Ghalib at Dusk Read online

  The only thing he could imagine was the conversation leading to it, and there his poetic sensitivity would take over. But how would it proceed? Did he get on top, or would she? He had read enough dirty magazines and stared at enough pictures of naked women but he was a novice and she would be able to tell right away. This thought shamed him. Since he wasn’t even sure how he would manoeuvre himself into a position so as to enter her with those thin bent legs of his, which were twisted out of shape, his mind simply darted back to the pleasanter, more manageable aspects of the meeting, where his intelligence and wit would place him on a firm footing, and he could be sure of charming her. Better not dwell on the murky parts—the actual thing, he told himself again and again during the night. It would simply happen at the right moment with her.

  He had told the friend who was arranging the meeting to tell the woman about his disability, but to let her know that the disability was limited to his limbs. He was fully capable of satisfying a woman. He was often quite amazed at the size of his own erections and the intensity of his desires, which he could barely satisfy by masturbating. But each time he came, there was a sadness that made the relief only temporary. Deep within him a hunger for making love to a woman grew and grew. He often questioned the existence of a God who could have been so cruel in shrivelling his legs but in leaving intact his desires. There were mornings when he woke and wanted to crush the swelling between his legs, even as he reached down to placate it as if it were a headstrong child.

  Pappu was back to carry him down the steps now. Saeed called out to Ammi in the inner room. ‘Ammi, I’m leaving. The door’s open. But Abba should be back from the store any minute.’ And then, as an afterthought, ‘By the way, I’ll be a little late this evening. So don’t get worried. I have to go to an evening lecture at the university.’

  Without waiting to hear his mother’s objections to his evening plans, he motioned Pappu to pick him up. Pappu slid his arms under the small body, and lifting him like a baby, carried him down the narrow flight of steps and settled him into his wheelchair which he had placed just outside the gate.

  Pappu pushed the wheelchair down the street, just as he did every morning, and they went past the usual shops, just as they did every morning. Some of the shops had opened, specially the provisions stores. The shopkeepers leaned over the counters to say hello to Saeed. He nodded distractedly in their direction. Many of them had been his neighbours since he was a small boy, and had seen him shuffle about in shorts. Although he gradually lost the ability to walk after the polio attack, his parents didn’t get him a wheelchair until he was almost seven, when the question of sending him to school came up; when Ammi had to be convinced he wasn’t going to walk, never going to walk using his limbs no matter how many different herbal oils she massaged his legs with, or how many taaweez written by all the maulvis she visited he was made to wear.

  ‘Arre yaar, be careful, you’ll break all the bones in my body,’ Saeed yelled. The wheelchair had slid into a pothole. Pappu mumbled something about the rains spoiling all the roads. The wheelchair rattled on its uncushioned joints past the vegetable sellers lining the main street in Rajapur that was just beginning to wake up. Of the things he had on his wish list was a new wheelchair with cushioned shock absorbers so the jolts on the potholed road wouldn’t be quite so rude. And frictionless wheels which would make it easier for him to move around on his own, though wheeling himself on the unruly streets of Allahabad, where even the firm-limbed had to watch out for themselves, was a dream. But the wheelchair would have to wait because dearer things had to be purchased. The answer to his lust, the love of a woman, had also to be bought by people like him, because no real woman would find him worthy of a relationship in which sex would happen as an act of love. One of his classmates had once asked if he functioned, resorting to shrugging and head-shaking, and the snickering ‘you know what I mean’, to which Saeed had replied, ‘As well as you’.

  He was determined not to let the day be spoilt with the thought that he had finally given in to the humiliation. He was to see a prostitute that evening. Instead he tried to imagine her as an innocent young woman who’d been forced into this unacceptable way of life by some evil pimp. He imagined her falling in love with him right after their first meeting. He would be the messiah she had been waiting for, for whom she would gladly give up this immoral way of life, and devote herself entirely to him. He would make the kind of love to her that would make her wonder what she was doing wasting her time with those able-bodied clients. His mind raced on, and as the day wore on, he let the story blossom like a flowering lotus in his feverish mind. He added little touches of domesticity to its evolving form: she would make tea for him and he would watch her rapt as she went about it.

  The air was heavy with moisture, almost too dense to breathe. The heat was just as dispiriting as it had been the day before. Luckily the distance to Saeed’s office was short, and in less than ten minutes after leaving home, he and Pappu were entering the gate of the bungalow in Ashok Nagar, where he worked as an advocate’s clerk. In one part of an ill-lit and badly ventilated room on the ground floor, Saeed answered phone calls while his boss, the advocate, was at the high court, and read case files that were brought to his desk by a lethargic peon, taking his time with them in a not-too-hurried way, so as to make his work stretch until lunchtime. Pappu went home to fetch his lunch. His other colleagues went out to the vendors nearby or brought their tiffins from home.

  She said he could call her Shalu. He wanted to know if Shalu was her real name, but didn’t ask. He introduced himself by another name. He had to be on guard too. In a small town like Allahabad, secrets were hard to keep. The friend who had arranged this meeting with Shalu could be trusted, almost like a younger brother, but this woman could betray him to anyone.

