IT WAS 3 a.m. In the surrounding predawn darkness, the brightly lit airport was like a ship alight in a dark, waveless ocean. The air bore the exhilarating early-morning smell as yet untouched by the day’s inevitable pollution. I checked again the receipt the man at the prepaid taxi counter had handed me. The number matched the plate of a neat sedan in parking bay number seven. There was no one in the car.
‘You are for Pune, sir? Did you book at the prepaid counter?’ A woman stood beside me. She was dark-skinned and big-boned, her beige salwar-kameez dulled by the dazzling white lights. I nodded, craning my neck for the driver. I had meetings in the morning and wanted to be on my way.
‘Could you show the receipt please, sir?’ I handed the piece of paper to her. ‘Is this your luggage, sir?’ She clicked the electronic key and opened the car’s boot.
I looked at her, puzzled. Then the penny dropped. ‘You are driving me to Pune?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She smiled. ‘You can check my driving licence if you like.’ She pointed to the laminated bit of paper displayed on the dashboard beside a small Ganpati idol. ‘I have been driving for ten years. Over a hundred trips to Pune and not a single accident. You will be safe with me, sir.’ Shamefaced, I picked up my suitcase and stowed it in the open boot.
The car sped out of the airport and onto a broad expressway. ‘We will take the NH4 to Pune, sir. I am not sure how familiar you are with the route but to reach the Pune highway, it would be quicker to cut through Dharavi and get to the Eastern Expressway. If you prefer another route, please tell me now.’ I mumbled my acquiescence and leaned back in the seat. ‘It will take around three hours to reach Pune. We have started early, so there won’t be any traffic problems here or in Pune. Let me know if you’d like to stretch your legs or have a cup of tea. There are quite a few places along the way. It would not add more than thirty minutes to your travel time. And no extra charges.’ I heard the smile in her voice.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and added, ‘It is very brave of you to drive from Mumbai to Pune at this hour.’
‘It is very brave of you too.’ Her voice quivered with mirth.
‘I am sure you understand what I mean – this is not the safest of jobs for a woman.’
‘You are right, sir. But then, is there any job that is really safe for women?’
Her tone was polite, conversational, but for a reason I couldn’t immediately pinpoint, I felt annoyed. ‘There are jobs, and then there are jobs. Can you truthfully say you haven’t had bad experiences in this line of work?’
‘Bad experiences because I drive a taxi or because I am a woman who drives a taxi?’ she challenged.
‘Both,’ I said. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘I don’t, sir, if you don’t mind it yourself.’
I sat up straight and looked carefully at her. I couldn’t see her face; the rear-view mirror reflected only the straggling slums of Dharavi, grey in the grey light of dawn. She sat at ease, her broad shoulders relaxed, her powerful-looking hands resting on the steering wheel with assurance. There were traces of red nail-paint on the nails and green glass bangles tinkled at her wrists. Her hair was neatly plaited, not a strand out of place, a string of mogra flowers, wilting but still fragrant, attached to her braid with a black hairpin.
‘I am truly sorry…’ I began.
‘Don’t be, sir. These are not unusual comments or questions. I get them all the time. People assume that a woman driving a taxi is bound to have certain kinds of experiences. On my part, I have had some remarkable experiences, good and bad. I would think any woman who steps out into the world to earn her living would tell you the same.’
I nodded. All sorts of people book prepaid taxis. I could imagine men of the undesirable kind becoming troublesome, even dangerous. ‘I understand. You can’t be too careful. Can’t the taxi company assign you families or perhaps only women passengers and allow you to drive during the day instead of at this hour?’ I asked.
‘No one has forced me to do this shift, sir. I chose it myself. In fact, these days I mostly do night shifts. The pay is better.’
‘Isn’t it unsafe to drive strangers late at night?’
‘We have been trained to deal with trouble.’ She flexed her shoulders.
‘How about your family? You have children? Who looks after them when you are away at night?’
‘There is more looking after to be done during the day than at night, sir. If I am away during the day, who would cook their meals and be home when they return from school? Who would keep them out of trouble and make them do their homework? I am only driving early morning today because it is a school holiday and they are with their grandmother in the village.’
‘And your husband? Doesn’t he worry about your driving late at night?’ It sounded wrong even as I said it.
Her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed deeply. ‘Doesn’t your wife worry about you travelling alone at night?’
