Delhi Noir (15 page)

In the New Year my liaisons with Sarika resumed. If she knew what was happening in my family, she never asked about it. After our third meeting in January, however, she handed me a slip of paper with a lady’s first name and number. I looked at her, confused, and she said: “You want to make some money, right?”

I heard out her proposition. The aunty on the paper would pay for small but important errands. If I was reliable, there would be more jobs.

The aunty sounded pleasant when I called her from Sari-ka’s phone. She gave me an appointment for the next day. Her bungalow was on Doctor’s Lane near Gol Market.

Sarika smiled broadly. “Come by soon and tell me what happened.” Then she took out some money and said severely: “Buy a new undershirt before you go. Are you using deodorant regularly?”

I laughed. This was how she spoke to me after we’d made hard, sweaty love for an hour. I tried to kiss her, but she cringed at my eagerness and pushed me back.

I was the opposite of eager when I returned with my report from Doctor’s Lane. “Sarikaji,” I said, lips trembling, “forgive me for misunderstanding. I’m not that kind of boy.”

“Oh?” she said, lifting her brows. “What kind are you then?”

I’d come in with the intention of confronting her, but her haughty self-assurance washed away my resolve. “The aunty … she gave me the money first. It seemed like too much. When she told me what she wanted, I tried to give it back.”

“She didn’t report any problems to me.”

“I was forced to stay,” I said, shuddering at the memory. “She told me she would raise a noise if I tried to leave, have me beaten as an intruder.” I held all the money before Sarika. “Take this. I don’t want it.”

She peeled out a few notes from the bundle. “That’s my share, Mukesh. Think of this work as social service you get paid for.”

“No,” I cried.

“Then don’t come back here,” she said flatly. “I can’t tolerate undependable boys. I give you a chance and you come back wheedling and whining.”

“Don’t say that,” I said, almost hacking. My throat was dry, constricted.

“Imagine what you can do with the money,” she said, and pulled me by the arm to the bedroom. Afterwards, she looked at the bites on her breasts. “I’ve taught you well,” she said. “Luckily, Mr. Khanna doesn’t like the lights on.”

With my first earnings I bought a mobile and a diary to keep track of my appointments. If the person I called didn’t recognize the name I asked for, the rule was to pretend I had the wrong number. Sarika sent me to railway wives, lady doctors, businesswomen, young managers in offices. Now I understood why she usually began texting the moment we finished in bed. I saw the insides of flats and bungalows from Gol Market to Bengali Market, and as far south as Sundar Na-gar. Some aunties only wanted to meet in a seedy tourist lodge in Tooti Chowk after shopping at Connaught Place. Sarika’s instructions were to accommodate every request.

I serviced aunties who were beautiful and bored, homely but adventurous, unabashed about their needs, or shy and self-conscious. One fed me afterwards; another threw money in my face as though I’d offended her dignity. Both asked for me again. I remember the aunty who liked to watch her favorite serial in bed. While I pleased her she delightedly gave me a rundown of the episodes I’d missed. One roundly cursed her husband while we made love; it drove her to heights of frenzy. Most never mentioned their husbands at all. They all appreciated that I readily agreed to their commands or requests. They all enjoyed the tricks with tongue and finger that Sarika had taught me.

I’d wake up on my hard cot in Bua’s veranda, remember the day’s appointments, and think my mind was playing tricks. Then I’d feel the soreness in my lower back and thighs. A few times I caught Bua watching me with narrowed eyes. I became convinced she could smell it on me—the disrepute, I mean.

Winter was almost over when I sent a package of clothes to my sisters’ hostel. Sweaters, woolen socks, new shoes. Sarika gave me grudging advice on size and colors, calling me a simpleton. On an impulse I bought silver anklets and left them by Sarika’s bedside with my weekly payment. She said: “Money is enough. No presents.” She never wore the anklets.

For Johnny, the caretaker, I bought a chess set from a Jan-path curio store, with pieces carved from dark and light wood. He was happy to see me once again. “I am in your debt for this,” he said. To remove some of his obligation, I played our next match with great focus and beat him in a fierce king and pawn endgame. Any awkwardness from our last exchange was gone.

I wasn’t surprised when Bua commented on my new shoes. I told her Sarika Aunty had given me some tuition referrals. “I see you’ve both kept me in the dark,” she said. “Be cautious, beta, that woman is very clever.”

