4th August, 07
Mumbai
I still remember that rainy afternoon in college, when the whole bloody world seemed to be soaked in rain, sopping wet and from the third floor people looked like frogs hopping to evade one puddle after the other.
It was my second year, results were out and I had passed. Free from the clutches of twelve years of rigorous and pointless schooling and forced pressure to perform, I felt like a wild deer, frolicking in the wilderness, which had to only make sure that he was faster than the slowest deer, survival was never easier. As we stood there chatting inanely, we saw ‘Ashkeen bhai’ swaggering towards us. He was broad and gaunt, tall enough to escape the stout tag. He believed in wearing tight clothes, tight like that instrument the doctor wraps around your arm to measure your blood pressure. His crotch uncomfortably jutted out of his jeans and his arms, a disproportionate blob of flab and muscle, burst out of that T-shirt. He was the kind of guy itch-guard guys would dream about. There was nothing good or bad about his face, apart from the fact that he always managed to wear a 3-day stubble, a billboard for ruggedness. Ashkeen bhai was friendly and good humoured. He was a veteran of a thousand street brawls and feared and respected for his fighting prowess. We really looked up to him, treasuring his friendship; it was more like an insurance against any future skirmishes. He was nice to talk to in spite of him being a complete dunce. His stories, a concoction of fact and hopeless imagination were entertaining, though none of us really believed in what he had to say. His favourite was about the cheap whores and sluts of Delhi, he had enough material to write a research paper in sociology titled ‘The Moods of Whores in Delhi’.
He once told us that those girls who stood in front of Miranda College for a decent stretch of time holding a particular shade of green umbrella in the rain were college-student whores. “But how are we to know when it’s not raining” I protested, Ashkeen Bhai was not amused, but said nothing. “Brilliant stuff”, he used to say in his crude lingo, followed by “smooth as butter”, drawing breath and then sucking his cheeks in. Anybody else doing it would have looked like a pervert but never Ashkeen bhai. I once spotted one such pretty thing under a similar shade of umbrella he had described but could never gather enough courage to ask her, believing Ashkeen bhai was always a risky proposition. I can go on about Ashkeen bhai but he was quite a famous character and that title of ‘bhai’ was nobly won.
We were a pack of four adolescent and distracted boys, infatuated with all that we hadn’t tried in our lives. Varun was the most studious of the lot (this most studious bit is entirely a comparative measure, and as with all comparative measures, it can be quite misleading). He was secretly afraid of the unknown and was confident of things that he had dealt with before, the rest he tried to shy away from with utter lack of grace. Manu, hyper-intelligent and a complete waste, was involved with everything but was never quite there, there was nothing that was not his domain and nothing that could really count as his own. The third, Toron Sen, a witty sarcastic arsehole was really my battering ram to knock down those dreary gates of boredom in those long hot afternoons we spent bunking classes and fooling around.
“So”, said Ashkeen bhai, his arms over his head scratching the back of his head in all his languid elegance, “let’s do something today?”, though it was a question he never asked it, he simply proclaimed it. “G B Road”, he blurted, a smile flitted across his face, as if blushing at the prospect. I liked the idea instantly, I respect whores, I believe they do a great service to Mankind. Manu liked the idea too, his eyes behind those rimless glasses lit up. Varun maintained his confused, guilty and dignified silence while Toron gave us some shit about integrity and he reminded us that he had a girlfriend back in Asansol ( which sounded like arsehole) and that he was not like us, unleashed, spineless animals. He was shit scared of a raid or something and his scare transformed into fury, it was quite plain. Varun scuttled off with Toron on some pretext and never looked back as I walked with Manu and Ashkeen bhai towards his car, reluctant yet eager.