The car’s air-conditioner hummed and vibrated in the ensuing silence. ‘I am very sorry,’ I said finally. ‘I seem to be saying one wrong thing after another. Yes, my wife used to worry about my travelling alone until she herself undertook a journey alone to an unknown place. Who can tell whether she still worries about me there…’ I remembered my wife’s last days in the hospital, her body a mass of pain, all humanity extinguished, only a flicker remaining, somehow, which kindled upon seeing me – I, who loathed the disease for devouring her and, sometimes, her, for not giving in, just giving in and letting go.
‘May your wife’s soul be at peace, sir. I am sorry I spoke sharply just now when you asked about my husband. The fact is, I don’t know where he is. The last time I saw him was years ago. I was eight months pregnant with my third, and he was leering at me from the mouth of the dry ditch he had pushed me into.’
I was aghast. ‘I am so sorry…’
‘It’s all right, sir. I survived, and believe it or not, the baby in my womb lived too. That drunkard never showed his face near me again, he just left me with three children to feed. Things soon got tough for me. I had to sell everything – clothes, bedding, pots and pans. When there was nothing left to sell and I began thinking of the bottomless sea as the solution to my problems, I had my first stroke of luck. A neighbour’s pregnant wife left for the village for her delivery and he needed someone to do his housework. He taught driving at a driving school and offered to teach me in exchange for cooking and cleaning for him. My folks back in the village didn’t like the idea of my washing another man’s clothes or sitting beside him in a car and learning to drive. But they weren’t the ones feeding my children, so I didn’t care about what they felt. I had no problems in learning to drive; I picked up the tricks of the trade easily too. I was always good with machines, even as a girl I could mend things – fix fans, hand pumps, things like that – and I quickly became handy with changing tyres, replacing oil, doing small repairs. I passed my driving test in the very first attempt and got a commercial driver’s licence. A couple of days after I got my licence, I had my second stroke of luck. The local goon, who owned a few taxis, thrashed and threw out one of his drivers for cheating. I went to him with my three hungry kids, my story of hardships and my new driving licence. He hired me on the spot, and gave me fuel money too, which was great as I was completely broke. From that day onwards, a little over a month after my neighbour offered to teach me driving, I found myself behind the wheel of a newish taxi, eight hours a day, learning my way around busy city streets. I thought finally my days of trouble were over. I even began making plans to save and buy a room in the slum, and someday, my own taxi. But I had relaxed too soon, for this was the time the first blue woman boarded my taxi.’ She paused.
‘Blue woman?’ I echoed, wondering whether it was some obscure religious sect or the name of a girl band.
She was silent for a moment. ‘I am sorry, that just slipped out. I have never spoken about the blue women with my passengers. I worry it might make them nervous.’
This, of course, only had the effect of increasing my curiosity. ‘With this preface, how do you expect me to not want to know more about them? If you really did not want me to be curious, you should have simply said they were students of a famous girls’ school or members of a dance troupe. I would have believed you readily and asked no further questions.’
She laughed. It was a quiet laugh. I saw it rather than heard it – her shoulders shook gently and the green bangles on her wrists danced. ‘I was never any good at making things up, sir. I couldn’t even make up stories to tell my children when they were little. So for me, telling the truth is the only way; imagination – I leave for those superior to me!’ I smiled at her subtlety.
‘I don’t want to make a mystery of it,’ she said. ‘If you really wish to hear about it, I have no issues telling you. But before I do so, I would like to tell you something about myself because it is important for you to know the kind of woman I am before I go any further. Hardships are not new for me, I was born in a village that saw many droughts. Every monsoon, women performed rituals for plentiful rains and prayed that the crops won’t fail, that their men would not need to leave for the city to carry loads or work as masons to make ends meet. I saw no point in the rituals, in being yoked to a plough like an ox or in breaking coconuts and anointing fields with handfuls of sindoor to appease the rain god. Instead, I helped weed the fields and mend the water channels, and when the crops did fail, I collected firewood and fodder for the cattle. Please don’t take this to mean that I don’t believe in the gods. It is just that I have never had any patience with imagining things. I had had an early introduction to reality, and reality has always been sufficient for me. As a little girl, instead of playing with rag dolls or clay puppets, I looked after my little sister and I did it better than my mother. I fed her sugared water while my mother was away in the fields and carried her everywhere on my back – to the railway tracks to collect the coal that fell from the freight trains, to the pond to fetch water, even to the school whenever I could sneak some time from the chores. But I never once took her to the ojha to be cleansed of evil spirits with a straw broom. I was no different when I had my own children. I refused to paint black spots on their cheeks to ward off an imaginary evil eye or pray to the goddess of pox for their health. Instead, I stood in long queues at the hospital to get them vaccinated and stayed up nights nursing them when they fell ill. The way I see it, there is enough trouble, why bother with imagining more? This is the type of woman I am – an ordinary, practical-minded woman, not someone with a hyperactive imagination. It is important that this is clear before I proceed further with my story.’
