There is a limit to how much ugliness a man can bear. I am afraid I have reached my breaking point for today. Medina Chicken Mart closes at eight p.m. It is five right now. I am already restless. I have been here since twelve noon. With a handkerchief pressed over my nose like a gora sahib, I have been going through the motions of business. A customer once asked me whether my handkerchiefs are perfumed. I ignored the insinuation. If I get used to the smell of chickens, what next? How many more of my senses will I have to deaden for the sake of practicality? So although this checkered square of cotton does little to bar the stench from my nostrils, and although I am losing the respect of customers, the handkerchief will remain—like a last vestige of my humanity, or whatever little of it is left.
I sit at a counter at the front of the shop, facing the walkway outside. To my left is the cage of chickens. Beside it sits Amjad, my employee butcher. Surrounding us is the soupy, vibrating stinkstenchsmell of the birds. We have had an especially good afternoon today. Eleven units. Chickens sometimes aged and died in the cage itself—but that was in my father’s time. Now non-vegetarianism is epidemic. As are lies, treachery, murder, promiscuity and heartlessness. No one knows what is right or wrong. Is it wrong to be the owner of a chicken shop? Wrong to oversee the butchering of twenty to thirty birds every day? And then to make money out of this? Is all this wrong? Really, I really want to know. But who’s going to tell me? Five youths in Save Earth T-shirts had picketed the shop once. Non-vegetarianism, they said, is wrong. Must I close my shop, I asked. They didn’t know. ‘We’re here to sensitize, not propagate,’ one of them said, and round and round they went in circles outside my shop, chanting jingles that extolled the virtues of vegetarianism. I almost joined them, enthused as I was by the spirit of those teenagers, till I remembered I was the enemy.
My attention strays to the wall above the cage where an old clock smoulders with time. Seventeen minutes past five. I would like to walk out this very instant. But sometimes I like torturing myself. At least this much I know is wrong. To torture oneself is wrong. Anything that makes a man happy is right. Anything that makes a man unhappy is wrong. But what is a man to do when something makes him neither happy nor sad? Most of the time I feel nothing. The propriety of my actions remains unknowable, and my attempts to ascertain right from wrong resemble a blind man opining on color. I wonder: Is it like this with everyone? Does Amjad feel anything as he slaughters away to glory from morning to night? Did he feel anything when he killed those two men? I don’t know for sure whether he did, I don’t want to know, but assuming he did, did Amjad feel anything while taking human lives? I do not think so. The feelings are missing. They have vanished. What’s left are instincts, sensations, drives, and passions. Inside, everything is dead.
The evening’s first customer enters; I know him—a freelance chef who caters to parties in the neighborhood. Things will get busier as night approaches. I am glad I will not be around then. The man ignores me and approaches Amjad because—because it is the kink of modern commerce: the doer owns nothing, the owner does nothing. Amjad comes to the counter and whispers, ‘Jamal Seth, customer wants a discount. He wants thirty kilos.’ I declare a five-rupee holiday per kilo. The caterer agrees. The genocide begins.
I am off. It is five-thirty. I stand up and push back my chair. Amjad is carrying the first four chickens, two in each hand, to the back of the shop. ‘I’m off,’ I say, ‘see you tomorrow.’ He waits for my exit. I remove a thousand rupees from the cashbox, blood money, and have to restrain myself from breaking into a run. This place augments the income of my family of two parents, sisters, and a freeloading cousin. I cannot sit through all its working hours. The least I can do is walk away. I walk away. And when the stench is no more to be seen (yes, sometimes it is so thick I can see it), I stuff my handkerchief in my trouser pocket and head straight for my bike in the market’s parking lot.
Outside of Medina Chicken Mart, and because of it, my leisure hours are devoted to the tracking and hunting down of beauty in all its squirming, reluctant forms. Money and mobility are essential to the endeavor.
Kickstart… and… vroom.
