That Whore

I don’t know how I contracted malaria in that godforsaken desert town since there were neither pools of dirty water around nor a blade of grass; both were too precious a commodity to waste and sheep and their owners had the first claim of right over them rather than mosquitoes. Anyway, due to a week of intermittent fever - aggravated by quinine of dubious quality - I lost quarter of my body weight and remained bedridden for an additional week.

The summer in that part of Punjab was unforgiving. The gates of hell would open early in the morning and remained ajar until the sundown. There used to be some activity on the streets early in the morning but as the high noon approached near the deserted streets started looking like those of a ghost town.

Recovery in such a place was not easy. I would spend most of my daytime in the study since doctors didn’t allow me to go into an air-conditioned room. That was perfectly fine with me as log as I had a ceiling fan and company. The afternoons were, however, cruel because people in the household had lass-si, and consequently siesta, as their second religion.

The view outside the window was an eyesore. Across the paved street there was a large ground. The town committee, probably before Partition, had installed goalposts on either side, which dignified it as a ’football ground’. There was not a single blade of grass in that ground and pulverized dust rose up in tiny dancing whirlwinds all the time. People used to cut across the field to make a shortcut to a nearby village. On the far side of the ground there were few trees under which cows and donkeys belonging to nearby gypsies would hang out in the scorching afternoons.

It was one such mid afternoon from hell when I was reading a book and occasionally peeking outside the window to give my eyes a rest. A pack of donkeys was standing motionless under the tree as if they were in a deep thought. Sometimes I think that only if these five-legged creatures could speak or write they would have been philosophers and writers. Contrary to the popular belief I think donkey is a very pensive and meditative animal. I have even seen tears in the eyes of some of them; probably they silently lament their misery.

My train of thought was interrupted as I saw two girls walking by the window. The older one was probably 17; she was leading with quick strides, whereas one behind her was flitting and bouncing like a little kid. She was probably seven or eight year old. Both were wearing identical ajrak like chadors and seemed to be from the nearby village.

"Hey! You! Come over here" I yelled absolutely impulsively because when the girls looked back, stopped, and hesitantly came to the window, my brain was still processing the query as to why I had called them.

"What do you want?" asked the older girl while holding the window bars.

"I don’t know. where are you headed in this burning afternoon".

"What is it to you?" girl sounded a bit annoyed.

"Nothing. I just don’t have anyone to talk to."

"Where are the other people of the house?"

I wondered whether she became curious or she just needed a break from the smoldering heat; I replied, "They’re sleeping"

"Why aren’t you sleeping then?"

"I can’t. Those medicines keep me awake all the time" I nodded towards the medicines lying on the side table. While I was explaining my predicament to her I saw that the younger one was a miniature copy of hers. One of her front milk teeth was broken and she was constantly feeling the gap with her tongue.

"Did you read all those books" she cast a bird’s-eye view of the room and nodded towards a pile of books on the table.

"Well most of them" I said as I saw that the milk teeth was beginning to sit down in the shade.

As my eyes adjusted to the glare in her background I started seeing her face clearly. She was a very ordinary village girl with an indistinctly unnoticeable face the face that you forget the very next minute you see it. As I delved deeper into the features of her face my heart began to sink. She wasn’t ugly but worst; she had a featureless face truly a girl without a face.

Allow me to elaborate on it a bit. The fact is that I do not believe in the concept of ugly or beautiful; to me in this world there are two kinds of people- they are either suns or moons. That is how God has made us. Some people are bestowed with an internal glow that radiates from every pore of their bodies and forms an aura around them. And then there are people who are like moon, which does not have light of its own but it reflects the sunlight from its surface. Such people, without their own respective suns, are nothing but a meaningless heap of rubble.

"Hey listen!" she interrupted my train of thought,". Can you spare two rupees?"

"What do you need them for?" I said looking at the little girl who slid a bit closer to the wall as the moving sun diminished the shade. She was now scratching dirt with a twig; probably drawing my cartoon.