‘I think you are quite an extraordinary woman,’ I replied. ‘You are very strong.’
‘Yes, I am strong,’ she agreed, ‘but that is nothing extraordinary. All the women in my family, my village and neighbourhood, all those that I know in this city, are strong. They have no choice – they have children and good-for-nothing husbands. But that really is not the point.’
‘I understand your point,’ I said. ‘I believe you are practical-minded and truthful, and do not like to imagine things. Whatever you tell me, rest assured, I will not doubt its veracity.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Sometime after I began driving a taxi,’ she continued, ‘I called my little sister from the village to live with me. She was a young woman now and a great help to me in every way. She was more like my own daughter. She had always wanted to learn the beauty trade. After coming to the city, she enrolled in a diploma course at a nearby institute and did very well there. She was so good that later, they waived half her fee. Anyway, I was very careful about her; she was young, and this was the first time for her in a big city filled with strangers instead of kinsfolk. Every morning after I sent my children to school, I walked her to the bus stop. Only after she boarded the bus would I pick up my taxi at the taxi stand and begin my shift for the day. Those days, I drove the taxi from early in the morning until 3 p.m. in the afternoon so I could be home by the time my children returned from school. Though new, I was good at my work. My fare and fuel accounts were always accurate, and any scratches on the taxi were because I could only control my taxi and not the rest of the traffic. After my shift ended, I would hand the taxi to the next driver, render my accounts and pay the daily rental to the swaggering young man from the neighbourhood who managed the fleet of taxis for the owner. I exchanged banter with him as he looked through my accounts. You see, I was still a young woman then and sometimes enjoyed talking to a young man who understood the kind of day I had had – irate cops, traffic jams, noise, arguments about fares or right-of-way, and so on. On my way home, I would stop at a grocery store and buy the simple ingredients I needed for preparing the evening meal – some split yellow lentil, a little turmeric and cumin, some onions, a few green chillies, and on feast days, jaggery and peanuts and sesame and nutmeg. When I returned, I would find my children playing in the alley in front of the house. There were drains overflowing with washing-up water and sewage on both sides of the narrow alley, and the stone-slabs covering them were broken and slippery. Every day I worried they’d slip and crack their heads, or worse still, would fall in bad company. Petty thieves and glue sniffers abounded in the slum I lived in then. But I could not keep them indoors all the time. We had a single ten feet by ten feet room; we cooked and ate and slept in it. On Sundays, I bathed the children there too, and my little sister washed her hair there instead of at the public tap in the alley. After coming home, I’d give the children some tea and snack – roasted chickpeas or puffed rice garnished with coriander, or occasionally, if I had made good money, seera made from flour, sugar and toop. I would then sit them down to do their homework and prepare the evening meal, set the pulses to boil, knead the dough or cook some rice, slice onions and green chillies. On days I picked up a few long-distance fares, I bought potatoes or beans and cooked them with garlic and red chillies. It all depended on how much I made after paying the taxi’s rent and fuel money. My little sister helped me clean the house, wash clothes, hang the children’s uniforms to air and make sure they packed their bags. This is how a typical day would pass, busy enough but nothing exciting, no different from that of any other woman in my neighbourhood. Money was scarce – there were my wages and my little sister got some money for working as a trainee. Thankfully, my mother sent rice and millet from the village, and the children got a free meal at their school.