I have been motorcycling since sixteen. I suffocate in other modes of transport. I am the man you see hanging out of train doors or being air-blasted on upper-level front seats of double-deckers. I walk; if being boxed in is the only way to get somewhere, I do not go. I see no merit in flexibility. Yield, and soon your whole world is gone.
My buddies are wondering what we should do tonight: dinner in the ghetto or gate-crash a college jam session? I have joined them on the footpath outside a grocery store that has served as our meeting point for several years, sometimes to the chagrin of the owner, sometimes to his relief and delight. This evening, since we have all ordered colas and cigarettes, the grocer is gracious. I have three friends I shall not name. We are all the same: except for some details (one of my friends is an orphan, the other almost a dwarf, the third can speak fluent English) and varying livelihoods, I would be hard-pressed to assign unique personalities to any of us. We are a pack, a herd. Think of us as one. In these few hours of bonhomie, we regain the vigor sapped through the day. We sit on our bikes and gossip or talk business. Sometimes we play cricket with makeshift apparatus. When we’re bored, we brawl. For men in their late twenties, we are alarmingly incapable of stillness. When I sleep, even my dreams are action-packed.
Two of my pals have had a windfall in their lines of work; they want to do something extraordinary this evening. This is just talk, of course, because our itinerary varies as predictably as the days of the week. Still, something special must be done.
We settle on a dance bar. In a suburb, along the National Highway, is a new place called Samudra Mahal. One of us had been there a few nights ago; he sings such paeans to the pleasures to be had there, we decide to set off at once. With the lives we live, it’s never too early or too far to watch half-naked women gyrate. The two cash-rich ones agree to shoulder most of the expenses. Samudra Mahal. Beautiful women shaking their goods for me. My crotch pulsates in anticipation. Thanks to AIDS and concomitant diseases, the dread of which public campaigns have successfully instilled in people like me (the middle class, ever ready to heed alarms), our eyes are now our cocks, and to ogle is to hug, kiss, fondle, undress, mount, and fuck, all rolled into one.
The pack is on the move. Four motorcycles weaving in and out of lanes, racing, swerving, overtaking from the left. The promise of sleaze makes us reckless. We leave in our wake shaken motorists and a traffic flow made fragile by our passage. At least we have been noticed, even if for the disruption we have caused; for the chronically powerless, this is revenge enough.
We ride past a girl in shorts and, because we have no words to compliment her sexiness, cannot help propagating a stereotype embraced unquestioningly, and are afraid to approach her, the four of us honk. The girl turns her head. I look back and wink. She widens her eyes. I accelerate to catch up with the others. ‘Uttha lein?’ one of us shouts over the roar of traffic. We laugh. But this is no joke for me. The abduction of a girl is a tempting course of action. Not to rape and discard the abductee, but to detain her long enough to win her affection. Half a chance to impress is all I ask for. I cannot remember the last time I spoke to a girl I was not related to, someone I could amuse with my Amitabh Bachchan imitation. We would talk, I would ask about her likes and dislikes, birth sign, and then I would propose. Why can’t my sisters hurry up and get married? Being the elder brother, I must wait till both have wedded. My sisters, however, seem in no hurry to say ‘yes’ to any one of the thousands of boys we have shown them. How did they grow so willful under their burkhas? Some of us do not want to wait for perfect loves and ringing bells. Some of us are tired of honking at girls and driving across town to watch sluts dance. Will someone please tell my sisters that some of us just want to get on with our bloody lives!
We are too early. Pig-guts! In our mad-monkey rush for illicit thrills, we have completed in an hour a journey that should have taken at least twice as long. It is eight p.m. Samudra Mahal has not even opened. The sign above the dance bar is still unlit. Damn! There are waves around ‘Samudra Mahal’; the ‘S’ is a topless mermaid stretching with an erotic lethargy. All this would have looked so good in neon.
Someplace else, then? No. The one who suggested this place is angry. He goes to ask when it will open.
He comes back grinning: the place is open. There is no electricity, but it will be back in some time. No, he will not allow us to go elsewhere. Please, he pleads with the other two, for they have promised to pay for this evening, the women in here are to die for !
