My Name Is Radha

Khushia

Khushia was thinking.

After buying a paan with a pinch of heady black tobacco in it, he was sitting on the stoop of the shop adjacent to the paan-wallah’s stall. During the daytime the stoop was piled high with tyres and a myriad of auto parts, but at about eight-thirty in the evening the auto supply shop closed for the day leaving the stone platform for Khushia’s exclusive use.

He was chewing on his paan, slowly, deliberately, and thinking. Thick jets of sticky, tobacco-mixed glob was swishing everywhere in his mouth. He felt as though his teeth were grinding his thoughts and blending them with his saliva. Maybe that was why he didn’t wish to spit out the glob of chewed-up paan.

Khushia kept rolling the spittle around in his mouth as he pondered what had happened to him half an hour ago.

Just before coming over to sit on the stoop, as was his wont, he had gone to Fifth Lane in Khetwadi. Kanta, a new girl from Mangalore, lived at the corner of this lane. Someone had informed him that she was planning to change her accommodation; he had gone to find out about it first-hand.

He knocked at the door of her kholi. A voice responded, ‘Who is it?’

‘Khushia,’ he replied.

Since the voice had come from somewhere deep inside the house, it was a while before the door opened. Khushia entered. After Kanta closed the door, Khushia turned around. What he saw shocked him. Kanta was standing before him in the nude. Yes, in the nude, for the small towel she had thrown around her body could hardly be called a covering. Whatever needed to be covered was in plain view before his astonished eyes.

‘Well, Khushia, what brings you here? I was about to bathe. Anyway, do sit down. You should have asked the bahar-wallah to send over some tea. I believe you know that accursed Rama has run away.’

Khushia had never seen a woman naked so unexpectedly, and lost his bearings; he didn’t quite know what to say. His eyes, confronted with such nakedness so abruptly, wanted to hide themselves somewhere.

‘Go,’ he said nervously, ‘go take your bath.’ Then, finding that he was no longer so tongue-tied, he continued, ‘Why did you have to answer the door if you were naked? You could have let me know you were bathing. I would have come back another time. Anyway, go, take your bath.’

Kanta smiled. ‘When you said it was Khushia, I thought, “What’s the harm. It’s just our Khushia. Let him come in.”’

Now, hours later, her smile was still embedded in his mind, creating havoc, and her naked body, standing right in front of his eyes, seemed to be melting into his own as if moulded from wax. It was stunningly beautiful. For the first time ever, it had dawned on him that women who sold their bodies could have such shapely figures. The realization surprised him, and even more surprising was the fact that she had stood before him stark naked without feeling a shred of shame or modesty. Why?

Kanta had already provided the answer when she said, ‘When you said it was Khushia, I thought, “What’s the harm. It’s just our Khushia. Let him come in.”’

Kanta and Khushia were part of the same profession. He was her pimp, so, in a manner of speaking, he was like one of her own. But this was no reason for her to have appeared in front of him naked. There had to be another reason behind it. Khushia tried to dig up some other meaning in her words.

The meaning was so obvious and yet so obscure that he failed to conclude anything definite.

Even now the vision of her completely naked body was etched on his mind — a body as firm and taut as the skin on a drum. And she entirely indifferent to his faltering gaze. Even in that confused state, his probing eyes had gone over her rich brown figure several times, but not a single atom of that body had displayed the slightest tremor. She had stood as immobile and unfeeling as a bronze figurine.

‘Damn it, a man was standing in front of her — a man whose eyes could see a woman’s body even through clothes, whose thoughts might take him God knows where. But she didn’t bat an eyelid! Instead her eyes seemed as fresh as newly washed fabric. She should have blushed — just a little. Her eyes should have wavered — at least a bit. Granted, she was a prostitute, but prostitutes don’t just drop their clothes like that!’