‘One late April afternoon, the humidity was very high. A heat haze hung over the sea, and inside the taxi was like being in a sweaty, sticky embrace. We who live in this city know the stifling feeling on days when the very tar on the road begins to melt, when everything is unbearable and everyone angry and impatient. It was that kind of day. A young woman, dressed in shirt and trousers, flagged down my taxi. Though there was a traffic cop on the curb and the road was busy with moving traffic, I stopped. I could see she was harried. Her eyes wore that familiar tight look of a person in a hurry to be elsewhere. I guessed she worked in an office and was late returning from lunch. She opened the rear door and sat down heavily, leaning back into the seat and letting out a deep sigh. She asked to be dropped at one of the large mid-town office complexes. I joined the queue of vehicles at the big traffic junction at Haji Ali going towards the other side. Crossing it usually means waiting for the lights to change a few times. The congealed mass of vehicles at the junction seems as wide as the sea that rolls just beyond the low parapet. As the engine idled, I adjusted the rear-view mirror and noticed a kind of blue glow reflected in it. I was surprised and moved the mirror about until it showed my passenger. The sight caused me to almost faint. Instead of the young woman who had just boarded my taxi, there was a blue woman in the passenger seat. Her body glowed, as if she were lit from inside by a blue flame. There was a large wound on her head, half her forehead had caved in, and there were bruises on both her eyes. My head jerked around like a puppet’s on a string. There was the woman, her twisted, broken body sprawled across the rear seat, blue like the throat of the God of Destruction. The wound on her head was bleeding, her face was twisted in pain. She was dressed in a torn and stained salwar-kameez, and a soiled dupatta was stuffed in her crushed mouth. I screamed in terror. Instantly the blue light and the battered body disappeared. The midday sun blazed through the windscreen flooding the taxi with its harsh glare and the young woman squinted at me with suspicion. Was there anything wrong, she asked in the sharp voice women acquire to keep all sorts of trouble at bay. My heart pounded worse than the last fast train and I hardly knew what to say. I muttered something about the car behind being too close. The woman didn’t say anything, but in the rear-view mirror I saw her look doubtfully at me and slide her hand on to the door handle. I stuck my head out the window on the pretext of checking the car behind and gulped the smoke-filled air. I dropped her at the office complex and, while she rooted about in her purse for the exact change, I examined her closely. She was neither tall nor short, neither fair nor dark. Her hair was tied in a neat ponytail, her large eyes were outlined with precise strokes of kohl and she wore a name tag around her neck. There was not a scratch on her anywhere. After she left, I parked the taxi under a tree and rooted around in the back of the vehicle, reaching into the recesses of the seat, peering into the footwell. I am not sure what I was looking for. All through that day and the next few days, the thought of the blue woman haunted me. I was sure I had not imagined her, but I could not make head or tail of what I had seen in the back of my taxi.
‘A couple of weeks later, I saw her again.’
I sat up. ‘You saw the young woman again or the vision?’ I asked.
‘Well, I saw a photo in the newspaper. After my shifts, I used to leaf through the newspapers while waiting for the young account-keeper to tally the day’s accounts. He had an easy life, that man. He took in all sorts of newspapers and magazines, mostly those with half-clad women and stories of gruesome murders, to while away time. The photo of the blue woman was on the front page of a city newspaper, only she wasn’t blue. But in every other respect, she was exactly the way I had seen her in the back of my taxi – the terrible wound, the bruised face, the battered body and gagged mouth. She was found the night before, covered in blood and dead, not far from the office I had dropped her at. You would, of course, understand that I was shaken by the whole thing. The entire evening, I could think of nothing else. I wondered whether I should tell the police about my vision, but what could I say? That I saw the dead woman in a blue vision a couple of weeks ago? What use would that be, even assuming they believed me? It might even get me into trouble, and then where would my sister and my children be? In the end, I decided not to say anything to anyone. As it is, I had enough troubles of my own at that time. A good-for-nothing from the neighbourhood had been hanging around my sister for some time and I could see my sister was beginning to take an interest too. The good-for-nothing did nothing except ride a loud motorbike through the slum, day and night, and wear his hair like the heroes in the movies my sister had acquired a taste for. Now, it wasn’t as if I was too old to see his appeal, but I was old enough to also see that trouble was written all over him. An added complication was that the good-for-nothing was distantly related to the goon whose taxi I drove. I had to be careful, and anyway, I knew saying anything to my sister would probably achieve the exact opposite result. So, I increased my vigilance, dropped in at her institute whenever I was in the vicinity and made sure she stayed indoors when home.
