Bombay Stories

SMELL

IT was a monsoon day just like today. Outside the window the leaves of the peepal tree were glistening in the rain, just as they were now. On this very teak bed, now pushed back a little from where it used to rest next to the window, a ghatin girl was nuzzling against Randhir’s side.

Outside the window, the leaves of the peepal tree were shimmering beneath the overcast night sky just as if they were flashy earrings, and inside the girl was trembling and holding on to Randhir. Earlier, after reading each and every section of an English newspaper (even its ads) throughout the day, Randhir had gone out onto his balcony to relax a little as evening approached. The girl, probably a worker at the neighbouring rope factory, was then standing under the tamarind tree to escape the rain. Randhir had cleared his throat to get her attention and then signalled with his hand for her to come up.

He had been very lonely for a number of days. On account of the war, almost all the Christian girls in Bombay, ones he was used to getting cheap, had been conscripted into the Women’s Auxiliary Forces. Many had opened ‘dancing’ schools in the Fort where only British soldiers were allowed. Randhir was depressed. He could no longer get these Christian girls. Even though he was more cultured and attractive than the soldiers, he wasn’t allowed into the Fort’s whorehouses, simply because he wasn’t white.

Before the war he had slept with many Christian girls, both in Nagpada and in the area around the Taj Hotel. He knew he was far more familiar with the intricacies of such relationships than the Christian boys with whom the girls pretended to be in love, only to lure one of those fools into marriage.

To be honest, Randhir had called the girl up to his room just to take revenge on Hazel for her new and arrogant indifference to him. Hazel lived in the apartment beneath his, and each morning she would put on her uniform, place her khaki hat crosswise over her military-style haircut, and go outside to strut down the pavement as though she expected everyone in front of her to fall to the ground, sacrificing their bodies to provide her with a carpet to walk across.

Randhir wondered why he was so obsessed with those Christian girls. Of course they were good at showing off all their assets, they talked about their periods without hesitating at all, they talked about their past love affairs, and they loved dance music so much that they started tapping their feet whenever they heard it. This is all true enough, and yet other women could be like that too.

When Randhir motioned for the girl to come up, he didn’t imagine that he would go to bed with her. But when she entered his room, he saw her soaked clothes. He feared that she might get pneumonia, so he said, ‘Take those off. You’ll catch cold.’

She understood, and her eyes flashed with shame. When Randhir took off his white dhoti and offered it to her, she hesitated a moment and then unwrapped her dirty kashta sari, placed it to the side and quickly flung the dhoti over her lap. Then she began trying to remove her skin-tight bra that was tied together in a knot stuck between her cleavage.

She kept trying to loosen the knot with the aid of her nails but the rain had tightened it. When she got tired of this and admitted defeat, she turned to Randhir and said in Marathi, ‘What can I do? It’s stuck.’

Randhir went to sit by her and try his luck with the knot. After vainly trying for some time, he grabbed one edge of her bra’s neckline in one hand, its other edge with his other hand, and yanked roughly. The knot broke. Her breasts sprung out, and for a moment he imagined himself as a skillful potter who had shaped her breasts from finely kneaded clay.

Her breasts were firm and fresh like a potter’s newly turned vessels. A shade darker than tan, they were completely unblemished and imbued with a strange radiance: just beneath the skin there seemed to be a layer of faint light giving off a spectral glow like a pond radiates light from beneath its turgid surface.

It was a monsoon day just like today. Outside the window, the peepal tree’s leaves were fluttering. The girl slept entwined with Randhir, and her rain-soaked clothes lay in a messy heap on the floor. The heat spreading from the girl’s dirty naked body felt the same to Randhir as what he had experienced when bathing in the grimy, hot public baths during the dead of winter.

All night the two clung to each other as though they had become one. They must not have said more than a couple of words, as what they had to communicate was accomplished by their breath, lips, and hands. All night Randhir caressed her breasts, arousing her small nipples and the nerves around her dark aureoles, and throughout the night tremors rippled up and down her body that were so strong that from time to time Randhir, too, quivered with delight.

Randhir knew all about such sensual pleasures. He had slept holding the breasts of countless girls. He had slept with girls so untrained that after cuddling up to him, they would go on to talk about all the household things you shouldn’t mention to a stranger. He had also slept with girls who did all the work so that he could just lie there. But this girl, this girl who had been trembling beneath the tamarind tree and whom he had called up to his room, was very different.

All night her body emitted a strange smell at once alluring and repellent. With every breath Randhir took in this ambivalent odour that came from everywhere — her hair, her armpits, her breasts, and her stomach. All night he told himself that he wouldn’t have felt that close to her if her naked body hadn’t smelled that way, if that smell hadn’t entered into his every fibre and invaded his every thought.