The problem with that girl was that she was neither a sun nor a moon; she was rather like an amorphous asteroid, roaming aimlessly in the dark expanse of universe. I really doubted that this girl would ever find her sun that would make her glow. Most likely she would end up tied to a middle-aged peasant who would accommodate her somewhere between his second wife and his mistress, the village hussy. He would keep her trapped in his orbit by perpetual pregnancies, regular beatings, and by tearing down her soul through verbal assaults. By the time she would be in her 40’s the malnutrition, the menopause, the frigidity and an early onset of osteoporosis would confine her to a chorpoy as a loveless hag, yelling at her own offspring and grandchildren at the same time.

I shuddered with the horror of my thought. Right there, just in one mental minute, like a petty god, I had written down her whole fate. Sometimes I wonder if God shudders the same way when He writes down our fate. But God is also benevolent; so I was told. That’s why I had to be benevolent too; but I was no god, I was a man and she was a woman.

"Hey! Hey! Are you even listening?" she complained bitterly.

"Oh! I am sorry; I was thinking about something else. What do you need the money for?"

"fare for the tonga. to get to our village."

"Surebut can’t you stay a little longer?"

She didn’t reply and rested her forehead on the window bars.

’How could God be so careless and indifferent?’ I thought. But that idea did not appeal to my mind. God cannot be indifferent; instead, He is like an innocent child and we are His toys. He loves His toys dearly but has no idea how to take care of them. So sometime when he mangles us and breaks us down, He feels really bad. Just like a child who breaks her favorite toy and then asks her father for a consolation kiss, He also comes to us for His consolation kiss; whom else He has got, but us.

"Hey! You think too much. Where are you lost now?"

"Oh! Nothing. I think these medicines are driving me nuts"

"You should take them with milk"

"ughh I hate milk"

She shrugged and started sliding her fingers over the bars as if they were made of velvet. It was the first time that I noticed her hands. They were soft and silky as of those girls who write poetry in their scrapbooks and keep roses and butterflies in them. There were no traces of broken nails or skin, which meant that she was not one of those villagers who worked as housemaids in that town. Her hands were quite extraordinary for a peasant girl. I thanked God. I knew that He wouldn’t be that careless.

"You’ve got very pretty hands"

She didn’t reply and started scraping paint off the bars with her nails. I was slightly encouraged after seeing her hands and I thought may be I wasn’t looking at her with an unprejudiced mind. I looked at her again. Her face was long and a pointed nose made it narrower but a tiny nose pin with a fake black pearl was diverting attention from her long face. Her lackluster eyes were small but eyelashes were thick and dark but still they weren’t anywhere close to giving sleepless nights to a man. She was in the prime of her youth but she lacked that fragrance the scent of a woman - that urges young men to smell their own armpits. Her slender body desperately needed a lot of layers of cream cheese all around but specially at the right places.

She followed my gaze and covered herself in the chador along with her hands. At least she could read what was on a man’s mind.

At that moment it dawned on me like a revelation. the whole game plan. the cosmic game of checkers that He wants us - a man and a woman - to play. Now I knew exactly why I fell ill; why she had to pass by my window and why I had to stop her. It was her serendipity and not her fate. Then within just one split second I knew what I had to do next. I looked her in the eye and with the certitude and command of a divinity I said, "I would very much like to kiss you"

My bluntness didn’t startle her but her face suddenly changed color. She mumbled back something, which I could not hear because just at that time one of the five-legged creatures across the playground started braying. These beasts. donkeys. have a strange psychology. Just as one starts braying in its horribly loud, foghorn-like shriek the other donkeys also start doing the same, initiating a horrible opera of giant tubas.

I waited. As those sopranos delivered the last of their magnum opus with a cadence I said "Take five rupees instead but I must kiss you"

"I thought you were a nice boy. Why are you talking like this?" she complained in a low disappointed voice.