‘Shortly after I saw the photo of the young woman in the newspaper, the second blue woman appeared. This one was older, middle-aged, an ordinary housewife. She boarded my taxi near the big bus stop at the vegetable market in Dadar and was carrying a bagful of vegetables. She didn’t take long to turn blue. As soon as she pulled the door close, the blue light filled the taxi. There were welts around her neck, her eyes protruded out of her head, her tongue stuck out, her body was stiff. It was a truly horrific sight. My hands wobbled on the steering wheel, and I had to stop the taxi by the roadside. Perspiration fell from me like rain, and I trembled as though I was struck by the worst rain-fever. “Are you okay?” my passenger asked. She had such a kind voice, a mother’s voice who suppresses a smile even as she scolds her unruly child and lets him have an extra sweet later. “I am fine, just this heat and the glare of the sun,” I lied. “I can understand,” she said in her soft voice and gave me an orange to suck. “I suffer from the heat too. That is why I flagged your taxi. The bus was too long coming and the sun was giving me a bad headache.” While I drove her to her destination, she told me about herself. Nothing unusual, just ordinary marital misery. Four children, and an alcoholic womanizer for a husband. Mine was, too, I told her. Why don’t you leave him, I asked. “How can I?” she said. “It’s not easy to leave.” She was right, of course. It isn’t easy. I was lucky that mine left me, otherwise I would be sewing sequins on dresses until I was blind or washing utensils and swabbing floors, only for him to grab the money I earned and beat me every night by way of thanks. “He is a policeman, no one would pay heed even if I complained. I just have to hold on somehow until my children grow up,” she sighed. I couldn’t blame her for not being able to see beyond her children. Most women can’t. I dropped her at the police quarters where she lived. That gave me a bit of comfort. I thought at least she would be safe in the police compound. I gave her a discount on the fare. I knew I would have to make up for the discount somehow. The account-keeper, though agreeable enough and lately a bit too free with his attentions, was strict about the money owed to the goon.’
‘Was he troubling you, the account-keeper?’ I asked.
She laughed her silent laugh again. ‘Nothing worth mentioning, sir, it was just a lot of drama. He’d clutch at his heart and speak filmi dialogues – he wished he was the motor I drove, he envied the sun because it could touch me – that kind of nonsense. Still, his foolishness made my day interesting. Once or twice, he waylaid me in a quiet alley as I walked home, pressed up against me, tried to kiss and fondle, but he stopped the moment he saw that I was really angry. Despite all his swagger, there was no real harm in him. The fact is, his wife had left him for another and his pride as a man was wounded, so he played the lover boy with every woman he met.
‘But this isn’t about the account-keeper,’ she said. ‘A few days later, I decided to check on the woman I had dropped at the police quarters. You see, the second blue woman coming on top of the photograph in the newspaper had unsettled me. So one day, I skipped lunch and drove to the police quarters. Her house was locked. I knocked at the neighbour’s door. They told me she had committed suicide. Hung herself from the ceiling fan with a nylon clothesline. It was several hours before she was found, they told me; her body was stiff, her eyes starting from her head, her tongue bitten through. “How did you know her?” they asked. “Are you related to her?” I couldn’t speak, I was crying so hard. I don’t know how I managed to complete my shift that day. The account-keeper was concerned when he saw me. Had I suffered a heatstroke, he asked, or did someone dare misbehave with me? He felt my forehead and got me a lemon soda. I thanked him and said I had a bit of a headache, that was all. You see, I couldn’t tell him about the blue women. If he knew, he would be duty-bound to tell the owner, and I would lose my job. Who would allow someone who had visions of blue women to drive a taxi? Still, I couldn’t keep it all to myself. I felt I had to tell someone, talk about why it was happening, what it all meant. So the day after I learned about the second blue woman’s suicide, I told my little sister. I poured everything out to her while the children slept under the pale, flickering light of the weak electric bulb. I made her swear on our mother that she would not tell anyone. She was both horrified and intrigued, just as I expect you are, sir. What does the blue glow mean, she asked, and why only women? “I don’t know any more than you do,” I said. “I just hope it stops, or one of these days I will have an accident.” She was very worried for me, so I said to her, “I am very troubled. Won’t you be sensible, my little doll, and keep away from the good-for-nothing for now, at least until you finish your diploma and find a good job? Once you are more settled, we can talk again.” My little sister promised, and she was as good as her word.
