Mumbai Noir by Altaf Tyrewala Page B

another auto as her mobile “full-tension-release” shag-pad had each coincided with bomb blasts in the city. Not only were customers hard to come by on those nights, she even had to pay by the meter, something Rahim never made her do. She had a lot to be pissed with Rahim for.
    When Rahim had returned last month, he sidled Langdi up to Ramdulari at the corner of Panch Marg and tried to apologize for disappearing. My house got washed away in the high tide , read his slate as he held it up in front of her face, his smile a precarious mix of cocky and earnest. She had looked past him at the mobile police patrol motorbike cruising by across the road; she turned and hurried away. She didn’t want to be seen with Rahim. The hafta she already owed the cops far exceeded what she’d made in the last week. If she got caught in a terror suspect’s auto they might harass her. And she’d heard of how they tortured female suspects. The havaldar had told her, as she gave him a hand job inside a broken-down car behind the chowki, getting off on the memory of the last time he fucked an upside-down woman with his lathi. Though he did add he’d hate to do something like that to Ramdulari, there was no remorse or mercy in his voice when he spoke of the suspect, emphatically adding that the minority needed to be hung upside down and straightened out. At that he had ejaculated, spitting venom all over the dusty dashboard.
    Rahim followed Ramdulari down the street, braking to a halt every few seconds to clean his slate and scribble a new request on it with chalk, before revving up again, gliding alongside her, and holding the slate up in front of her face, begging her to get inside, saying he’d drive her around for free tonight. She ignored him completely, a knot forming in her chest, her face flushed. But Rahim kept at it. He kept at it till he ran out of chalk. And then he hit the brakes, wiped his slate clean, and sat still, watching her disappear down the street, his hands starting to ache as the flat rectangular piece of night they held grew heavy with the weight of its own wordlessness.
    After that night, every night, for nearly a month, Ramdulari kept her distance. Rahim would catch glimpses of her in other rickshaws, as he ferried drunk young boys, watchful dupatta-covered women, and zombielike call center employees back and forth. When his shift ended, tired and irritable, he’d make do with the fast-fading memory of that meager morning. The one in which Ramdulari had stepped out of the circular margin of the rearview and invited him into the backseat.
    It had been the night after his first reappearance, and customers—scared by the terror unleashed on Mumbai’s streets—were nowhere to be found. Strapped for cash and feeling unwanted, Ramdulari had suggested she pay Rahim in kind. Rahim had never dared to insinuate that to her. He had been both thrilled and terrified at the invitation. He hadn’t touched a woman before, and he shyly indicated that to her. She had simply nodded. He’d parked Langdi right in the center of an abandoned field amidst a far-off cluster of cottages in Aaraamnagar. The risqué move had made Ramdulari hot. As the moon slipped out of the sky, he had slipped into her. But he’d finished even before the cock crowed. She had sighed “premachoor,” and patted him on the head. He didn’t know what it meant, but knew it didn’t bode well for his future with her.
    And he was right.
    He often hoped she’d make that offer again, give him another chance to prove he could gratify her. But she never did, pretending instead like that morning had never existed. Ever since though she had started talking more, telling Rahim about her life, and why she thought “tension-releasers” like herself were so important in Mumbai’s scheme of things. He didn’t care much to listen, but listened well, in the hope that one night she might feel some love and send it his way.
    “If it wasn’t for us,” she would