Beautiful Thing

by Sonia Faleiro

  ‘Yes, on the floor. Oh, but then I lost it. So sad.’

  She was quiet for a moment.

  ‘I ate and ate and I stayed until it closed. Then I sat outside and thought through everything. So I have bad luck, I thought to myself. Bad luck is in my blood. It is true what they say—destiny is as strong as iron, it is tougher than steel; nothing can change what is written for you. Because even after I ran away from my father and mother, even when I did everything I could to make myself better, better than what they had tried so hard to make me, even then I couldn’t change what was destined for me.

  ‘I just sat there, like a fool.

  ‘Then some girls came up to me. One of them asked why I was crying. I said, “That’s my bijniss.” The other one said, “If it’s your bijniss, why are you alone, away from your family?” They asked if I was thirsty. When I said “yes” they shared a bottle of daru with me. And so I knew we were alike. We started drinking and I told them everything. Oh, how satisfying it was! They asked if I’d like to come along with them to work, to a disco called Magnus, in Khar. Do you know what a disco is?’

  I think so, I said.

  ‘No you don’t. It’s not what you think. It’s not what you know. It looks like a disco, but it’s really a brothel. Only men are allowed inside. All the girls are in half-half clothes. They dance and sit on the laps of men and put their tongues in their mouths. One of the girls said to me, “Tum bhi nacho, nahin to hamari insult ho jayegi.” If you don’t dance, we’ll feel insulted. What was it to me? I started dancing. I don’t know what happened next but when I woke up it was morning. I was on the floor of someone’s house and all my clothes had been removed from me.’

  You should have called me, I said.

  ‘Why? What had to happen would happen. Destiny, remember? And why for would I have gone home? To have Apsara call me a whore? No, I had no choice. I stayed with the girls, they became my gang. We went to Magnus every night. Then they started taking me to private parties in people’s houses. I almost went to jail! One night I was with a police inspector when we heard a commotion—“Bhago, police! Randi chal hat!” It was a raid! But my policeman was a decent man. “Quick,” he said, “jump into your clothes and get out through the bathroom window. Keep running and don’t look back. I’ll take care of this.” How I laughed as I ran fast-fast like a thief! I felt like a Hindi film heroine running away from goonda-bhai log! I thought God was smiling down on me again.

  ‘But then . . . Can girls live in peace? Huh! They turned on me, of course. It happened after a nanga naach. I had been told there would be “Navy”, that I would have to take off my clothes. After Navy, kustomers decide who gets which girl and for how much. I was never more disgusted. Not with the men. What can one expect of men? With the girls! Many of them had come with their children; some appeared only a few weeks old. They placed their children in a corner and immediately started dancing. Next thing I saw they were taking off their clothes and performing in their underwears to Main aayi hoon UP Bihar lootne. They were roaming in their chaddis! Openly! Shamelessly! Their children were staring at them with their thumbs in their mouths, their milk bottles by their side. They were probably wondering, “What is mummy doing?” Why was I upset? I don’t know. They weren’t my children after all, and if their mothers didn’t dance what would they put in their milk bottles? Blessings? But when we returned home that night I said to my friends, “No more. I don’t want to see this any more.” My gang was upset with me. They tried to . . .’

  Baby was tapping on the wall. ‘Leela?’ she called out.

  ‘Come in, Baby,’ Leela said. ‘Come in. What’s the matter?’

  Baby parted the curtain and, lowering her voice, said, ‘Sajida apa is getting a little impatient. She wants to serve dinner.’

  Tell her I’ll be out soon, I said.

  ‘Five times she has told me that she used real saffron and real cashew nuts and that if we don’t eat quickly the biryani won’t taste any good. Like real biryani.’

  ‘Real biryani!’ Leela snorted.

  ‘Sorry,’ Baby said apologetically. ‘Sajida apa worries so much about her girls. I’m scared for her health. She may get a heart attack! Cooking is a good distraction, wouldn’t you say? At least for Sajida apa. It takes her mind off the girls.’

  ‘Also fish,’ Leela quipped. ‘Food and her fish.’

  Five minutes, I said to Baby. Please?

  Baby nodded sympathetically and went back out.

