Sarita’s mother was always telling this story, but no one knew whether it was true. No one in the building felt any sympathy for her, perhaps because their lives were so difficult that they had no time to think about others. No one had any friends. Most of the men slept during the day and worked nights in the nearby factory. Everyone lived right on top of one another, and yet no one took any interest in anyone else.
Almost everyone in the building knew that Sarita’s mother was forcing her young daughter to be a prostitute, but because they weren’t in the habit of concerning themselves with others, no one ever contradicted Sarita’s mother when she would lie about how innocent her daughter was. Once when Tukaram harassed Sarita by the water spigot one early morning, Sarita’s mother started screeching at Tukaram’s wife, ‘Why can’t you keep track of that dirty rat? I pray to God he goes blind for eyeing my little girl like that. I’m telling you the truth, some day I’m going to smack him so hard he won’t know up from down. If he wants to raise hell somewhere else, that’s fine, but if he wants to live here, he’s going to have to behave like a respectable person, got it?’
Hearing this, Tukaram’s squint-eyed wife rushed out of her room tying on her sari. ‘Watch out, you old witch, if you say anything else!’ she said. ‘Your little angel flirts with even hotel boys. You think we’re all blind — you don’t think we know about that fine character who comes to your place and why your little Sarita gets dressed up and goes out? You — going on about honour — you must be kidding! Go! Get out of here!’
Tukaram’s wife was notorious for many things, but every single person in the building knew about her relationship with the kerosene seller, about how she would call him inside and close the door. Sarita’s mother made it a point to mention this. In a spiteful voice, she harped, ‘And your gigolo, the kerosene seller? You take him into your room for two hours just to sniff his kerosene?’
And yet Sarita’s mother and Tukaram’s wife wouldn’t stay angry for long. One day Sarita’s mother saw Tukaram’s wife whispering sweet nothings to some man in the darkness of night, and the very next day when Tukaram’s wife was coming back from Pydhoni, she saw Sarita seated with a ‘gentleman friend’ in a car, and so the two agreed that they were even and began talking to each other again.
‘You didn’t see Sarita anywhere, did you?’ Sarita’s mother asked Tukaram’s wife. Tukaram’s wife looked through her squinty eyes towards the alley’s corner. ‘She’s playing with her friend over by the trash heap.’ Then she whispered, ‘Just a minute ago Kishori went upstairs, did you see him?’
Sarita’s mother glanced right and left. Then she whispered, ‘I just asked him to sit down, but Sarita’s always disappearing right when she’s needed. She doesn’t ever think, she doesn’t understand anything. All she wants to do is play all day.’ Then she headed off towards the trash heap, and when she reached the concrete urinal, she went up to Sarita, who immediately stood up and a despondent expression spread over her face. Sarita’s mother angrily grabbed her by the arm and said, ‘Go home — get going! All you do is horse around, you good-for-nothing.’ Then as they were on their way home, she whispered, ‘Kishori’s been waiting. He brought a rich man with a car. So listen. Hurry and run upstairs. Put on that blue georgette sari. And look, your hair’s all messed up. Get ready quick, and I’ll fix your hair.’
Sarita was very happy to hear that a rich man with a car had come. She didn’t care about the man but she really liked car rides. When she was in a car speeding through the empty streets, the wind whipping over her face, she felt as though she had been transformed into a rampaging whirlwind.
Sarita must not have been any older than fifteen, but she acted like a thirteen-year-old. She hated spending time with women and having to talk to them. All day long she kept busy playing meaningless games with younger girls. For example, she really liked to draw chalk lines on the alley’s black asphalt, and she would play this game with so much concentration that it seemed as though the world would end if those crooked lines weren’t there. Or she would take an old gunnysack from their room and spend hours engrossed with her friends on the footpath — twisting it around, laying it on the pavement, sitting on it, and such childish things.
Sarita wasn’t beautiful or fair-skinned. Her face was always glossy because of Bombay’s humid climate, her thin lips looked like the brown skin of the chikku fruit and were always lightly quavering, and above her upper lip you could always find three or four glistening beads of sweat. And yet she was healthy. Although she lived in a dirty neighbourhood, her body was graceful and fit — in fact you could say that she embodied youth itself. She was short and a little chubby, but this chubbiness made her seem only healthier, and when she rushed about the streets, if her dirty dress should fly up, passing men would look at her young calves that gleamed like smooth teak. Her pores were like those of an orange, its skin filled with juice, which, if you applied the slightest pressure, would squirt up into your eyes. She was that fresh.
Sarita had good-looking arms as well. Even though she wore a poorly fitting blouse, the beauty of her shoulders was still visible. Her hair was long and thick and always smelled of coconut oil, and her braid snapped like a whip against her back. Sarita didn’t like the length of her hair because her braid gave her problems when she played, and she had tried all sorts of ways to hold it in place.
Sarita was blissfully free from worry. She got two meals a day, and her mother did all the work at home. Sarita carried out only two duties: every morning she would fill up buckets of water and take them inside, and in the evening she would fill up the lamps with a drop or two of oil. This had been her strict routine for years, and so each evening, without thinking, she would reach for the tea saucer in which they kept their coins and grab one before taking the lamp down to buy oil.
Once in a while, about four or five times a month, Kishori would bring customers, and the men would take Sarita off to a hotel or some dark place, and she considered this good entertainment. She never bothered much about these nights, perhaps because she thought that some guy like Kishori must go to other girls’ houses too. Perhaps she imagined that all girls had to go out with rich guys to Worli to sit on cold benches, or to the wet sand of Juhu Beach. Whatever happened to her must happen to everyone, right? One day when Kishori brought a regular john, Sarita said to her mother, ‘Mom, Shanta’s old enough now. Send her out with me, okay? This one always orders me eggs, and Shanta really likes eggs.’ Her mother replied evasively, ‘Okay, okay, I’ll send her out once her mom comes back from Pune.’ The next day Sarita saw Shanta coming back from the open toilet, and she told her the good news, ‘When your mom comes back from Pune, everything’s going to work out. You’ll start coming with me to Worli.’ Then Sarita told the story of what had happened one recent night, making it sound like a wonderful dream. Shanta was two years younger than Sarita, and after listening to Sarita’s story, she felt a ripple of excitement course through her body. She wanted to hear even more, so she grabbed Sarita’s arm and said, ‘Come on, let’s go outside.’ They went down near the open toilet where Girdhari, the shopkeeper, had put out dirty pieces of coconut to dry on gunnysacks. There they gossiped for hours.