‘The children’s summer holidays had begun, and I decided to send them and my sister to the village to spend the months before the rains in my mother’s home. A few days before they were to leave for the village, I was flagged down by a smartly dressed lady. She wore a tunic the colour of a cat’s eyes and heels which were not meant for walking. There was an expensive-looking car by the roadside, smoke pouring from under its hood. A couple of men were bent over it. She climbed into my taxi and told the men to call her once the car was fixed. Then she turned to me and gave me the address of a famous old club in the rich part of the city. Despite being such a smart lady, she chatted with me. She complimented me on my driving, on the neatness of the taxi, and asked all sorts of questions about me and my life. We had just stopped at a traffic light when I happened to glance at her in the rear-view mirror. One moment she was smiling and typing something into her phone and everything was normal and the next there was the accursed blue glow in the taxi, emitting from her puffed up body, swollen out of shape, battered and bruised, not a shred of humanity left. I sat paralysed I was so shocked. The traffic signal changed, the cars behind me honked sharply, and I somehow managed to ease into first gear. My skin crawled with horror, and I did not dare look into the rear-view mirror again. At her destination, she paid the fare and refused the change I held out. Instead, she handed me her business card. “Come see me next week before I leave for Goa,” she said. “I am a documentary filmmaker and you have given me a great idea!” I felt panic surge inside me, I did not know what to say, what to do. I wanted to warn her against going to Goa, to not go near the sea at any cost for, you see, the blue woman I had seen in the back this time was a drowned corpse. Meanwhile, she waved at me and disappeared into the old club.
‘The rest of my day passed in a haze, but I was careful to disguise my anxiety from the account-keeper. I did not want him to think I was sickly. In trying to conceal my agitation, I went to the other extreme and was so spirited that he felt encouraged enough to grab and kiss me. I was annoyed with myself for not seeing this coming. The door of his little tin port-a-cabin was broken and hung from one hinge, and something of this sort was bound to attract gossip. I slapped him half-heartedly and walked out. That night, I told my little sister about the drowned blue woman. She listened carefully. She is a smart girl, my sister, and she suggested that I write to the lady. “Since she has given you her address, it would be a simple matter of writing a note and delivering it to her office,” she said. “You can warn her and explain what you saw. I am sure she would understand.” I thought that was a good idea, and we composed the letter together. We decided to write about the other blue women and their fate, and to appeal to her to take my vision seriously, to take precautions against drowning, perhaps not go to the seaside at all. My sister wrote it out in her neat handwriting. I am going on and on, sir. If you feel bored or sleepy, please tell me.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I have been utterly engrossed. Your story is fascinating. Please go on.’
‘The next day my fares took me to the other end of the town, far from the city centre where the lady’s office was. The day after, I refused fares unless they were heading towards the city centre. Towards the end of my shift, I found myself in the vicinity. Her office was on the fourth floor of a newly painted old building; the stonework was picked out in white paint and the window frames were black and shiny. Her name was on a pearly white plate outside. A smart, young man was seated on a sofa, tapping away at a computer, his bare feet propped on a black table shaped like an anvil. I explained that I had met the lady and she had asked me to come see her in a few days. “I have something important to tell her,” I said and held out the letter. The young man raised an eyebrow and pointed to a low table, green like a soldier’s uniform and, of all things, shaped like a wave. “Leave the note there. She will see it when she comes in,” he said. I placed the note in the first trough of the wave, weighed it down with one of the pebbles, green like the table, that were lying heaped in a glass bowl, and left.
‘Over the next few days, I got busy with preparations for my family’s village trip. There were gifts to be bought, money to be arranged for deepening the borewell, the children to be told to do their holiday homework, and my little sister to be reminded to supervise them in the village and not let them run wild in the afternoon heat. But I kept an eye on the city newspapers and was relieved that there were no reports about drowning-deaths. A couple of days after my family left, I had a slow shift and decided to visit the smart lady. The office was as before – the white nameplate, the black table shaped like an anvil, the young man. He was standing on one bare foot, the other resting on the wall behind him, talking into his mobile phone. I waited for him to finish and then told him that I had come to keep my appointment with the lady. He looked at me, and I saw his eyes were red and he was unshaven. “She is dead, drowned in Goa,” he said flatly. My legs collapsed under me. Until that moment I was so sure I had saved her, that I had defeated the blue vision. The young man helped me to a seat and got me some water. That’s when I saw the note I had left for the lady, lying untouched in the first trough of the wave-table. I picked it up. “She left in a hurry. I thought it could wait.” He choked up. Back in my taxi, I struggled to control myself, but I was shaking so violently that the tea I bought from a passing tea boy spilled all over me. Eventually I managed to drive the taxi back to the stand, handed over the rent money and my fuel book to the next driver, and requested him to give them to the account-keeper. I told him I was feeling unwell, and it was true – I was soaked in sweat and my teeth chattered uncontrollably.