  ‘They went crazy,’ Leela continued. ‘They took my refusal personally, as though by refusing to dance naked I was refusing their friendship. To my face they said “as you wish”. But that night in Magnus they got me real drunk. So drunk I couldn’t walk. I wanted to leave but they kept saying, “What’s the hurry?” Finally, when all the other girls had left, when even the manager was collecting his thailis, they took me to the bathroom. They threw me against a wall and one of them took off her belt and started beating me. I had bought that belt for her from Linking Road, two days back. It was Tommy Hilfiger. Good brand! After they beat me they cleaned me up. Then they pushed me into their car. One of them said, “Have you met my brother? He’s very chikna, very hensum. You want to be a good girl na? You don’t want to do Navy no more na? He’ll show you.” We drove for a few minutes; we were still in Khar. They made me walk up to the fifth floor. Her brother was waiting for us. Him and his five friends. They showed me. They showed me all night. Then, when it was time for them to leave, they opened the door and kicked me down the stairs. No clothes, no chappals, nothing. Here, see.’

  Leela reached into her pocket and, retrieving something, held it out for me.

  It was a tooth.

  I didn’t understand.

  She opened her mouth wide.

  I stared at her palm.

  ‘Don’t start,’ Leela warned gruffly.

  I couldn’t help the tears in my eyes. I looked up at her.

  ‘This is why I didn’t call you! Because I knew this would happen. I knew it! Let it be. I said, let it be! Call the police you’ll say now! Call them and say what? They make maximum hafta from discos like Magnus. Did I not tell you that one of my best kustomers was an inspector? He was married. He had children. But there he was night after night drinking like a boy from Saudi who had never before seen a girl’s face. Best to let it pass. Let it be, I told you, I won’t say it again. Why are you staring? Have you never seen a tooth? Are there no teeth in your mouth?!

  ‘Next thing I know you’ll run off. And two days after that I’ll see you wearing it around your neck on a gold chain! Tsk. I’m only joking baba, I’m joking. Accha, how is Priya? And Chaddi Bhai? He turned out to be an okay fellow. I thought he had got Priya into dhanda, but in the end he took her out of it. The last time we spoke, she was mast: eating, drinking, enjoying. She deserves no less. And Apsara? Have you seen my crazy witch of a mother?’

  She’s fine, I said.

  ‘Of course, she’s same-same! The day she changes the sun won’t rise!’

  Sajida apa walked in, ‘Do you girls want to gossip all night, or can we eat dinner as well?’

  ‘Gossip,’ Leela mouthed off.

  Sajida apa snorted. ‘This one is a princess,’ she said grimly. ‘I tell her to wash the dishes, she says, “But my hands will spoil!” I say, “Cook some food,” she says, “But how?” The only thing she knows to do is take a bath. Her bath lasts an hour, and I had to borrow water from the neighbours to cook the meat.’

  ‘Sorry, Sajida apa,’ said Leela, looking contrite.

  ‘Sorry doesn’t cook meat beti,’ Sajida apa pointed out. ‘Now come, let’s eat. Chit-chat won’t fill your stomach.’

  { 5 }

  ‘Move on. Stay away. Leave me alone’

  Leela and Sajida apa could not resolve their differences. Leela was not interested in working in a beauty salon and she wouldn’t help around the house. After a few days, a frustrated Sajida apa asked her to leave. Leela returned to Mira Road to the silence of an e
mpty flat. Her bed was perfectly made, her few bits of furniture covered with dust. The unexpected gift of her mother’s absence filled her with gratitude. Racing down to Paanwala Shyam’s she phoned Priya and asked her to move back in with her immediately.

  Priya left Tinkoo. I never saw him again, although on more than one occasion as I drove through Mira Road I thought I saw a boy like him. But in Bombay there were so many boys like him, I could not have been sure.

  Leela assumed Apsara had returned to Meerut. But after a few days without news, she decided to ask Paanwala Shyam. He had the ear of Dawood, after all.

  ‘Has she gone home?’ Leela asked.

  ‘Arre, what home? She’s gone to Malvani,’ Paanwala Shyam replied.

  Apsara had asked him for advice he said, about starting a bijniss, a bijniss with girls. And he had told her what she needed to know, his fondness for Leela notwithstanding, because he was a bijnissman first. Apsara had paid for the information.