Toron had never scowled so viciously before, or got so upset over anything, he was the coolest of the characters I knew, probably he was feverish that day, I shrugged off the thought. But it still appeared weird, as if I was shamelessly violating morality, as if visiting sluts was defying codes of propriety laid down by society, I felt like revolting even if it was only for the sake of a revolt. Well, I was visiting a whorehouse because I wanted to see what it felt like, not just the humping, but the surroundings, the people, the heritage. A profession that had existed with pre-historic societies and had refused to die down with time had to have a lot of meaning, even if that meaning was only pure carnal pleasure, it was still romantic, it had rhythm and continuity. The institution of prostitution throbbed with life even after being shunned by the society, the same society which helped it to exist. The ugly underbelly of a seemingly perfect society sounded fascinating. It was a place where hypocrisy met necessity, where the black and the white melted into hues of grey. Adjoining G B Road is Kamala Market and Chandni Chowk, one of the oldest trading hubs in Delhi and therefore the facility.
In all my infant infatuation I got a funny feeling now, I had romanticised this slut business beyond reason. Ashkeen Bhai pulled out a sweaty wallet from a tight, damp pocket of his jeans and distributed condoms dutifully. He explained that those girls there take advantage of our haste and sell condoms at an unreasonably high price. Then he advised us to only keep 100 bucks to ourselves, “its never safe there” in that elder-brother-concern look on his face. He also knew the ‘economics of whoring’; I was all the more impressed. And then began the journey. Ashkeen bhai played some loud bhangra pop on his broken system, foot-tapping numbers thundered from the speakers, stirring up the neglected interiors of the car. Vibrations rocked my already guilty conscience, confused and besotted. Majority of the audience of such music don’t follow a word of what’s being sung and those who do, don’t care. Anyway, imagine Punjabi pop being regarded for its lyrical richness, I smiled to myself, Ashkeen bhai thought that I was really excited and smiled back.
I stared at the trail of images passing by the window, half-awake I imagined what would happen if things went wrong. What if there was police raid and I was arrested, I wouldn’t be able to face my parents, more than that I would hurt them without really wanting to. It was a depressing thought, giving your parents needless trouble, especially my mother; she wouldn’t deserve any of this nonsense that I was experimenting with. Before I could arrive at a conclusion, Ashkeen bhai violently parked the car, recklessly and without care, jerking me out of my reverie; it never occurred to him that he could apply the brakes gradually and come to a smooth halt.
We walked down the miserable looking lane dumped with refuse and decaying garbage. We were going to Kotha no. 64, which all goons frequenting G.B Road would swear by. It’s got the best stock of women and is relatively elite. Half-naked urchins running by and the disorderly street continued. Women stuck their heads out of windows to call out to prospective customers, it was scary. Bright red lipstick glinted as they spoke, brash and commercial, the complete opposite of what you would want women to be, shy and horny.
Finally we arrived at our destination, the building stood grim and quiet, it felt like the calm before an impending doom and as we slowly climbed the dark dank stairs of the building, the pounding of my heart became more pronounced and painful; apprehension can at times take the life out of you and all efforts to calm your mind seem to add to the apprehension. On the third floor, Ashkeen bhai led us to a balcony trough a narrow passage, the back of my neck hurt after all the stooping I had to do to get there.
The narrow passage opened to a terrace, large, spacious and uncluttered with some potted flowering plants for decoration. The flooring was of cheap marble, smooth and domestic. On the other side of the terrace were some rooms. After climbing those claustrophobic stairs, which seemed like a secret escape route of a fort which you could gain access to only after opening the trap door, I had not expected such a spacious setting. A girl, Nepalese in all probability, sat on the surrounding walls of the terrace and nibbled at a bunch of black grapes. She had a flimsy maroon coloured see-through dupatta material cloth strategically draped around her bod. A closer inspection might have revealed more but I maintained my indifferent glance. She peeked at us through those slitty eyes and continued to suck those succulent grapes till those poor things would hang precariously from the stalk and then she would devour them. I prayed that there were some effective medicines against chronic acidity. I wondered how many such kilos of sweet and sour black grapes she had to suck and eat every day in her quest to woo customers. Talk about overhead expenses. Other girls stood in groups chatting and smoking. They wore salwaar-kameez and night-gowns and kept reapplying their lipstick between their drags as if that lipstick would magically transform their appearance.