For one night this odour united Randhir and the girl. They became one, descending into an animal place where they existed only in pure pleasure, a place that despite being temporary was also eternal and that while being a sort of transcendent elation was also a quieted calm. They had become one, like a bird flying so high in the sky that it appears motionless.

This scent emanated from every pore of the girl’s body. He recognized it but he couldn’t describe it: it was like the pleasing aroma that dirt gives off after you sprinkle it with water. No, it wasn’t like that at all. It was something different. It was without any of the artificiality of perfume, but pure and real. It was as real and old as the story of men and women itself.

Randhir hated the smell of sweat. After bathing, he would normally sprinkle aromatic baby powder under his armpits and elsewhere or use some other substance to cover up the smell. So it was amazing that he kissed the girl’s hairy armpits over and over and was not at all disgusted, but rather found this surprisingly pleasurable. Her delicate armpit hairs were damp from her sweat that gave off this scent at once evocative and yet indefinable. Randhir felt like he knew this scent — it was familiar, he knew it in his bones, but he lacked the words to explain it to anyone.

It was a monsoon day just like today, exactly like today. When he looked through the window, he saw the leaves of the peepal tree trembling in the rain, rustling and fluttering in the breeze. It was dark and yet the night gave off a faint glow, as though the raindrops had stolen some of the stars’ radiance. It was a monsoon day just like today back when Randhir had had only one teak bed in his room, though now there was another one along with a dressing table consigned to a corner. It was a monsoon day just like today, the weather was just the same, with the same twinkling rain, and yet the sharp aroma of henna hung in the air.

The second bed was empty. Randhir lay on his stomach, his head turned to look out of the window at the leaves of the peepal tree quivering in the rain, and next to him a fair-skinned girl had fallen asleep after struggling unsuccessfully to cover herself with her naked limbs. Her red silk pants lay on the other bed, from which hung one knotted end of her pant’s deep red drawstring. Her other clothes were strewn over the bed as well: her flowery kameez, her bra, underpants, and veil — and everything was red, bright red. And the clothes all smelled strongly of the pungent aroma of henna.

Her black hair was flecked with glitter, and her face was covered with rouge and a sparkly make-up that dissolved together to produce a sick greyish hue. The poor girl! Her bra’s badly dyed fabric had run and stained her pale breasts red in places.

Her breasts were the colour of milk, white with a faint bluish tinge, and her armpits were badly shaven, leaving a greyish stubble. Over and over, when Randhir looked at the girl, he felt as though he had just exhumed her from some box, as though she were a book or a porcelain vessel: just as ink spots may mar the cover of a book sent from the printer’s, or as scratches appear on porcelain treated roughly, he found the very same marks on her body.

Earlier, Randhir had untied the string fastening her bra, which had left deep lines on the tender flesh of her back and beneath her breasts. Her waist also bore the mark of her tight drawstring. Her necklace’s heavy and sharp-edged jewels had left scratches across her chest that made it look as though she had torn at her skin with her nails.

It was a monsoon day just like today, the sound of the rain on the peepal tree’s tender leaves was exactly the same, and Randhir listened to it throughout the night. The weather was wonderful, and the breeze was pleasantly cool, but the overpowering aroma of henna lay thick in the air.

Randhir continued to caress the girl’s milky white breasts. His fingers felt ripples of pleasure run up and down her tender body and faint tremors coming from its deepest recesses. When Randhir pressed his chest against hers, he felt every nerve in his body vibrate in response to her passion. But something was missing: the attraction he had felt to the ghatin girl’s scent, the pull more urgent than a baby crying for his mother’s milk, that instinctive call surpassing all words.

Randhir looked through the iron bars on the window. Nearby, the leaves of the peepal tree were fluttering, and yet he was looking beyond this at the distant overcast sky where the clouds cast an eerie glow that reminded him of the light of the ghatin girl’s breasts.

A girl lay next to Randhir. Her body was as soft as dough made with milk and butter. The aromatic scent of henna rising from her sleeping body seemed to be fading little by little. Randhir could barely stand this poisonous, gut-wrenching odour: it smelled acidic, the strange type of acidity he associated with acid reflux — a sad scent, without colour, without exhilaration.

Randhir looked at the girl lying by his side. Feminine charm touched her only in places, just as drops of spoilt milk fleck water. In truth, Randhir still longed for the ghatin girl’s natural scent, so much lighter and yet so much more penetrating than the scent of henna, the scent that was so welcome, that had excited Randhir so naturally. Trying for the last time, Randhir ran his hand over the girl’s milky skin, but he felt nothing. Even though she was a respected judge’s daughter, had graduated from college, and had hundreds of her male college classmates crazy about her, Randhir’s new wife couldn’t excite him. In the dying scent of henna, he tried to find the scent of the ghatin girl’s dirty naked body that he had enjoyed when outside the window, the leaves of the peepal tree had glistened in the rain, exactly like today.