Wednesday, April 19, 2006
TWILIGHT
The middle aged gentleman hurrying home briefcase-in-hand slows down to rummage for his handkerchief. He finds a sweat soaked ball of cloth that was gleaming white in the morning thanks to the ministrations of his wife of 18 years. Now a discoloured, shapeless mass…he uses it to mop his forehead which extends to his receding hairline. Slyly, he throws a longing glance at a flash of white cloth that had caught his eye.
The lights from shops across the street define her printed white kurta against a dark alleyway behind her. His critical eye for detail savours the image as he moves away muttering to himself in self-reproach: “I must write to the newspapers against them.”
He has been saying the same thing over and over again for many years now. The adolescent disappointment of being unable to perform in front of the prostitute is a memory that lingers bitterly on. He had been disgusted by that narrow, creaking bed, the stench, and the semi- darkness relieved by a red, low-wattage electric lamp. But most of all it was a fear of getting caught that troubled him. It was a failure that he had tried to hide from himself, unsuccessfully, for a lifetime.
They sit there every evening – unseeing, unfeeling, chewing paan. They look around with vacant eyes, or squabble raucously amongst themselves, the red betel juice occasionally squirting through missing or malformed teeth. Sitting on wickerwork chairs, careful to expose some breast, they hitch up their saris, and spread their legs apart inviting a peek into the cellulite laden dark mysteries beyond.
Ever present, their bastard children play about in the dust at their feet or beat each other with worn out slippers. Their mothers quarrel for carefully selected vantage points on the days that the drains are not overflowing and ruining their business.
A rabid dog snatches away a morsel from a shy, self-conscious painted face in the white kurta. She is young and new to the ways of the trade. A man across the street throws a couple of wary glances about himself and swiftly walks over, dodging the evening rush-hour traffic that jerks forward in fits and starts.
The fat bespectacled lady takes him into the gloomy passageway that leads to the dimly lit dingy rooms with the semen stained cots. The negotiations begin. She is a wily bargainer, having grown old pimping in the world’s oldest profession. She offers a “festival discount” to the regular, to clinch the deal.
The currency is swiftly counted, and the girl in white sent in. The customer has asked for her by name. She commands a premium price. The evening’s business is off to a start. Diwali lights twinkle in the gathering dusk all over the city. One of the bastard children sets off a volley of firecrackers.
As she moves down the one-man-wide alleyway, she cannot help being jostled by the customer who grabs her tiny frame in drunken delight! “Just another day,” she thinks at this exchange of pleasantries. “It will soon be over.”
At all of fourteen years, could she have anything to look forward to at the coming of the new day? Perhaps, an escape to starvation? Or suicide for attempting which the state would prosecute her, if she failed? Only, she would not fail.
Of the people, for the people, by the people…