‘Reaching my room, I warmed some water on the small stove on which I did most of my cooking. Then I took a bath inside the room instead of going to the public washroom at the end of the alley. I soaped my body and washed my hair and scrubbed my hands and feet. After putting on my clothes and swabbing and drying the floor, I unrolled one of the mattresses stowed in the loft and lay down. The heat in my body had abated, but I felt a sickness inside me, a kind of aversion towards my own self. The fatal blue women floated before my eyes, gory, rigid, dead. I shuddered with horror, my own flesh repelled me. I don’t know how long I lay like that. It was evening when I was roused by a knock on the door. At first, I ignored it, but the knocking only grew louder. Reluctantly, I got up and opened the door halfway. The account-keeper stood in the alley. “I came to check on you. Are you okay?” I nodded. “I have got you something to eat. I know your children and sister are away, and there is no one to give you any food,” he said, holding out a bundle wrapped in newspaper towards me. I opened the door and let him in. What else could I have done? I couldn’t touch the food, my flesh crept with horror of myself, and there he stood with his simple needs, alive and whole, unaware of death and decay. I let him hold me, caress me over my clothes, kiss me clumsily. After his fumblings were over, I lay next to him, his body against mine. We were almost of equal height. He held me and cried, whispering about his loneliness, the bastard his wife left him for, the children he’d never had. I could feel my body through his hands as they grasped me, and my horror slowly ebbed away. After all, I was only a medium, I had no active role to play in anything. I soon got rid of him, but until my family returned from the village, he continued to pester me.’
‘But you were lonely yourself,’ I said. ‘You didn’t think of taking up with him?’
‘With him? Never,’ she said. ‘If I had found him an exciting lover, it might have been different, but he was clumsy, inept, quickly spent, and all I could muster for him was pity. Anyway, I had no time for all that. I had to think things over and take important decisions.’
‘What decisions?’
‘Decisions about what I should do about the blue women. You see, I couldn’t go on like that. I had to do something to stop the blue women from haunting my taxi. So I decided to avoid taking female passengers and found a job with a long-distance car company. No city-driving for me. I have driven inter-city ever since.’ She fell silent.
‘What happened next?’
‘Next? There isn’t much left,’ she replied. ‘My story, like our journey, is drawing to an end. You will soon reach your destination. We are already in the outskirts of Pune.’
I was surprised. ‘How is that possible? You said it would take three hours.’
‘And it has!’ She sounded amused.
I looked out the window. The rocky ghats had given way to a straggling cityscape. There were apartment blocks scattered on both sides of the road; and restaurants and hotels, too. The day looked fresh and a large, orange-coloured sun hung just above the raggedy mountains. Coarse-leaved dwarf mango trees, African tulip trees bearing bunches of vermillion flowers and sunshine trees sending forth sprays of yellow blossoms flashed past. How could the story be over when none of the questions were answered?
‘Let’s stop for a cup of tea. You must be tired after the long drive,’ I stalled.
‘My throat is somewhat dry, and I never say no to a cup of tea,’ she said and slowed the sedan, bringing it to a halt before a neat-looking restaurant by the roadside. There were tables and chairs set under a large tamarind tree, and a couple of puppies, dirty brown but still charming as only small animals can be, loitered about. I asked the boy who was dusting tables to bring some tea, and whatever was hot and freshly cooked. ‘Kande-pohe,’ she interjected, ‘topped with fresh kotambir. I can smell the onion-peanut-curry leaf garnish from here. Also a packet of biscuits for the puppies. Those puppies do not seem to have a mother around.’
‘Neither does that boy,’ I commented, as the boy retreated. He was skinny. The shoulders of his shirt hung low over his elbows and the hem fell below his knees.
‘Oh, he has a mother all right.’ She settled back into her chair.
‘How could you be so sure?’
‘You can see for yourself, sir. His face and hands are clean, and his hair oiled and neatly parted. His shirt is clean too. He has a mother, or at the very least, a grandmother.’