As the days warmed, the wad of cash in my satchel grew in size. Its heft made me both excited and uneasy. I began to dream of renting a room in Paharganj. I’d bring my sisters to live with me. It would be tight at first. Bua would pretend to be upset, but secretly she’d be relieved.

I tried to open a bank account, but they wanted to know my source of income and see my guardian’s ID card. Instead, I went to Sarika and asked her to hold on to most of my earnings.

“Don’t trust me so much,” she said, very seriously.

“I have nowhere else to keep it.”

She was amused. “I will charge interest.”

“I know,” I said, defending myself with my arms as she tried to clutch and bruise my chest. “This is that kind of bank.”

She’d tied me to the bedposts one hot afternoon when we heard footsteps followed by banging on the bedroom door. At first I thought Bibiji had escaped. Then the door crashed open, and Mr. Khanna stood before us in a brown safari suit. We had carelessly left the back door unlocked. I wrenched myself free of my restraints, chafing my wrists badly.

Panic flowered on Sarika’s face, but only for a moment. With exaggerated slowness, she reached for her bra and bathrobe, while I stumbled into my discarded jeans and T-shirt.

“If you can’t knock like a civilized person, at least have the courtesy to look away,” she said to her husband. But I could see that her hands were shaking.

Mr. Khanna’s wide, brutish face appeared paralyzed on one side. “All these years I thought the hag was half-mad,” he said hoarsely. “Then one day I asked myself: Ashok, how long since Sarika nagged you for anything? She seems
content
. What has changed?” He licked his lips as if they were parched. “You were certainly clever, Sarika. It took my man quite a while to discover your tricks.” He produced an envelope and threw it at her. Photos spilled to the floor.

“Get out,” Sarika said, eyes looking down. It took me a second to realize she meant me. I was flustered, but worried for her safety.
“Now,”
she hissed. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Sorry, Uncleji,” I mumbled stupidly as I passed Mr. Khanna. The thick, stubby fingers of his right hand were clenched as though around an invisible club.

“Beta,” he said, “ask your bua to arrange your funeral party.”

I grabbed my satchel from the dining table and fled. Bibiji, let free, was shucking peas on the floor. She rocked back and forth and chanted noisily.

Later that night, I climbed up to my bua’s flat, my heart flap-ping like a wild bird in a cage. Everyone was watching TV with blank expressions.
Nothing has happened,
I thought.
Sarika has
managed it.
Then Bua rose and asked me to follow her to the veranda. I saw the smirks on my cousins’ faces and my legs turned to leaden weights.

Mr. Khanna had been over. He claimed I’d dropped in on Sarika asking for more cash. I’d complained that my bua withheld food and money. Sarika had listened because I’d been so respectful in the past. Then, in full view of Bibiji, I’d tried to give Sarika a hug. She had smelled cheap liquor on my breath and gently pushed me away. I was a boy, and boys can get stupid ideas when they have a woman’s attention. But I had been insistent. I’d demanded a kiss. I had pulled so hard on Sarika’s arm that I had badly bruised her.

I flinched. I knew who had caused that injury. Then I saw how red Bua’s eyes were.

“You have one hour to pack your things,” she said.

“Where will I go?” I said, becoming angry. My college exams were a week away.

“I don’t know. Stay with a friend. Get a hotel with all the money you are making. Go indulge your new habits—fancy clothes and, now, drinking.”

“What Mr. Khanna told you wasn’t the truth,” I said quietly.

“Sarika has a known reputation, beta. But this is a public shaming. Whatever his reasons, Khanna will make trouble if he sees you here.”

As I was leaving, she stuffed some hundred-rupee notes into my hand. I didn’t refuse, but once outside I dropped the notes in the mail slot.

I camped outside the graveyard gates with my bags. There were any number of cheap hotels in Paharganj, but I was in the mood to see what destitution felt like. The air was dusty and full of exhaust fumes. Till midnight, traffic was brisk on Ramdwara Road, with people buying vegetables by the hiss of gas lanterns and groups of raggedy foreigners stumbling to their hovels, high on hashish. Soon, the market began closing down. A number of vendors put out their bedding right on their stands and carts. The smell of rotting vegetables hung like an unwelcome blanket in the night heat, the quiet broken by snatches of disco music blaring from hotel rooftops.