  Location was paramount, Paanwala Shyam had informed her, and Malvani was already full of brothels. The police wouldn’t care as long as Apsara paid them. ‘Hire a room, then hire a dalal,’ Paanwala Shyam had said. ‘He supplies the first set of girls. Don’t get fooled, virgins are half a lakh, you can buy a little girl (not a virgin, mind you) for ten thousand and aunties toh are anda-bread—cheap and best. If you like foreign what is better than Nepal ka maal? The delivery system between the two countries is as smooth as butter.’

  ‘She had an inauspicious start,’ Paanwala Shyam confided. ‘She paid a dalal twenty-five thousand rupees for three girls. But that night itself, the randis ran off. When she opened their suitcases hoping to recover something she could sell, all she found was kachra.’

  Leela wasn’t surprised by what her mother had done; she was even a little impressed. ‘She’s never lived on her own!’ she said to me.

  She opened a brothel, I reminded her.

  Leela shrugged. ‘At her age what option does she have?’

  She was pleased that Apsara had stolen what she wanted and fled, confirming the worst she had thought of her.

  ‘As long as she stays away,’ said Leela. ‘I wish her success.’

  Still, Apsara was her blood and when she phoned from her new cellphone, inviting me to visit, it was Leela who urged me to go.

  Apsara’s brothel, a fragile tin-roof construction, squatted above a smoky tea shop that saturated the air with the smell of boiling milk and Glucose biscuits. Up the brief but rickety metal stairs was a short corridor thick with kitchen smoke. A dirty white bra and a blue-and-white mop hung from the same nail.

  At the end of this corridor was a small room in which Apsara and two of her girls were seated cross-legged on the floor, watching TV. The girls wore nightdresses and glass bangles; they sat upright and had the appearance of wanting to gobble everything before them.

  Apsara was leaning against a bolster and her feet rested comfortably on the lap of one of the girls, who was massaging them. When she saw me, her face broke into a smile. ‘My daughter,’ she said, pretending to wipe away tears. ‘You came!’

  Apsara, I said, sternly.

  ‘You look well, beti,’ she said, motioning for me to sit beside her, poking at one of her girls to make space. ‘But tell, how do I look?’

  Well, I had to admit, settling down.

  Apsara had lost weight. Instead of her regulation nightgown, she wore a crisp polyester sari, toe-rings, a Timex. She smelt, refreshingly, of the coconut oil that flattened down her hair and not of stale food or gutka. She looked healthy and not a little smug, her absolute comfort in her surroundings suggesting that she was finally in her natural habitat.

  Her new wardrobe matched her new persona. She spoke with an authority I hadn’t heard before and it was clear the girls were terrified of her. They called her ‘mummy’. She called them ‘ai ladki’. As in, ‘Ai ladki, if you’re not making me money can you at least make me tea?’ The one who had been massaging her feet, Monu, scampered off to the kitchen. Setting water to boil, she began to sing Apsara’s praises. ‘Mummy is like a goddess,’ she called out breathlessly. ‘She is so pure; she insists we only eat wedge food. Those who want to eat dirty non-wedge must sit outside, she says. And we have to do puja every morning and wash our feet and bottom parts every night. And she lets us take it between our thighs, to save us from children.’

  ‘This one is a tape recorder,’ sneered Apsara. ‘Anything I say, she repeats.’

  Monu blushed.

  ‘She was raped, was she not?’ said Apsara. ‘So what option but to come into this line? And this one,’ she pointed, ‘goes by Sonu name. She allowed her boyfriend to give her a baby, did she not? So of course he would not marry her. Marry a slut?’

  And now they have you, I said.

  ‘I have taken on the burden,’ agreed Apsara.

  Sonu stared at the floor. Her feet were bare, her nails long and varnished red.

  ‘Tell what else I said,’ Apsara demanded.

  Monu peered through the kitchen door, pleased. ‘There is only one goddess we should worship,’ she said. ‘And that is you. And on every festival we should pray to you and give you gifts of money, mithai and saris.’

  ‘Exactly! And if you don’t, I’ll pluck your eyes out.’ Apsara laughed her rasping laugh. ‘I’m joking, beti. Tell, tell more.’