The boy brought our tea and snack. She tore open the packet of biscuits and breaking them into bits, threw them to the puppies. The little creatures yapped and swarmed around her feet, wagging their small, curved tails. I observed her carefully. The first impression of strength and neatness I had when I saw her at the airport was reinforced. She had large eyes set wide apart and her face was not unpleasing. The loose tunic she had on fell comfortably around her large bosom and broad hips. Her arms were muscled, and veins stood out on her wrists where the glass bangles gently jostled.
‘So, what happened next?’ I repeated my question. ‘Did you never see another blue woman ever again?’
She raised the teacup to her mouth and hesitated.
‘You did, didn’t you?’ I said.
‘I did,’ she conceded, ‘once, but this was not like the other occasions. This happened right after my children and my little sister returned from the village and shortly before I took the new job. The good-for-nothing was making a nuisance of himself, saying he wanted to marry my sister, trying to make her run away with him. He found out about the account-keeper and me and thought he could hold that over me, the fool. I, of course, told the account-keeper, and he thrashed the good-for-nothing. You would think a person would give up after this. Not him. He bought a country-made revolver and brandished it around. My little sister, though smart in other ways, is rather foolish about people. She got it into her head that he would shoot himself if she did not agree to marry him. By this time, she had completed her diploma and had taken a job with one of those home-beauty service companies. I was not in favour of this job, her going from house to house dragging heavy cases filled with bottles and tubes and machines to beautify idle women; it seemed less respectable than working in a salon. But she liked it, and because of her job, it was difficult for me to keep track of her. I was sure she was meeting the good-for-nothing every day.’
She emptied her cup, and I asked the boy to bring another.
‘You must be wondering what all this has to do with the blue women. Well, my little sister used to travel to her appointments by trains, taxis, autos, depending upon the location. Whenever I was headed in the same direction as her, I gave her a lift. One day, during the time all the mess with the good-for-nothing was going on, she was riding in the back of my taxi, and believe it or not, at one of the traffic lights, there was the cursed blue glow and there was my little sister, bullet wounds to her stomach, her mouth open in a scream of agony. I felt the nausea surge in my throat and screamed her name. I heard her frightened voice stammering, what happened, what happened, and the horrid sight was gone. She was no longer blue, no longer bleeding slowly to death. I told her what I had seen. “I am sure the good-for-nothing is planning to do something drastic,” I said. “You must listen to me, my vahini, my little sister, you must quit this job tomorrow and leave for the village directly. Stay there for the remainder of the summer. Let me see how things go here. When I think the time is right, I will call you back.” My sister was scared. She agreed and left the next day. That was the last blue woman I ever saw, and I am glad that there have been no more.’ She pulled out a paper napkin from the plastic napkin holder, wiped her mouth, and shaking the crumbs from her tunic, rose. ‘We must be going, sir. The morning rush hour is terrible, you wouldn’t want to get stuck in a jam.’
I paid the bill, gave some money to the little boy in the oversized shirt and followed her to the car.
‘So, no more blue women after that,’ I said after a while.
‘None at all, sir,’ she said, ‘not a single one.’
‘Have you ever wondered why you never had visions about blue men?’
‘I have asked myself many questions,’ she said in response. ‘Why did I see those specific blue women? What was I supposed to do upon seeing them? But I have found no answers.’
We were in the city now and speeding through broad, treelined roads.
‘Perhaps the purpose of those visions was for you to save your sister from that murderous fellow,’ I said.
‘Perhaps,’ she agreed. ‘My sister is now married to a boy from our village whom I always liked for her. She works in a proper salon now. She doesn’t need to go to people’s homes like a common servant.’
‘And that good-for-nothing?’ I asked. ‘You said he was connected to the goon in your locality. He didn’t kick up a fuss?’
The car turned into a pair of wide gates and rumbled over a gravel path. For the second time that morning, she hesitated. ‘He did trouble me,’ she said slowly.
‘I thought as much,’ I said, a note of satisfaction creeping into my voice. ‘What did he do?’ I asked.
‘He shot himself with that cursed revolver in front of our house. Made a hash of the job too, the fool. Shot himself in the stomach … They took him to the hospital, bleeding and screaming in pain.’
She brought the car to a stop in front of a glass façade.
‘We have reached your hotel, sir,’ she said.