I was jostled awake during the night, I thought, by someone brushing against my luggage with evil intentions. But it was just stray dogs chasing enormous rats.

In the morning, Johnny took me to his bachelor abode. It was what I’d imagined for my sisters and me—one room in an alley not far from the lodge where I met some of my aunties. It overlooked a shared courtyard with a peepal tree. Johnny owned a kerosene stove, some aluminum pots and utensils, one wooden cot, and a trunk. There were no family photos. The solitary bright spot was a postcard taped on the wall showing blue skies over a white sand beach.

“My cousin in Mauritius,” he explained. “He says I should emigrate, but I’m too old.”

“Thank you, Johnny,” I said. “As soon as my exams are over I’ll find another place.”

“Play chess with me every night, and you can stay forever.”

That evening the power went out while I was studying, and, with a hand on my thigh, he made a very different request of me. It was put gently, but with a clear expectation. Initially I was anxious, even fearful. But unlike my last lover, Johnny was tender in his attentions before he was forceful. Later I realized I enjoyed being held in the safety of his short, burly arms.

I knew Sarika would be waiting for a message so we could settle accounts and discuss the future. If she was aware how close I was, we could find a way to meet. I was sure even she was feeling badly about turning me in.

Meanwhile, I had to resume business on my own. I phoned an aunty by the alias of Devika. This lady, whose voice I knew well, said, “Wrong number.” I wasn’t concerned; it only meant I’d called at an inconvenient time. But two days later, the number was cut off. In this way, one by one, the numbers in my diary disappeared from service, snuffed out by an invisible hand.

I went to see the aunty on Doctor’s Lane, and another bungalow I’d visited many times near Bengali Market. I rang and knocked in both places, but no one answered.

“Friend,” I told Johnny one morning during these harrowing days, “one more favor from you. Please take a message to a lady in Basant Lane. Tell her I need to settle my tuition account.” I’d told Johnny I’d fought with my bua and it was awkward going back to the railway colony. For his trouble, I put money into the pocket of his shirt hanging on a nail.

“I am a bachelor,” he protested. “What use do I have for that?” But I didn’t listen; I needed as little charity as possible. As he dressed to leave, I wrapped what was left of my earnings inside my underwear and locked them in my suitcase.

All day I paced in his room. As the sun got stronger, the walls heated up, until I felt I was being slowly cooked. In the late afternoon I must have fallen asleep. When I awoke, my half-shirt drenched in sweat, Johnny was priming the kerosene stove in the dark, the blue flame lighting up his creased face. The way he crouched on his haunches, his compact upper body folded over as he worked, made me feel a pang of affection for him, my one loyal friend.

“I met your lady friend in the railway flats,” he said. “She wouldn’t let me in. She said no one needs a tutor now.”

“What about settling what she owes me? For her nephew’s tuition?”

“She got angry. She said: ‘We’ve paid our dues. Tell the tutor to keep what he has. But there is no more work.’ Then she shut the door in my face.”

It was as though someone had shot me point-blank through the heart. In bed that night, I turned away when Johnny reached for me. He was silent for a while. Then he said, in his somber way: “I don’t know all your troubles, Mukesh. But if you’ve been treated unjustly, you must stand up for yourself.”

Over several mornings I wandered down Basant Lane with a dark umbrella over my head, looking over the boundary wall at the buildings rising in staggered rows. Days of punishing sunlight had unevenly bleached the pink distemper on the outside of the buildings; to my eyes they had a mottled, diseased appearance.

I was sure Sarika was padlocking her doors now. I noticed that adjoining flats on each floor shared the narrow servants’ balcony, with just a wall dividing it into two parts. A plan took shape in my head.

I knew Sarika headed to her gym and beauty salon on Monday mornings. I waited with my umbrella outside the colony gate to see if this ritual had changed, and, indeed, it had not. I followed her as she walked to the taxi stand on the main road. Her slender profile from the back, the sight of her pert shoulders in a T-shirt, made me melt through the center of my body.

By the following Monday my preparations were complete. I bought a length of strong rope, a crowbar, and a switchblade, and I put them inside a backpack. I got my hair cut with a quarter-inch clipper. Johnny said I looked different, tougher.