A Cut-Like Wound (29 page)

But Bhuvana, his Bhuvana, was not one of those sluts. Bhuvana was the kind of girl he knew his sisters to be. Shy, docile and traditional.

‘I can’t stay very long,’ she said.

‘Why? Chikka master keeping tabs on you?’ Sanjay murmured.

‘Yes.’ She smiled and looked at her watch.

‘I have to be back at my hostel by nine thirty.’

‘Let’s go in,’ he said.

‘No, not here,’ she said quickly. ‘Someone Chikka knows may see us. On the other side is another restaurant. Let’s go there.’

‘How do you know about the other place?’ he asked curiously.

‘Chikka told me about it. He said he was going to take me there as a treat.’

He nodded and pushed the bike off its stand. As they turned the corner, he asked, ‘Have you had anything at all after lunch?’

She shook her head.

‘Katthe,’ he whispered. ‘You shouldn’t go hungry this long.’

She smiled. He had called her a donkey. But only if there was great feeling could there be such familiarity. ‘I couldn’t eat even if I wanted to,’ she murmured.

‘Why? Are you on some silly fast?’ he said as he climbed the staircase.

‘How could I eat when I knew I was going to see you?’ she said quietly.

Sanjay smiled at her. He hummed a popular Kannada song, replacing the word Geetha with Bhuvana. ‘
Sanju mattu Bhuvana, serebeku antha, baredaagide indhu Brahmanu
…’

Bhuvana hid her smile. That Sanju and Bhuvana should belong to each other had been ordained by Brahma the creator himself…

Sanjay pushed open the restaurant doors and looked at the low lights and the little pools of intimate space it created. This place would certainly be more expensive than Komala Refreshments. But perhaps he could find a corner and hold her hand without shocking her out of her wits.

In the cover of darkness, girls even as demure as Bhuvana lost some of their timidity. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

She drank in his smile hungrily. Her heart felt as if it would explode with the weight of the love she felt for him.

He waited for her to slide into the bottle-green velvet sofa set against the wall. Instead of sitting across the table, he slid in beside her. She shrank into herself. He smiled at her tenderly and reached for her hand. ‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘I am not going to do anything to you even though…’

‘Even though what?’ she asked.

‘Even though I want to… badly. Kiss you from head to toe … mmuwa mmuwa… till you ask me to stop.’

She smiled and hid her face in her hands. ‘Oh Sanju,’ she said, peering at him through a crack between her fingers.

He was a young man. Not older than twenty-six or twenty-seven. A nondescript young man working in a restaurant on the Outer Ring Road near Marathahalli, as a steward. The hours were long and the pay wasn’t very good, but it was a place to start and he had grabbed his chance when a friend who supplied bottled water to the restaurant told him about it. ‘Once you have some experience, I’ll find you a place in a star hotel,’ the friend had said. ‘Or in the housekeeping section of one of the IT companies.’

Mohan liked his life the way it was just then. He had fled his little village near Kannur in Kerala, knowing that to live
there was to be in a prison, trapped between his family’s expectations and social compulsions. But in the anonymity of a big city like Bangalore, he was his own man and he could be anyone or anything. Free to wear the jeans that clung to his crotch like a second skin. Free to flirt with his customers. Free to find solace in the arms of whoever he chose. He liked them both: men and women. Different contours, different pleasures. ‘You are just greedy,’ a middle-aged schoolteacher with gaps in his teeth and a long curling tongue had told him a week ago. ‘You want it all.’

Mohan smiled. He wanted it all. But he was also careful to not take any risks. He waited for them to come to him. He looked down at the man kneeling before him. The man had just given him one of the best blowjobs of his life and would pay him, too, for pleasuring him. ‘That’s why you like me so much,’ he retorted.

But that evening, Mohan made a mistake. A customer at table number 8 had flirted with him even as he walked in. Darting glances his way, leaning forward as he ordered so his face was almost in Mohan’s crotch. Calling him back to the table again and again. Chatting him up. What was he to make of it? Mohan liked what he saw; he was flattered by the obvious attention. When he brought the bill, he let his fingers slide over the customer’s. And the man had sprung up from his table screaming, ‘Get away from me, you bloody homo!’

Mohan had stood stricken.

The man flung the bill and its faux leather folder to the ground. He reached across and with one angry move swept the plate, dishes, cutlery, glass, water jug and the bud vase with a wilting-at-the-edge rosebud in it off the tablecloth. Over the din of smashing crockery, he hollered, ‘Is this a restaurant or a pick-up joint?’

The other customers had looked up in shock. The chefs came to the kitchen doors. The other waiters stopped in their path. The manager came running. ‘What’s the problem, sir?’

‘He made a pass at me. This fucking homo made a pass at me!’ the man ranted. ‘I came in here thinking this is a respectable place. But it’s just a whorehouse for gays…’

‘Sir, sir!’ The manager plucked at his sleeve. ‘Please, sir!’ He gestured furiously to Mohan to get out of the man’s sight.

The man was placated. The rest of the customers returned to their dinner. And Mohan was fired.

‘I didn’t do anything, sir,’ Mohan pleaded.