  ‘That a woman who sold her daughter to the polis will not hesitate to sell us to ten polis and that a polis only has to see a hole to put it in, and do we know what it’s like to be raped non-stop, and if not, would we like to find out, if so we should try running away.’

  Apsara gave me a sideways glance. ‘Okay okay, enough. Now let mummy talk to her guest.’

  Sonu dusted herself off and, jumping up, walked into the kitchen. She leaned over the pot bubbling on the stove. Monu moved over, but kept her eyes trained on Apsara.

  I asked Apsara how business was. ‘First-class!’ she beamed. ‘God’s grace, after all. Accha, change the channel, na. Why we are watching girls dancing nanga-panga? Let’s watch a good serial.’

  I did as she requested and then sitting back said, Leela is well. She asked about you.

  ‘Volume down,’ Apsara called out. Monu scurried over and grabbing the remote control did as asked.

  ‘Beti,’ Apsara turned to me, ‘can I tell you something?’

  I nodded.

  ‘All my life I’ve lived in someone’s shadow, you know that very well. In the shadow of my father. In the shadow of my husband. In the shadows of my sons, my daughter. What does Apsara want to eat? No one asked. What would Apsara like to watch? No one cared. No one cared, because it’s not human nature to care for someone dependent on you. But then God, in his mercy, gave me another chance. And look around you, I chose to take it. I have my little bijniss, I make a little money. I’m independent. Well, as independent as an old woman can be! But tell me, how many women my age can say that? Tell me? Most of them die dependant. The clothes they wore, the food they ate, the pillow they slept on, all purchased for them! So do me this favour beti. Tell my daughter everything you saw and all I said. And tell her this: I’m happy. And if she is happy, well then praise God! Finally, we have got what we deserve. Let us forget the past and let each of us, separately, enjoy this present. Tell Leela this for me: Enjoy life, beti. And please, move on. Stay away. Leave me alone.’

  I nodded.

  She did look happy, I thought. And she deserved to, I supposed. It was not only Leela who had suffered at the hands of Manohar. Leela had suffered terribly, but so had Apsara. And that suffering could only have been compounded by the fact that, unlike Leela, she had never before had the courage to leave.

  However Apsara had purchased this new life, at whatever cost, I thought, I hoped she would enjoy it.

  Monu brought us tea and as we drank it Apsara touched upon a variety of random subjects: the latest films, the most admirable deity, her favourite chicken recipes. Also, how she was forced to hide her jewellery in a sack of rice to p
rotect it from thieves, and when she said thieves, ‘You know who I mean!’ she said, swivelling her head to glare at Sonu and Monu.

  Later, as I was preparing to leave, she thanked me graciously for visiting her and asked me to visit again.

  I knew I wouldn’t and I said so.

  ‘In that case,’ she replied. ‘God bless you, beti. God shower you with blessings.’

  Thank you, I said. And good luck to you.

  ‘Don’t forget me,’ she said.

  How could I? I replied, with honesty. You are Leela’s mother.

  Apsara nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am Leela’s mother.’

  { 6 }

  ‘Once these randis come upstairs, their chamri is mine’

  One weekend Priya spoke of a new boyfriend, an agent who hired bar dancers to perform in clubs in Dubai, and it seemed that it was only the next day when she burst into Leela’s flat with the words they had waited so long to hear: ‘Contract! Leela, contract!’

  Leela was puzzled and, as immediately, she was not. She stared at Priya and as Priya nodded they screamed in unison, ‘DUBAI!’

  It was a dream come true.

  Leela asked if I would accompany her to meet the agent, his name was Sharma. He was older than Priya, he was experienced. He had contacts and, yes, he was vouched for.

  By who? I asked.

  ‘Priya of course!’ Leela replied.

  She anticipated no problems, but wanted me to come along. I agreed and we drove together to a small coffee shop in Borivali West, near the National Park.

  Priya was waiting for us and she introduced Sharma with pride. Sharma had a head full of grey hair and a mouth full of gold teeth and he stood over six feet tall.

  He was delighted to meet Leela, whom he called ‘sister’.

  ‘The sister of my darling!’ he said, throwing open his arms.

  ‘The friend of my darling!’ he said to me, offering me his hand. He then wiped his hand on his black sherwani and pushed a couple of chairs towards us. ‘Sit, please sit,’ he said.