Okay, okay. We park our bikes. We backslap and kick each other as we approach the entrance. For men in their late twenties, we are worryingly juvenile.
These are moments I relish: transitional moments, when the tedium of the day and the promise of pleasure just minutes away are both pressingly real. I can still smell the shop on my clothes. But I can also already imagine the smell of smoke inside the dance bar and the flavors of appetizers drifting on drafts from the air-conditioning. The cage will be replaced with a stage; the poop-streaked grilling with disco lights; the chickens will turn into bar girls dressed in clothes revealing cleavages and midriffs. The girls will be smiling, their bodies moving in sync to whatever dissonance is currently parading as music. I will, as usual, fall in love with one of the dancers and convince myself that she, as against the others, is chaste and innocent. Such moments make me happy; they have got to be right.
I, because I am ahead—ever the eager beaver—go first through the wooden door of Samudra Mahal, watched by two guys in neckties and a bearded man. There is an unlit passage behind the main entrance. What is it? Something does not feel right. In passages like these the day should begin to shrivel, and the night should awaken like a woman from deep slumber. This passage is too warm, too silent. Past the passage, I push open a tinted glass door. No! Of course! It’s the electricity. There’s no electricity! ‘Let’s go elsewhere, boss, come on!’ I say to my friends, I insist, and turn around to leave. But the other three do not want to be bothered. ‘This will be no fun,’ I say, ‘let’s go, boss, please!’
Three emphatic NOs.
The restaurant is hot, silent, and dark, except for two tube lights burning on battery. Conversations stop when we enter. Eyeballs rotate. The air is sagging like an overloaded clothesline. Too many things have been suspended in here.
Three tiers of tables are arranged in a semicircle facing a raised platform. On one side of the room, around one tube light, sits a group of women and men. The four of us sit on the opposite side, around the second tube light, where five other men are already seated. Employees and clients. These battery-operated tube lights are made in China. I can tell. Their gloss and curved contours cannot conceal the cheeky smile of fraudulence. A battery-operated fan has been directed at us. Touching.
We know we have merged with the scenery when a woman giggles and breaks the silence. Conversations resume, but only among the employees. We clients are too busy stealing glances at the dancers. They seem fantastical in the dim light. Depending on how they are facing the tube light, only parts of their bodies are illuminated: someone’s left cheek, someone’s arm, someone’s mirror-studded bustier. The talk is ribald. A woman is being teased for something she swears she did not do. Another woman has a fever. A man is on the phone ordering ice.
What nonsense! We should not be seeing and hearing all this. I want the finished product. Those breasts should be in motion. The one in the white halter-top—her hair should be strewn over her undulating shoulders. And why am I still thinking? The lights and loud music ought to have stunned me by now.
They should have kept the doors sealed. The wait would have made us hungrier. But to allow us in like this, and to seat us here in the dark, is to replicate the tedium that we have come in here to escape.
Fuckers, I whisper, let’s just go somewhere else; this is depressing. At least one of my friends agrees. The other two are not so sure.
I stand up. I am alone. Now all three are not so sure. Fuck ya’ll, I say, and move toward the door.
‘Sir, sir!’ A man in a waiter’s uniform comes running. ‘What’s the problem? Please wait, lights will come on any moment, don’t go, sir!’
I want to smash the bastard’s nose for drawing everyone’s attention to me. ‘No, no,’ I say, ‘I’m going, I can’t waste my night waiting for your bloody lights.’
‘Arrey, sir, don’t be angry na,’ a woman says. I look past the waiter’s shoulder. A bar girl is winding her way to me. Her black sari is hitched way below her navel, her white sleeveless blouse is cutting into her flesh. So what if the light is dim, I am a bat where these things are concerned.
‘Sit na, sir, please, don’t go.’ The bar girl is yanking me by the hand. The touch of her soft palm floods my loins. She is not young. My bat eyes fail to ascertain her exact age, but I can tell from the rotundity of her upper arms that the woman has been around longer than any of the girls.
