Bombay Stories

KHUSHIYA

KHUSHIYA was thinking.

He bought some black tobacco paan and sat down in his favourite place near the paan seller’s stall. The raised stone platform there became his domain at eight thirty every night when the auto supply shop closed, clearing away its clutter of tyres and miscellaneous parts.

He was slowly chewing his paan and thinking. The paan mixed with his saliva to form a thick juice that oozed between his teeth and squirted throughout his mouth. He felt as though his teeth were grinding up his thoughts, which the paan juice then dissolved, and maybe this was why he was reluctant to spit.

Khushiya was swishing the paan juice around inside his mouth and thinking about what had happened to him just half an hour ago.

He had gone to the fifth alley in Khetwadi where Kanta, the new girl from Mangalore, lived in the corner. Khushiya had heard she was moving and so had gone to find out if this was true.

He knocked on Kanta’s door, and a woman’s voice called out from inside, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Khushiya!’

A few minutes later the door was pushed open from inside, and Khushiya entered. When Kanta closed the door behind him Khushiya turned to look, and yet he wasn’t prepared for what he saw. Kanta was completely naked; I mean she had a towel wrapped around her but it wasn’t hiding much — everything that she had to hide was on full display.

‘So, what brings you here, Khushiya?’ Kanta asked. ‘I was just about to wash up. Sit down, sit down. You should’ve told the tea boy to bring up some tea. After all — you know, right? — that worthless Rama ran away.’

Khushiya was dumbfounded — he had never been so unexpectedly confronted with a naked woman. He was so flustered he couldn’t figure out what to say, and he wanted to avert his eyes from the naked spectacle in front of him.

He rushed for words, ‘Go, go on and wash up.’ Then he regained his composure. ‘But why did you open the door when you were naked? You should’ve told me. I would’ve come back. But go, go wash up.’

Kanta smiled. ‘When you said it was you, I thought, what’s the big deal? It’s only my Khushiya, I’ll let him in …’

Sitting on the platform, Khushiya could still see Kanta’s smile. He could sense her naked body standing in front of him, and he felt as though it was melting right into his soul.

She had a beautiful body. It was the first time Khushiya realized that a whore, too, could be attractive. This surprised him, but he was even more amazed to see that Kanta was not at all ashamed of her nakedness. Why was that?

Kanta had already answered this. She had said, ‘When you said it was you, I thought, what’s the big deal? It’s only my Khushiya, I’ll let him in.’

What’s the big deal?

Khushiya was Kanta’s pimp. From that point of view, she was his, but that was no reason to be stark naked in front of him. That was something special. Khushiya tried to imagine what Kanta must have meant.

In his mind’s eye, he was still looking at Kanta’s naked body. It was as tight as hide stretched taut across a drumhead. He had looked her up and down, and yet she hadn’t cared at all. Still in shock, he had let his eyes rove over her sexy body, but she didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. She stood there as though bereft of any feeling, like a wanton stone statue!

Come on now — there was a man standing in front of her, a man who like all men are always undressing women, and after that imagining God knows what else! But she hadn’t minded a bit, and her expression had betrayed no shame. She should have been a little ashamed! She should have blushed a little! Granted she was a whore, but even whores don’t behave like that.

He had been a pimp for ten years and had learned all his prostitutes’ secrets. He knew that the girl living at the end of Pydhoni shared her place with a young man she pretended was her brother, and that she had a broken record player on which she played for him the song ‘Why, You Fool, Are You Always Falling in Love’ from her Untouchable Girl record. He also knew that this girl was deeply in love with Ashok Kumar, and that countless hustlers had scammed her for sex by pretending to set up meetings between her and the actor. He also knew that the Punjabi girl who lived in Dawar wore a coat and pants only because one of her boyfriends had told her that her legs looked just like those of the actress in Morocco. She had seen this film many times, and when her friend told her that Marlene Dietrich wore pants to show off her beautiful legs (for which she had a large insurance policy), then she began to wear pants too, even though she could hardly fit her butt into them. He also knew the South Indian girl from Mazagaon liked to sleep with cute college boys because she was fixated on having a beautiful child despite the fact that this was impossible because she was infertile. And he knew that the skin of the black Madrasi woman who always wore diamond earrings would never get lighter and that she was wasting her money on whitening creams.

He knew everything about his girls, but he never suspected that one day Kanta Kumari (whose real name was so difficult, he could never remember it) would be standing in front of him naked. It was his life’s greatest surprise.

Khushiya continued to think, and the paan juice had built up in his mouth so much so that he was having problems chewing the small bits of betel nut that passed between his teeth.

Drops of sweat appeared on his small forehead, like the drops of water that emerge from paneer when you gently squeeze the soft mass through cheesecloth. His masculine dignity had been affronted, and when he remembered Kanta’s naked body, he felt humiliated.

Suddenly he said to himself, ‘I’ve been disgraced! I mean a girl stands in front of you stark naked and says, “What’s the big deal? It’s just my Khushiya?” Hell, she treated me like I wasn’t the real Khushiya but the cat that’s always dozing off on her bed, right?’

Now he was sure he’d been insulted. He realized that he implicitly expected women, whores included, to take him for a man and so to dress modestly in his presence, as had been the tradition for so long. He had gone to Kanta’s room to find out when and where she was moving and beyond that hadn’t thought about what she would be doing when he got there. If he had tried, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with much more than a few possibilities:

1) She would be lying on her bed with a cloth strip tied around her forehead to combat a headache.

2) She would be picking fleas out of her cat’s fur.

3) She would be removing armpit hair by applying that foul-smelling powder he couldn’t stand.

4) She would be on her bed with cards spread out, busy playing Patience.