"But what is wrong with a kiss. Haven’t you ever kissed anyone in your whole life?"

"I kiss my little brother all the time but that is different"

"Why do you kiss him?"

"Because he is so cute and I just can’t help it"

"I find you adorable too and I can’t help it either. "

" But that is different."

At that time one of the four-legged creatures started rolling in the dirt raising the clouds of dust in the ground. My dad once told, me when I was young, that donkeys take a ’bath’ by rolling in the dirt. The way they perform this ritual with playfulness and agility shows their excitement and joviality. What a way to unwind.

I relaxed my back on the chair and clasped my hands behind my head leisurely. She hadn’t spat on my face and run away yet, so it was safe to assume that I was in control.

"Look! It is just a harmless little kiss. No one would even know"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I don’t live here. I am only here for the summer vacation and will be gone by next week. We will probably never see each other again"

She shook her head baffled "But why do you want to kiss me; what do you see in me?"

"I don’t know. it is hard to explain. but lets just assume that I find you incredibly attractive." I paused and then continued ". Okay 10 rupees just to show you how bad I want it." I proposed looking at the little girl who was retracting her feet into the continuously shrinking shade.

She didn’t reply immediately but then she spoke in a stern but thoughtful voice "What if someone demanded a kiss from your sister in exchange for 10 rupees. what would you do then?"

Woman has been asking this question from man since the time he assumed the role of hunter-gatherer and she took responsibility to propagate his seed. Sometimes woman gets away with it and sometimes man does what he has to do anyway. But I was not an ordinary man; I was one of those rare genetic anomalies who are cursed with relentless and never-ending pensiveness and cogitation. Since the time I became aware of my existence I had been thinking. I had no childhood if I had one, it was spent thinking.

Was I unethical or amoral? No I wasn’t, though I had my own rules and my own ethics. You might hate my self-righteousness at this time but if it is of any consolation to you, just think of me as a vulture. We may hate vultures but I think they are the most ethical beings on this planet. A vulture will wait, sitting on a tree it may even drop and die from hunger and thirst but it would never touch its prey until the prey breathes its last breath and turn into a carcass. My persistence was my ethic and the sublimity and eminence of my objective made me persistent.

"I don’t know. May be I will advice my sister never to solicit 10 rupees from a stranger"

"I didn’t ask for 10; I asked for 2. I have never seen such a heartless and amoral person in my whole life. Aren’t human beings supposed to help each other? What is one to do when in need of help sell her body or dignity?" As she bawled a tear was almost on the verge of rolling down the corner of her eye.

That tear in her lackluster eye looked pretty. I thought of that worthless speck of mica on a sandy beach, which is unnoticeable until sun shines at it at a particular direction. The reflected light dazzles you and invokes a desire in you to possess it. Glitter is the worth of things here. Girls like her also become very pretty when a sun starts shining in their lives. The realization of the fact that they are wanted rubifies their faces; the candescence that their eyes reflect makes other women covetous; and the elegance of their canter makes men envisage tickling thoughts.

She continued bawling "I just asked you for 2 rupees and you started bidding on my dignity. What is wrong with men like you; if a woman is not your maaN (mother) she is your kutti (bitch); do you ever consider her a human being"

At that moment I started banging my head on the table. That startled her so much so that she forgot bawling.

"Listen! I do not even want to touch you with my hands. How can I violate your dignity without even touching you I was wrong to think that since you asked for money I could get what I wanted with more money. I am sorry. I apologize. but I have to have this kiss"

Probably, she wasn’t expecting words of apology from a man sitting in an intimidating red brick haveli.

"I don’t understand" she was utterly perplexed now. "I think you are crazy. Why would you want to kiss me?"

The donkeys had again turned into philosophers; standing motionless under the tree, contemplating. The little girl had now folded her legs to keep them in the shade. She was still busy drawing meaningless objects on the ground, seemingly indifferent to our conversation.