I yield to her tugging. I am pulled to the tables and seated with the other clients.
‘This is for you, dear,’ the bar girl says.
She turns to her colleagues and claps a rudimentary beat. The other girls whoop and giggle. Then they too start clapping—like gypsies around a campfire, like eunuchs, like soft-spoken women calling out to someone far, far away. Clap. Clap, clap.
The bar girl turns to us clients. She hooks the loose end of her black sari into her skirt.
And then she starts—to my utter embarrassment, in the near darkness, to the simple beat of hands clapping—to dance.
Whistles go up from the clients’ side.
‘Chhaawee!’ two men cheer.
The bar girl places one hand on her hip, the other on her head, and begins twitching and lurching. She jumps from foot to foot. She twirls, prances, hops, jiggles her breasts and then her buttocks, all to the sound of hands clapping.
I have been re-seated at the very front, away from my friends, with no face-saving distance between the girl and me.
The men seated behind me pat my shoulders. One man flashes the thumbs-up sign at me.
I loosen up. I start to savor the impromptu performance. My eyes turn frantic, trying to take in as much as possible. My dick turns half-hard and will remain so all through the evening.
The man on my right sticks two fingers in his mouth and blows a shrill whistle. And one more. And one more. ‘Phhhhiissst… phhhhhissstt… phhhhhisssssstttt!’
The clapping turns synchronized.
The bar girl’s movements take on a fresh vigor. As she shimmies on the floor, her movements become affected, louder, the sweep of her limbs turns wider, her steps go from suggestive to farcical.
A hesitation descends upon us clients. The cheers and whistles die down. What the…
The girl is not quite dancing any more. She swaggers about like a drunk. She twitches like an epileptic. Lurches. Marches around like a soldier. Rolls on the floor. Slaps her own face. Paces back and forth like a tigress. Huh?
Then she starts beating her own chest. Whack! Whack! She paces the floor and beats her chest. The other girls continue to clap like machines. Thuck! Thuck! The bar girl rolls on the floor again. She stands up. Leaps into the air. Slaps herself again. Grabs her private parts.
Two clients stand up.
But of course!
The clapping falls to pieces, a staccato mess. A waiter comes running—the same one who had stopped me from leaving.
‘Tell her to stop this madness,’ one of the men who have stood up says to the waiter. ‘What’s this nonsense!’
The bar girl stops. She just stops: with her right hand on her groin, and her left hand clutching her behind. ‘Why? What happened? You didn’t enjoy?’ the girl asks.
The two men do not answer. They storm past the bar girl and approach the entrance. The waiter tries to stop them. The two customers are adamant. The waiter grabs one of them by the arm. In response to this gesture of friendly insistence, he—the waiter—is rewarded with a punch on his right shoulder and a laser beam stream of abuses. Sisterfucker. Son of a whore. Pimp!
I squirm in silence. What have I started!
And what did the woman think she was doing?
Our eyes meet. Because I am closest, and the light is dim, only I can see the bar girl’s malicious smile. She flicks her eyebrows at me.
What? What’s with all this? The defiance on her face.
The hostility. Is she angry? Why is she angry? She was the one who stopped me from walking out. She offered to dance. And then she was the one who made a complete fool of herself.
And now why is she flicking her eyebrows at me? And why this baring of teeth? I did not force her to do anything. I thought she was happy to dance for us. If she was not, why did she volunteer?
I get up and join my friends in the rear row.
I am greeted with much backslapping and whispered well dones.
I try to come up with smart retorts. I try to laugh. But it is so dark back here. And wherever I look, I can see the bar girl’s bitter stinging smile superimposed onto the darkness.
This is not fair. It is really not.
She should not dance if it makes her unhappy. Someone should tell the bar girl that. Someone should tell her that it is wrong to do something that makes you unhappy.
And now I have the rest of the evening—a whole evening—to take joy in someone else’s unhappiness.