But that was the limit of his imagination. She didn’t live with anyone, and so he hadn’t expected to find anyone else there. He had gone there on business, and suddenly Kanta — I mean the clothes-wearing Kanta whom he always saw dressed for the day — appeared before him completely naked, or just about. Faced with this spectacle, Khushiya felt as though he had a banana peel in his hand while the banana itself had fallen to the floor. No, he felt something else: he felt as though he himself had been stripped naked.

If it had come to just this, Khushiya could have gotten over his surprise — he could have thought of some excuse or another. But the problem was the slut had smiled and said, ‘When you said it was Khushiya, I thought, what’s the big deal? It’s only my Khushiya, I’ll let him in.’ This was still eating him up. ‘The bitch was smiling!’ he kept muttering to himself. Her smile had seemed as naked as her body, but what a smile! He felt as though he had looked into her body — as though a carpenter had scraped off dissimulation and he had gazed into her being.

He thought back to his childhood and how a lady who lived next door would call to him, ‘Khushiya, honey, run and fill up this bucket with some water.’ He would fill up the bucket and return. Then from behind a dhoti’s makeshift curtain she would say, ‘Come and put it over here. My face is covered in soap, and I can’t see a thing.’ He would push aside the curtain and put the bucket down next to her. He would see her naked body covered in soapsuds, but he never got aroused.

‘Come on, I was only a kid then — I was so innocent!’ Khushiya thought. ‘There’s a huge difference between a boy and a man. Who worries about purdah with boys? But now I’m twenty-eight. Not even an old woman goes nude in front of a twenty-eight-year-old.’

What did Kanta think he was? Wasn’t he still a young man filled with a young man’s desires? Of course, seeing Kanta nude so unexpectedly had flustered him. But with stolen glances, hadn’t he checked her out and found her womanly assets in good condition? What surprise was there that he thought Kanta was well worth ten rupees and that the bank clerk was an idiot, the one that walked away last Dassehra when he was refused a two-rupee discount? And above all, hadn’t he felt a strange tension ripple through his muscles, a tension that made him want to stretch his limbs and yawn? Why didn’t this sexy girl from Mangalore respect his manhood but considered him just Khushiya and so let him see her naked body? He angrily spit the paan juice on the pavement, making a messy mosaic there. Then he rose and boarded a tram home.

At home he washed up and put on a new dhoti. In his building there was a hair salon, and he went in and combed his hair in front of the mirror. Then suddenly something occurred to him. He sat down in a chair and sharply told the barber he wanted a shave. It was the second time he had come in that day, and so the barber asked, ‘But Khushiya, did you forget? I shaved you just this morning.’ Khushiya ran a hand over his cheeks. ‘There’s still some stubble.’

He got a good shave and had powder applied to his face. Then he left the salon. There was a taxi stand right in front of the shop, and he drew the attention of a driver in the style of Bombay by saying, ‘Chi, chi!’ and signalling with his finger to the driver to bring the taxi around. When Khushiya was seated in the taxi, the driver turned around and asked, ‘Where to, sir?’

These three words, especially the ‘sir’, pleased Khushiya. He smiled and in a friendly manner said, ‘I’ll tell you soon enough, but first go towards the Paseera House by Lamington Road, okay?’

The driver set the metre by pushing its red lever down. He started the engine, which rumbled to life, and then turned the taxi toward Lemington Road. They travelled along the road and had nearly reached its end when Khushiya said, ‘Turn left.’

They turned left and before the driver could shift into a higher gear, Khushiya said, ‘Please stop in front of that pole there.’ The driver pulled up right next to the pole, and Khushiya got out. He went up to a paan stall and bought a paan. He talked to a man standing next to the stall, and they both returned to the taxi. When the two were seated, Khushiya instructed the driver, ‘Straight ahead!’

The route was rather long, but the driver went wherever Khushiya signalled. After passing through many crowded markets, the taxi entered a half-lit alley devoid of almost all traffic. Some people were lying on bedding in the street, and others were getting massages. The taxi passed these people and reached a bungalow-like wooden house. Khushiya said, ‘Okay, stop here.’ The taxi stopped, and Khushiya whispered to his companion, ‘Go. I’ll wait for you here.’ The man gave Khushiya a bewildered glance and then left for the wooden house opposite.

Khushiya stayed seated. He crossed one leg over the other, took a bidi from his pocket and lit it. After several drags, he tossed it onto the street. He was anxious, and his heart was beating so strongly that he thought the taxi driver hadn’t switched off the engine. He imagined the driver was running up the bill, and so he said sharply, ‘If you keep the engine running like this, how many more rupees will you earn?’

The driver turned around. ‘Sir, the engine’s off.’

When Khushiya realized his mistake, his anxiety grew further. He said nothing but bit his lips. Suddenly he put on the black, boat-like hat he had been holding. He shook the driver’s shoulder and said, ‘Look, a girl’s going to come out. As soon as she gets in, start the engine, okay? It’s nothing to worry about — it’s no monkey business.’

Two people emerged from the wooden house. Khushiya’s friend led Kanta, who was wearing a bright sari.

Khushiya moved to the side of the taxi partially in shadows. Khushiya’s friend opened the taxi’s door. Kanta sat down, and this man closed the door behind her. Immediately she cried out in astonishment, ‘Khushiya! You?’

‘Yes — me.’

‘But you got the money, right?’

In a husky voice Khushiya addressed the driver, ‘Okay, Juhu Beach.’

The engine rattled into life, making whatever Kanta was saying inaudible. The taxi lurched forward, leaving Khushiya’s friend standing startled in the middle of the street as the taxi disappeared down the half-lit alley.

And never again did anyone see Khushiya sitting on the stone platform in front of the auto supply store.