s mother how she was going to marry Sarita off to a respectable man so that she might learn how to read and write a little, or how the city government had opened a school nearby where she was going to send Sarita because her father very much wanted her to know how to read and write. Then she would sigh deeply and launch into a recitation of her deceased husband’s story, which all the building’s women knew by heart. If you asked Ram Dai how Sarita’s father (who had worked for the railway) reacted when his boss swore at him, then Ram Dai would immediately tell you that he got enraged and told off his boss, ‘I’m not your servant but a servant of the government. You don’t intimidate me. Look here, if you insult me again, I’m going to break your jaw.’ Then it happened. His boss went ahead and insulted Sarita’s father, and so Sarita’s father punched him in the neck so hard that this man’s hat fell to the floor and he almost collapsed. But he didn’t. His boss was a big man — he stepped forward and with his army boot kicked Sarita’s father in the stomach with such force that his spleen burst and he fell down right there near the railroad tracks and died. The government tried the man and ordered him to pay 500 rupees to Sarita’s mother, but fate was unkind: Sarita’s mother developed a love for gambling and in less than five months wasted all the money.