Khushia had been soliciting clients for girls for ten years, long enough to know all their quirks, hidden and otherwise. He knew, for instance, that the girl who lived at the end of Pydhonie with a man she called brother and who was fond of playing the song ‘Kahe karta moorakh pyar, pyar, pyar’ from the film Achhut Kanya on her malfunctioning gramophone was, in fact, madly in love with the movie star Ashok Kumar. Some clever boys had wheedled what they wanted out of her by promising to introduce her to the superstar. He also knew why the Punjabi woman who lived in Dadar wore pants and a coat. One of her lovers had once told her, ‘Your legs are just like the legs of the English actress who was in the movie Morocco, also known as Khun-e Tamanna.’ She watched the film many times. When her lover told her that Marlene Dietrich wore slacks because she had beautiful legs which she had insured for two lakh rupees, this Punjabi woman immediately started wearing hip-hugging slacks. And that girl from the south who lived in Mazgaon — the only reason she seduced handsome college boys was that she wanted to have a pretty baby, even though she knew full well she’d never be able to because she was barren. Or that swarthy Madrasi woman who always wore diamond earrings — Khushia knew she was just wasting her money on bleaching agents, her skin would never become white.

He knew the ins and outs of all the girls on his circuit, but he didn’t know that one day Kanta Kumari, whose real name was impossible to remember, would stand in front of him completely naked and throw him into the greatest turmoil of his life.

So much spittle had now collected in his mouth that he was finding it increasingly difficult to chew on the tiny pieces of betel nut which kept escaping through the crevices of his teeth.

Tiny beads of perspiration had sprouted up on his narrow forehead, like fresh curds that had been gently squeezed through a piece of cheesecloth. His manly pride had been hurt. Every time he recalled the image of Kanta’s naked body in his mind, he felt he’d been disgraced.

‘If this isn’t disgrace, what is it?’ he asked himself. ‘A girl standing in front of you naked tells you to your face: “Well, what’s the harm. It’s just our Khushia.” As if I’m not Khushia, but that idiotic tomcat who sits around on her bed dozing all the time. Yes, what else?’

By now he was pretty convinced that he’d been insulted. He was a man and unconsciously expected that every woman, whether respectable or not, would consider him just that — a man — and, therefore, guard her modesty around him. He had only come to her place to find out when she was going to change her lodgings and where her new place would be. It was strictly a business call. The most he might have imagined was that when he knocked at her door she would be lying on her bed with her hair in curlers, or removing lice from her tomcat, or depilating unwanted hair from her underarms with the powder that gave off such a horrible odour that it stung his nostrils, or playing patience with the cards spread out on her bed. That’s about it. She didn’t keep anyone with her in the house, so anything along that line was out of the question.

But Khushia hadn’t thought about any of these things; he had merely visited her to get some information when Kanta, whom he had always seen clothed, suddenly came and stood in front of him completely naked. Yes, it should be called completely naked. That itty-bitty towel couldn’t possibly have covered everything. He had the strange feeling that the inside of a banana had suddenly dropped down in front of him leaving the peel in his hands. No, he’d actually felt something else; it was as if he himself had been stripped naked. Well, if the matter hadn’t gone beyond this point, it would have ended right there. He could have found some way to allay his perplexity. But what was eating away at him was that she had smiled and said, ‘When you said it was Khushia, I thought “What’s the harm. It’s just our Khushia. Let him come in.”’

He kept mumbling over and over, ‘She was smiling, the saali!’ To him her smile seemed as naked as her body. In fact, both looked contrived.

Khushia’s thoughts repeatedly went back to his childhood when a neighbour often asked him, ‘Khushia, my son, run along and fetch me a bucket of water.’ After he filled the bucket and brought it back, she would tell him from behind the threadbare screen of her dhoti, ‘Bring it here and put it next to me. I have soap on my face; I can’t see.’ When he lifted the dhoti to place the bucket near her, he would see a naked woman covered in soapsuds, but that sight had never stirred up such excitement.

‘Well, I was just a little boy then. There’s got to be a big difference between a simple, innocent little boy and a grown man! Who hides their body from a mere boy? Now I’m almost twenty-eight years old; not even an old hag would stand naked in front of a twenty-eight-year-old man.’