  She had come out to meet him only after the rickshawwalla set him down in his wheelchair and left. She wheeled him in smoothly as if she’d pushed wheelchairs all her life. It was a small house on the ground floor, in posh Civil Lines, where he hoped he wouldn’t meet anybody from his own neighbourhood. His friend had told Saeed that he had asked for a meeting place where he didn’t have to worry about stairs. Once inside, he overcame his nervousness simply because she seemed so much at ease. She started moving around, taking out cups, a thermos and some paper plates from a plastic bag and arranging them on the little table against the wall. His mind was crowded with questions, but he felt tongue-tied. She seemed in total control of the evening, so he decided he would simply watch her. People moving about freely, going about their jobs, without any awareness that they were doing anything extraordinary always fascinated him. He was used to watching the labourers on the street, or the maid in their house, sweeping, mopping. To him human movement, the willed exercise of one’s limbs to make the body achieve some purpose, was one of the most novel feats of Nature.

  He noted that she wasn’t dressed in a silk sari as he had imagined her. Nor was she shy. She was wearing a cotton kurta and some sort of pants. She had no bindi or sindoor, which would tell him she was married. And then he had to grin inwardly. What did it matter if such women were married or not?

  She had sensed his embarrassment, it seemed to him.

  ‘Tired? I thought you’d like some tea after a long day,’ she said in a smooth, practiced voice. ‘I can serve beer or whisky too, but you have to let me know ahead of time, and it costs extra. Here, have a sandwich with the tea. I always make arrangement for tea and something to eat for my clients,’ she said as if she were a saleswoman selling some brand of sanitary napkins. ‘You know it gets late by the time you get home, and you’re going to be really hungry after we finish,’ she smiled.

  He was struck dumb by her matter-of-factness. He felt like a child before her, a complete fool. He chewed the sandwich she gave him and drank the tea but his mind was aghast with shock. This was not how he had imagined their conversation to proceed. It was he who was going to recite poetry to her, and gradually coax her into the act
of disrobing.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Here, you can look at these in the meantime,’ she said, removing his cup and plate from his hands, and handing him a couple of magazines. He watched her disappear behind a door. And then he looked down at the magazines. They were familiar. He had leafed through enough of them on nights when he found looking at those pictures was the only way to relieve the longing, the aching that swelled between his legs and spread like a throbbing, maddening pain throughout his body. There was always the guilt afterwards that he had done something unpardonable. Why waste time over these pictures, he thought, when I’m here to do the real thing?

  She came out and he was taken aback to see her in a transparent night gown of some gauzy material. She walked with a soft, sliding gait, as if she were some scent wafting towards him. She had undone her shoulder length hair. He noticed it wasn’t long as he had imagined it. His eyes moved down to her breasts and pointed nipples, which stood out under the thin gown. And his unbroken gaze travelled down to her navel and below where he could see the outline of her lacy panty. She smiled as she caught him staring and playfully tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ears.

  ‘You didn’t find the magazines interesting?’ she asked, leaning over him and almost stopping his breath from her closeness. It was the first time in his life he had been so close to a woman. And he hadn’t the least idea what was expected of him. But she didn’t let him feel lost. ‘I just give these to my clients as a sort of warm-up, you know. Some of them are a little uptight, at first,’ she said. Her breasts brushed teasingly against his face and he found his hands reach up and grab the two orbs as if to make sure they were real. ‘My god,’ he whispered. ‘My god.’ The joy flooding his body was a tidal wave. The magazines slid to the floor.

  She placed her hand between his legs. Immediately he stiffened, what would she think of those stumpy things, his legs. But she knew her job as if she had dealt with nothing but men with wasted limbs ‘Why don’t we get on the bed?’ she said. ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘Thanks, I can manage that on my own,’ he said brusquely.

  ‘Ok, so let’s hurry up then. Time is precious. Oh, by the way, do you want to see my HIV negative report before we start?’

  ‘You carry that with you everywhere?’ he asked, taken aback.

  ‘No, only when I’m meeting a new client. The regulars know I’m clean. But a lot of hot shots, you know, businessmen types, ask to see it.’

  ‘I trust you,’ he said, though he wanted to see it. But he didn’t want to sound like a businessman.

  ‘You mind using a condom?’ she asked.

  ‘No, but I’ve never used one.’

  ‘It’s easy, I’ll show you how. And it’s the safest thing, for both of us. I never do business with a client who refuses to use a condom. Okay, if you don’t mind, I like to be paid in advance. It’s five hundred for two hours. But if you meet me on a Sunday, I can spend the whole day with you for a thousand.’

  He had been warned by his friend she was classy, and therefore, expensive. He had come prepared. But he also knew that at these rates, he would have to wait months before he could see her again. He pulled out his wallet and counted five hundred rupee notes into her palm. She tucked the money into her purse and from some inner pocket fished out a packet of condoms. He turned around and wheeled himself right up against the bed, and then slid off the chair on to the bed. She took off the nightgown just like that, without a moment’s hesitation. He realized that she had a beautiful body, well-proportioned, not too thin or too flabby. Her skin glistened as if she had just stepped out of a bath, but it was probably sweat.

