of ghosts that fought to drink at the pit: whenever one succeeded in clawing his way through, a hooded swordsman decapitated the weeping creature with a single broad stroke. In this way the ghosts were left headless though not extinguished. Only one among them managed to reach the pit and drink its fill. When the ghost lifted its oily black mouth to the moon and howled with joy, Dimple recognized her own blind face and then she saw the face of the hooded swordsman and recognized him too. And though she knew she was dreaming, that Sister Remedios’s book was her own invention and the world was as intact as it had ever been, she whimpered in her sleep at the ferocity of her own visions.
Towards dawn she fell into a deeper sleep and woke up late, unrested, with a taste in her mouth, a sweet-and-sour residue like pani-puri water. She bathed and the tai gave her money for new clothes but a customer arrived as she was leaving, a regular, with two boxes of mithai. He was the seth of a sari shop on the main road and it was what everyone called him, Seth. Lakshmi said even his own family called him Seth. She said he’d answered to it for so long he must have forgotten his real name. The seth wanted to drink a few bottles of beer and toss handfuls of salted cashews in his mouth and brag about how much money he would spend on his daughter’s wedding. It had just been arranged, he said, and he wanted to celebrate. He wanted French, no handshake, and then he wanted to lie back and sip his beer while she danced for him, lip-syncing to the radio. When she sponged him, he cleaned his hands and groin carefully so no trace of her remained. It was the ritual shared by all her married customers. After he left, she slept some more, very deeply, and woke up late in the evening and the next day the pain was back and it was as if she’d never been free of it and would never again be free. She was on outcall. An Arab customer had telephoned the tai. Send Dimple, he said. He wanted her to stay the night at his hotel in Colaba, a new building in one of the alleys behind the Taj. The Arab came to Bombay every year during the monsoon to see the rains that didn’t come to his country. He expected very little by way of service: he wanted her to lie face down on the bed while he rubbed himself against her, both of them fully dressed. He was a big tipper and she couldn’t afford to be unwell. She went back to Mr Lee’s. She began to visit him a few times a week. She kept an emergency hoard of eating opium for the times she couldn’t make it to the khana and it was as easy as that to acquire the habit of opium, for that’s what it was, a habit, like bathing twice a day or eating vegetables.
*
She was learning to live with the pain. It was always there, in her shoulders and her back. The opium reduced it to something manageable, but she woke with pain. And then, taking the pipe one morning from Mr Lee, she realized that her arms were getting longer. She was sure of it, her arms were out of proportion to the rest of her. She went to a real doctor in Colaba. She took a train to Churchgate and a taxi from the station to his office. He was an English-speaking man with a degree from London and a second office in Worli. His room was full of books on glass-fronted shelves. He picked up a heavy black volume with indentations on the pages and after a few minutes of reading he told her that the lengthening of her arms was a biological change brought about by her gelding. He said You were castrated so young there have been hormonal spikes in your physiology. In a way, the growth of your arms is a compensation for the profound change you’ve undergone, perhaps the most profound change a human system can experience short of dying. She thought, I don’t care. As long as my knuckles don’t drag on the floor I don’t care. What does it mean if my arms are longer? It will be easier to make pipes. She thought: This is nothing, just one more of the body changes I
Towards dawn she fell into a deeper sleep and woke up late, unrested, with a taste in her mouth, a sweet-and-sour residue like pani-puri water. She bathed and the tai gave her money for new clothes but a customer arrived as she was leaving, a regular, with two boxes of mithai. He was the seth of a sari shop on the main road and it was what everyone called him, Seth. Lakshmi said even his own family called him Seth. She said he’d answered to it for so long he must have forgotten his real name. The seth wanted to drink a few bottles of beer and toss handfuls of salted cashews in his mouth and brag about how much money he would spend on his daughter’s wedding. It had just been arranged, he said, and he wanted to celebrate. He wanted French, no handshake, and then he wanted to lie back and sip his beer while she danced for him, lip-syncing to the radio. When she sponged him, he cleaned his hands and groin carefully so no trace of her remained. It was the ritual shared by all her married customers. After he left, she slept some more, very deeply, and woke up late in the evening and the next day the pain was back and it was as if she’d never been free of it and would never again be free. She was on outcall. An Arab customer had telephoned the tai. Send Dimple, he said. He wanted her to stay the night at his hotel in Colaba, a new building in one of the alleys behind the Taj. The Arab came to Bombay every year during the monsoon to see the rains that didn’t come to his country. He expected very little by way of service: he wanted her to lie face down on the bed while he rubbed himself against her, both of them fully dressed. He was a big tipper and she couldn’t afford to be unwell. She went back to Mr Lee’s. She began to visit him a few times a week. She kept an emergency hoard of eating opium for the times she couldn’t make it to the khana and it was as easy as that to acquire the habit of opium, for that’s what it was, a habit, like bathing twice a day or eating vegetables.
*
She was learning to live with the pain. It was always there, in her shoulders and her back. The opium reduced it to something manageable, but she woke with pain. And then, taking the pipe one morning from Mr Lee, she realized that her arms were getting longer. She was sure of it, her arms were out of proportion to the rest of her. She went to a real doctor in Colaba. She took a train to Churchgate and a taxi from the station to his office. He was an English-speaking man with a degree from London and a second office in Worli. His room was full of books on glass-fronted shelves. He picked up a heavy black volume with indentations on the pages and after a few minutes of reading he told her that the lengthening of her arms was a biological change brought about by her gelding. He said You were castrated so young there have been hormonal spikes in your physiology. In a way, the growth of your arms is a compensation for the profound change you’ve undergone, perhaps the most profound change a human system can experience short of dying. She thought, I don’t care. As long as my knuckles don’t drag on the floor I don’t care. What does it mean if my arms are longer? It will be easier to make pipes. She thought: This is nothing, just one more of the body changes I
Similar Books