But the manager was firm. ‘This isn’t like breaking a stack of plates or getting an order wrong. I don’t want to know whether you were at fault or not. I just don’t want you here. You can collect your salary and leave.’

And so, at half past nine, Mohan was out of work. As he left the restaurant for good, a violent rage coursed through him. An internal combustion that made him want to push himself to his limits. He wasn’t a bloody homo, he wasn’t one. He would find a woman, a whore if necessary, and fuck her brains out. He was a man; a proper red-blooded male.

He took a bus, not caring where it went. When it got to a traffic signal near Ramamurthy Nagar, he got out and began walking down the service road that ran alongside the Outer Ring Road. A can of diet Coke lay on its side. He kicked at it furiously. It sailed through the air and landed a few feet ahead, near an intersection where a small lane opened onto the service road. He walked towards it. A woman stepped out of the shadows and began walking alongside. ‘Are you alone?’ she asked softly.

Mohan muttered, ‘We are all alone.’

‘You are upset,’ she said. ‘I can see you are very disturbed.’

‘What is it to you?’ he snapped. ‘Go away and leave me alone. You’ll walk with me now and ten minutes later, you’ll be screaming rape! Just go.’

‘No, I won’t,’ she said. ‘I can see you are hurting. I know how to make you feel better.’

In the pool of light from a street lamp, he turned to look at her. She wasn’t bad looking at all. In fact, she was pretty. Then it struck him that something was amiss. What he saw was a man dressed as a woman. Well, if that was how he got his kicks, Mohan didn’t mind. He just wanted to fuck and this creature before him was willing.

‘Do you have a place to go to?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘Of course.’

‘Do you have a name?’ he asked.

‘Bhuvana.’

S
antosh looked at his watch again. It was quarter past nine. The eunuch had been in there for almost two hours now. Didn’t the temple close for the night?

Suddenly, the eunuch appeared at the doorway. She looked furious. Santosh shivered. He had never seen anyone or anything as menacing as this creature.

She walked down the road and flagged an autorickshaw.

Santosh felt his heart quicken. Where was she going? He saw an empty autorickshaw approaching. He stepped onto the road and waved it down. ‘Follow that auto,’ he said, jumping in. ‘Don’t lose it.’

The autorickshaw driver snapped, ‘Who do you think you are? I am not chasing after any auto. Get out or I’ll call the police.’

‘I am the police,’ Santosh said with a supreme sense of satisfaction. How many times had he heard this mouthed in the movies; now finally, he had said it. ‘Go, go,’ he urged.

The autorickshaw wound its way through the streets and soon, some of it became familiar. The Lingarajapuram flyover, down Kacharanakanahalli, across the Outer Ring Road strewn with barricades, earthmoving equipment and giant craters… this was almost their station jurisdiction area… and then Hennur Main Road. The autorickshaw turned into a by-lane and came to an abrupt halt.

The eunuch stepped out and knocked on the door of a rundown house.

‘Stop,’ Santosh said. The autorickshaw braked, nearly throwing him out of the seat. ‘Mind it,’ Santosh growled.

The door opened and the eunuch stepped in.

‘A group of eunuchs live there,’ the autorickshaw driver offered helpfully. ‘It’s a sort of mother house.’

‘Mother house?’ Santosh didn’t even bother to hide his bafflement.

The autorickshaw driver flicked at his dashboard with a cloth. ‘Like you and me and everyone else, even eunuchs need a place to go to. Since they don’t have any ties with their real families, they create one of their own with an elderly eunuch or two being the mother and aunts…’

‘How long have they lived here?’

‘I don’t know about that. But I’ve seen them here for almost ten years now. But why are you so interested in them?’ The autorickshaw driver opened a packet of gutka and stuffed some into his cheek.

‘None of your business,’ Santosh said. ‘Just park the auto where I ask you to, and wait.’

‘For how long?’

The autorickshaw driver’s questions annoyed Santosh. He was hungry, thirsty and tired. But he couldn’t think about all that. ‘As long as I want you to,’ he snapped.

An hour later, all the lights in the house were switched off.

Santosh wondered what he should do. ‘Sir, I have to get back,’ the autorickshaw driver said, as if he had sensed Santosh’s mood shift.

‘Drop me back at Shivaji Nagar,’ Santosh said. He would have to get his bike back and then ride all the way home. It would be midnight before he stumbled into bed. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, weary though he was. Something had gone wrong this evening. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what.

‘How much?’ he asked as the autorickshaw paused at the mouth of the lane he had parked his bike in.

‘You are going to pay me?’ The autorickshaw driver craned his neck and peered out at the clear night sky.

‘What are you doing?’ Santosh asked curiously.

‘Just checking if a crow’s flying on its back and if the sun is shining at midnight. Such occurrences are known to happen when a policeman offers to pay!’

‘You are a joker, aren’t you?’ Santosh said as he pulled two hundred-rupee notes out of his wallet.

It had been a wasted evening and it had cost him money for nothing. He wondered if he would be able to claim expenses.

SATURDAY, 20 AUGUST

The corporator ate his breakfast, watching his brother. He tore a piece of dosa, dipped it into a bowl of chutney and popped it into his mouth. Chikka, he noticed, was toying with his food.