  ‘You want me to help you undress or are you going to do that yourself too?’

  He was silent. He wanted the lights out. He couldn’t reveal the vileness of his body, twisted and unmanly, utterly pointless in every way except that it contained a mind and a restlessness which raged nightly and left him groping for his pillows.

  ‘Feeling shy? Or scared?’ she asked, sitting down next to him at the edge of the bed.

  ‘It’s my first time,’ he mumbled, placing his slightly tremulous hands around her waist.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You like my breasts? I have other very exciting parts too, which you should explore.’ Then leaning over his face, she put her lips to his.

  He surrendered himself to her vastly superior skills.

  It was she who undid his pants. It was she who complimented him on his performance. It was she who said he needn’t worry about satisfying a woman, because he was more than capable but he wondered if she really meant it.

  When he had climaxed, and lay back utterly spent, the unruly child in him content for the moment, he began to question her, because he felt comfortable talking to her now.

  ‘Whose place is this?’ he asked, a little apprehensive that somebody might suddenly knock on the door.

  ‘It’s a friend’s. Don’t worry. She won’t be back until late at night. I give her a hundred rupees each time I use her place. We do favours for each other.’

  ‘I want to know more about you.’ There was tenderness in his voice.

  ‘What kinds of things do you want to know? Not the usual why am I doing this kind of work and all that stuff?’ she raised her eyebrows.

  ‘No, no,’ he lied. That’s exactly what he wanted to know. ‘I want to know if you like your work?’ he said, though he thought it odd calling what she had just done with him ‘work’.

  ‘Sometimes I like it if I meet an interesting person,’ she shrugged. ‘But most of the time it’s just a job. Just like any other job.’

  ‘Who got you started in this line of … work?’ Saeed ventured timidly.

  ‘Nobody. I started it myself. I needed the money badly after my husband left me. I have a child. And my day job pays very little. I wanted my child to go to a good English-medium school. I wanted clothes and money to buy the things I liked. I took up going out with men as a part-time job.’

  ‘But it’s not like any other job. I mean it’s not the same as any other job, right?’ Saeed emphasized the word ‘job’.

  ‘The way I see it, work is work. Just because you go to work in an office, you think—my job is to satisfy people’s needs. Haven’t I satisfied you today? Taught you a few things?’ she asked, in a flat voice, as if tired of answering the same kinds of questions. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re like all my educated clients. It’s not work when I do it with your kind of man, that’s what you want to think. Let me tell you something. I’m here because you need me.’ He saw her shoulders shrug dismissively. ‘As long as men need us, good men, bad men, we’re going to be around.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not hurt,’ she said, but he could sense a stiffness in her voice. ‘If I get hurt every time the guy who fucks me turns around and wonders why I don’t quit, I’d be out of work.’

  ‘I’m sorry. How old is your child?’

  ‘Seven. He lives with my mother.’ She didn’t want to talk about her son any more. ‘Why don’t you relax a bit, and then I’ll show you a few more things I think you’d like.’

  Saeed lay back and closed his eyes. He tried to imagine her as a mother, but he had difficulty seeing her in that pure, nurturing, sacrificing role. Mothers were supposed to be virtuous women, and even though he wouldn’t exactly think of Shalu as a bad woman, he couldn’t think of her as a mother.

  ‘Don’t you miss your son?’ he couldn’t stop himself. ‘My mother can’t sleep until I get home no matter how late it is, and I’m twenty-eight years old.’

  ‘What makes you think I don’t miss him?’ she asked irritably.

  He sensed his questions were perhaps insensitive and knew he shouldn’t be asking them. He tried to imagine her as a mother longing to see her son and failed. He couldn’t believe what this woman had done for him. She had given him pleasure he had never really known himself capable of. But what he couldn’t comprehend was how naturally she
demanded respect for herself and for what she called her ‘work’. What puzzled him most was her total lack of guilt or shame. She seemed annoyed with him because she turned away from him and walked towards the bathroom. He listened to her movements. He thought he heard her turn on a tap and water filling a bucket. He was feeling tired and happy. He wanted to doze off. The monotonous droning of the ceiling fan was like a lullaby. But he had only an hour left with her. And he wanted to make the most of it.

  After a few minutes, she came out, looking bathed and fresh, but dressed in the same night gown, through which her body’s contours tortured him, sending waves of excitement down to his groins again.

  ‘Now, mister, it’s my turn. You tell me something about yourself. What happened to your legs?’ Shalu said, lying down next to him and stroking his chest in circles moving down to his waist.

  ‘Polio. My parents tried everything. All kinds of doctors, and every pir-faqir anybody mentioned. I remember being taken to strange little towns and villages on trains and buses to visit shrines and holy men.’

  ‘So you live with your parents?’

  ‘Yes. We have an ancestral house. My grandfather built it. But it has stairs. Steep stairs. That’s the only problem.’