"Look! You wont understand it, but let me try" I paused, collected my thoughts and continued, "Do you know when God created man, he asked all the angels and djinns to prostrate before man and they all did except Satan?"

"Yeah"

"So think of me as one of those angels and my kiss as my prostration before the best of His creations and if it is too much to think of me as an angel, consider me the devil who has recanted. My kiss is my recantation. my redemption."

Her eyes widened and after contemplating for a while she said "I have no idea what you’ve just said but it sure sounded good. do you read such things in those books"

"Yeah sometimes"

"So, are those books dirty?"

"Yeah some of them" I wasn’t sure whether I was telling a lie or a truth.

"Would you show me one of your dirty books?"

"Some other time. may be but let’s first attend to the business at hand"

"So why don’t you marry me instead? Then you can kiss me all you want"

"Look at me. I am only 17. I can marry you but I can’t provide you even the next meal, what to talk about security or shelter. I can’t kiss you all my life living on a sidewalknow can I?"

I think it was the first time that she looked at me from head to toe. She heaved a sigh of relief as she evaluated her suitor slash tormentor. The frailty of the bony little runt sunk in a rocking chair emboldened her. As she smiled, a shade of mischief veneered her face and a tiny star started twinkling in her eye. I had defeated God. I had made her beautiful.

"Twenty rupees and you have to promise me that you wont touch me" she said hesitantly like a nervous investor who puts all of his eggs in one basket entrusting it with someone he hardly knows.

"uh okay." now it was my turn to be baffled, "but only if you think that my twenty rupees and your kiss are our gifts to each other and not a barter..and I promise on Joohle Laal’s grave that I wont touch you except with my lips right on yours."

"Angraizi chummi?ughh that is gross" she raised her eyebrows " you didn’t tell me that."

"How do you know that it is angraizi chummi" I chuckled at her innocent spontaneity.

"I saw it on VCR at my mausi’s (aunt)"

"It’s called French Kiss. and its not gross it is delicious"

She tried to repeat the word ’French Kiss’ but couldn’t pronounce it.

"Have you ever kissed someone like that" a sudden surge of carnal anticipation raised the tiny, colorless otherwise invisible- hair on her earlobes.

"Yep... every girl that I kiss I kiss her like that" I lied blatantly.

She didn’t say anything and kept scratching the bar. Sunlight was almost hitting at her back now. The little girl also stood up. She was almost glued to the wall.

"Soshall we?" I nodded towards the door.

"Okay, but I would like to see twenty rupees in my hand first"

"Sure" I said, and opened the drawer. But as I opened the drawer it hit me like a brick that my wallet was lying upstairs and there was no way in the world to get it unless waking people up. Sweat appeared almost immediately on my forehead. I looked at the girl; she was looking at me with anticipation. That tiny little starlet that appeared in her eyes was still glittering. But the tangled web that I had woven so meticulously was about to crumble.

I simpered. I pretended that I had trouble getting up from my chair and sat down panting.

"Excuse me, just give me a minute", I held my head as if I was trying to get over vertigo. I needed time to think. The genetic anomaly, the god, the thinker needed time to think.

I simpered again. The sun was now shining right over her face and tiny little droplets of perspiration started appearing at her hairline. The little girl had unglued herself from the wall and now she was standing directly in the sun.

"How about a kiss on the cheek?" I struggled to straighten up the mangled web.

"Uhhhhhhhhh" the scream startled both of us. It was the little girl.

"Goddammit!!!! You two.. what is wrong with you. the hell is burning all around us and you can’t get through with your"

While she paused for a while, we both were too dumbfounded to reply to her. Then she looked at me, smiled, and said while blinking her eyes "Just give us two rupees and kiss me instead to your hearts content will ya?".

My mind turned absolutely numb. The drawer was still open, and in one corner I could see four glittering 50 paisa coins.