Narcopolis

She went out in the burkha and she saw the way the men looked at the lipstick on her mouth and the kaajal around her eyes. The men looked at her, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, they all looked. She stopped outside Grant Road Bazaar where the handbags were stacked in piles on the sidewalk. The vendor was a young guy in bell-bottoms, whose eyes lingered on her feet. She bought a clutch purse and paid him in small notes, grubby one- and two- and five-rupee notes that she dug out of her bra. The vendor took the notes with a smile, making sure their fingers touched. She walked on and now the vendors all seemed to be speaking at once, speaking only to her, offering special deals — Hello, madam, low price for you — not because they wanted her to buy something but because they wanted her to stop so they could get a look at her.

*

She didn’t give up saris. She varied her costume depending on who she wanted to be, Dimple or Zeenat, Hindu or Muslim. Each name had its own set of adornments. Then Bengali told her about a shop in Tardeo that sold saris from the entire subcontinent. She went there one afternoon in the mango season to buy the Begum Bahar. It was fine see-through gauze. Bengali told her that women painted their buttocks and their feet when they wore the Begum Bahar, so she tried it too, painted herself with red shellac dye and then took a look in the mirror. She wore no skirt under the sari and the effect was subtle. You could see the shape of the ass and thighs, but the work on the sheer fabric obscured her figure just enough. She knew some of her giraks would pay a lot to see her in the Begum Bahar. Bengali said, Now you look like a lady of the merchant class, an indolent Bania woman with many admirers. No, she said, looking at the semi-circles under her eyes, so dark they were like bruises. No, I’m like a woman whose only admirer hanged himself so long ago that she can’t remember his name or why he killed himself or whether she misses him; all she’s sure of is her own solitude and regret and, above all, her anger. Bengali said, You’re wrong, your admirers are numerous and I’m proud to count myself among them. And he left the room so quickly that she knew he’d embarrassed himself. She changed out of the sari and put on a salvaar. She never wore burkhas while working; Rashid said it was out of the question. His customers were pimps and chandulis, yes, but they were conservative about some things and they would not take kindly to a woman in a burkha making the pipe. In any case, said Rashid, salvaars were more convenient. She changed and took up her spot at the main pipe and after she made Rashid’s first pyalis of the day she served those who waited, Rumi usually among them. He came to talk as much as to smoke. He lent her his headphones and played music she had never heard, in particular, jazz, for which he had developed not a liking exactly but a taste, he said, like a taste for anchovies or bitter chocolate, an unexpected appreciation that comes upon a man late in his life. He told her about his work or his domestic situation, and he talked about his life, which, it seemed to her, was nothing if not a disaster.

*