Ashkeen bhai in the meanwhile had promptly disappeared into one of those rooms and came back with a pimp, obscenely fat and irritatingly unctuous. She told us about the friendship she had shared with Ashkeen bhai for years now and about various irrelevant incidents, maintaining that needless smile that showed her teeth that was reddened in patches with the lipstick that now seemed a trademark of their profession. Her belly folded in huge tyres like the undulating waves of a stormy sea. She was one huge lump of adipose tissue with a painted smile. Manu and I extended our hundred rupee notes to her and she kept on mumbling that it wasn’t required as she tucked it into her tight white bra and kept gleaming. Ashkeen bhai it seemed qualified as a privileged customer, and therefore got this fuck free, he had gathered enough mileage points or it was prearranged to show his effortless flair.
Ashkeen bhai then winked at dark slut, the one that was built like a tank and loudly slapped her buttocks while leading her inside, I glanced to find out where Manu was but it seemed he had drifted somewhere as well and I found myself surrounded by cheap sluts smoking, giggling and mocking at me or so it seemed. I swear I felt like kicking each one of them for their cheap show, but I knew they were one hard bunch to insult, the insult was all mine. Then the pimp came closer to me feigning affection and uttering tch tch sounds. My temple hurt with extreme agitation and fury, at my helplessness, at my experimentation. Then she came along saying that I needed somebody nice, ‘comfortable’ and delicate and then added with a wink “we have variety”. Then from that group emerged a girl, who seemed so different from the lot that it was unbelievable.
I was appalled. I saw a girl, who couldn’t have been more than 15; I could easily imagine her as a school-girl, going for tuitions wearing green slacks and a yellow striped tee with a flimsy bag slung across her shoulders, speaking to friend intently in diarrhoeal English, anxious about her first initial periods of her life. In front of me, I saw a sad picture, that of a half-bored, half-hurried kid with puckered lips, with downcast eyes not out of shame but generally avoiding eye-contact. I am the last person on earth to feel sorry for whores, but there I felt weird. She wore a worn out and a hopelessly tight salwaar-kameez clinging to her frail frame, faded in patches, or that could easily have been the printed design and kept shifting her feet in impatience. I had gone there imagining a voluptuous slut, brown and big-breasted, ravenous in her sexual appetite, ready to engulf whatever came her way. And here I had an under-age kid whom I could only pat gently on the head with affection unless I was a disgusting paedophile. It was a numbing experience, a complete antithesis of the picture that I had conjured all the way there. It was crazy. I just couldn’t do this.
The rest were worse, nothing feminine about them apart from their sex, it was maddening, infernal. I had my moments of attention, and then more guys came in and the usual crowding continued, I was relegated to a corner where I leaned against the wall, passively watching the surroundings. That smile plastered on that pimp’s face passed on from one customer to another, the hanging fat of her arms wobbling like jelly as she gesticulated. That chink under the violet cloth kept nibbling at her grapes conscious of eyes following her slow deliberate tongue movements, her nipples visible now from side angle, pinkish brown heaving as she drew her breath exaggeratedly, greenish veins leading up to the summit, but I was still not aroused, it all seemed too disgusting now.
Time slows down when you least want it to, when you want to run away from it all, it mockingly slows down, as if deriving pleasure in seeing you impatient. The Delhi dusk, dry and damp in monsoon, whiff of sand in the wind, patches of water reflecting the golden sun, the lull when you head feels heavy. After some aeons had passed, I saw Manu and Ashkeen Bhai looking around for me, to my utter relief, Manu was not laughing and sniggering, he looked pretty contemplative. We didn’t speak and walked down the road silently, two eighteen year olds with a goon. Ashkeen bhai did try to make conversation and Manu did reply but not in his trademark carefree, know-all style, he was subdued and preoccupied. Nobody asked me what I did or whom I did.
I scampered on to a passing blue-line bus swinging as it turned and waved to them, freedom, I had never felt this free before, unburdened and light. Well it’s been six years since that incident and I never have indulged in any such whoring activity since, the buried past knocks more sense into you than any well-meaning advice ever can.
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