And this was when Dimple tried not to show her surprise. She said You should have asked me. I have a friend who would have given you much better service.
*
Rumi told her he drove home after his adventure with the housewife hooker, and walked in the door to a full-scale family celebration, his wife’s relatives, wandering around the house half naked. First thing they do, these people, walk in the door and take off their clothes because of the heat, which wasn’t any worse than usual. There were five of them, a man in shorts and no shirt, his wife, fully dressed, unfortunately, two small half-naked children, and an older woman, stopping by on their way home to Ahmedabad. Rumi sat on a couch in the front room, flipping through a magazine while the travellers repacked their bags and made phone calls. The older woman was bragging about her son’s new car. He caught the word Maruti, as he was meant to. And in case he didn’t, she repeated it for him in English. Darshan bought a new car, she said, Maruti, such a nice car. His partner bought a new model Ambassador, but Maruti’s mileage is better. At least Darshan had the sense to be embarrassed by his mother’s propaganda: he looked shamefaced. Just then the older child came in from the kitchen. He wore only underwear and he made a low whooo sound as he ran across the room. At the last moment, just as he was about to crash into the couch, he made a sharp turn into a new flight path parallel with the wall; his whoop became higher pitched. The other child staggered around the room like an old drunk, bumping into furniture and babbling with happiness. An instant later her face crumpled and there was a long exhalation. She stopped breathing. Her arms hung by her side and only her feet moved, in rhythm, walking in place. There was silence for a long excruciating moment, everyone waiting for the child to breathe. Then: a telescoping wail so loud it shook Rumi out of his half nod. Here, Rumi digressed for a moment. He told Dimple that childhood was a kind of affliction, certainly physical and possibly mental. Children were at a hopeless disadvantage; they were unsuited for the world. They were short and ungainly and stupid, half-people, dwarf bundles of ectoplasm and shit, stunted organisms incapable of finding food or keeping their asses clean. They needed constant attention and they couldn’t communicate their needs. All they could do was wait for it to pass, years of waiting until the blight was gone. It would make anybody bawl for no reason, he said. Soon, he heard his wife ask her cousin about his business. Her cousin and his partner had set up the company eight years earlier to provide technical support for office computer networks. It hadn’t begun well, had begun so badly in fact that they thought of packing it in. Then the economy opened up and they started to get orders from all over the place, and now there was so much business he’d bought his mother an apartment. Everybody, it seemed to Rumi, was making money except for him. After her relatives left, his wife went to sleep. Rumi thought of the time immediately after his return from LA, when he had a job in advertising and was earning better, and his wife was the one who had initiated sex. She’d been insatiable; it was all they did. He’d come home from work and she would pull him into the bedroom first thing. It was hard to believe this was the same woman. If he were bringing more money home, would it make a difference? Of course it would, he was sure of it. Her manner had changed almost to the month and day that he’d lost the job at the agency and taken up employment at her father’s brokerage. In that case, if money was the lubricant that made her agree to sex, what was the difference between her and the woman he’d paid earlier in the evening? If there was a difference, it was the prostitute who came out of it in a better light. At least she was true to her profession and her station in life. His wife was true to neither. If she were, she would understand that her duty was to serve him and make him happy. He was her pati, her husband and lord, and his happiness was her need. This is what he thought about as he lay beside his sleeping wife, Rumi told Dimple, and it gave him pleasure to remember the adventure with the prostitute, to relive it while his wife lay beside him and to smell again the street woman’s kitchen sweat. He sniffed his hands and smiled in the dark.
Chapter Seven Business Practices among the Criminal Class: C & E
There was a Godrej padlock on the door. People came up the stairs and it was the first thing they saw. Then they saw the Customs and Excise notice tacked to the wall and understood that Rashid’s was shut indefinitely. They went elsewhere. That morning Rashid, Dimple and Bengali were in Gilass Palass, a teashop and falooda parlour near Grant Road Station. Only Bengali noticed the mirrors on the walls and ceiling, and, on smoked-glass shelving that ran the length of the premises, a collection of figurines in the likeness of swans and androgynous, possibly female angels. Rashid drank masala chai, and he held an unlit Triple Five in his hand.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘temporary, tell everybody we’ll be back very soon.’
‘How soon?’
‘Very soon.’
‘You already said that.’
‘Eat your khari biscuit.’
‘I told you something was wrong. The use.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘Noticing things, telling you. And then you forget. What’s the use?’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘Bilkul, I did, bhai, told you there was something wrong when that Customs and Excise came round asking for five lakhs instead of fifty thousand. He’s been taking money from you for years, same amount every time, like tax, and suddenly he adds a zero. Something was wrong.’
‘When did you tell me? You think I’d forget?’
‘Why not? You forget everything else.’
She was using the formal aap though her words were not formal at all. Bengali’s thoughts were in his face: look at this woman, until yesterday she was a prostitute in a hijra’s brothel and listen to her now, talking as if she’s Rashid’s equal. He was dismayed by her manner around his boss and by the way she said whatever came to her mind, whether respectful or not. She talks as if she is his wife and Rashid listens like a husband, he thought. But she’s more than a wife, more than both his wives put together: she’s his business partner and she’s better at it than he is. If she was in charge, we’d be rich and the competition would be mincemeat.
‘So that’s why you’re here, to remind me.’
‘And meanwhile.’
‘Meanwhile, we have a temporary shop and we keep going.’
‘Sounds like this meanwhile will be a long meanwhile. And you’ll do what?’
‘Something, I’m thinking.’
‘Bhai, the khana won’t reopen by itself.’
Rashid lit his cigarette and blew a ring and then he blew another through the first.
‘I know who’s behind it: the bhadwa. He came to see me, made an offer to buy my khana, such a low price I knew he was the one who put the C & E lock on the door.’