What the hell had Kanta taken him for? Did he lack any of the things a strapping youth could lay claim to? It’s true that the unexpected sight of Kanta’s naked body had thrown him off balance. But had he not surreptitiously scanned the assets of that body, which in spite of being subjected to repeated harsh treatment had retained their shapeliness and firmness? Had the thought not crossed his mind, because he was a man, that she was a steal at ten rupees? And hadn’t he labelled that bank clerk who visited her on Dussehra an unlucky fool because he left without touching her when he couldn’t get her to lower her rate by two rupees? On top of all that, hadn’t all his muscles felt a strange sensation of tautness, so much so that he thought his bones would crack under the pressure? Then why hadn’t this dusky girl from Mangalore considered him a man, not ‘just our Khushia’, and had let him see all of her?

In a fit of anger, he spat out a stream of paan juice, which splashed on to the sidewalk painting flowery patterns. Then he got up, hopped on the tram and went home.

He took a bath and donned a brand new dhoti. One of the shops in his building was a barbershop. Khushia went in and began combing his hair in the mirror. Then, giving in to a sudden impulse, he plunked himself down in one of the chairs and asked the barber earnestly for a proper shave. Since this was Khushia’s second request for a shave that day, the barber reminded him, ‘Khushia, did you forget, I just shaved you this morning?’ Khushia quickly ran the back of his hand along his cheeks and said in all seriousness, ‘Yes, but it isn’t close enough.’

After he got a close shave and a little bit of powder dusted on his face, he left the shop. There was a taxi stand directly across from it. He hailed a taxi in the peculiar manner of Bombay-wallahs, calling out ‘Chhi-chhi!’ After he sat down, the driver turned around and asked, ‘Where to, Sahib?’

These three words, but especially ‘Sahib’, sent a wave of exhilaration through Khushia. He smiled and said in an exceedingly friendly tone, ‘I’ll tell you in a second, but first go towards Opera House. . by way of Lamington Road. Got it?’

The taxi driver pushed the red flag on his meter down and headed for Lamington Road with a honk. After they had come to the tail end of the road, Khushia instructed him, ‘Turn left.’

The taxi turned left. Before the driver could switch gears, Khushia abruptly ordered, ‘Stop for a minute, there, near the lamp post.’ The taxi pulled up right in front of the lamp post. Khushia got out of the vehicle and walked over to a paan-wallah’s stall. He bought a paan, exchanged a few words with a guy who was standing by the stall, guided him into the taxi and told the driver, ‘Now go straight.’

They drove for quite a while, the driver turning whichever way Khushia ordered, through several bustling bazaars full of glittering lights, finally entering a dimly lit lane with very little traffic. Some people had rolled their beds out on to the sidewalk and were stretched out on them. Others were getting a leisurely massage. The taxi motored past these people and came to stop outside a wooden house fashioned somewhat like a bungalow. ‘Okay, go. I’ll wait here in the taxi,’ Khushia told his companion in a hushed voice. Gaping at Khushia like a fool, the man got out, walked over to the bungalow and went inside. Khushia sank down into his seat, putting one leg on top of the other. Then he took out a biri, lit it, took a few drags and tossed it out of the window. He was feeling very restless. His heart was beating so wildly that he was certain the driver had left the engine running to boost the fare. ‘How much more do you expect to make by letting the engine run?’ he asked.

The driver turned and said, ‘But, Seth, the engine isn’t running.’

The realization that the engine wasn’t running only heightened Khushia’s agitation and he started chewing on his lip. Then, setting the boat-shaped cap tucked under his arm on his head, he tapped gently on the driver’s shoulder and said, ‘Look, a girl will come out soon. You take off as soon as she steps inside the cab. Understand? Don’t be afraid. There won’t be any trouble.’

Just then two figures came out of the wooden house. Khushia’s companion was in front and Kanta was right behind him, dressed in a screaming-red sari.

Khushia quickly moved to the part of the seat that was dark. His companion opened the door, helped Kanta climb in, and then shut it. Suddenly a perplexed voice, somewhat resembling a shout, shot from Kanta’s throat. ‘You — Khushia?’

‘Yes, it’s me, Khushia, so what? You got your money, didn’t you?’ His thick voice rose. ‘Driver, take us to Juhu.’

The driver turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered, drowning out whatever it was that Kanta said. The taxi lurched forward, leaving Khushia’s befuddled companion behind, and disappeared in the shadows of the dimly lit lane.

From that day forward no one ever saw Khushia on the stoop of the auto supply shop again.