for bent
nimmy joshi
14th April
Bangalore
Been five years I am in this trade now. It doesn’t feel as unnaturally demeaning as it used to. But I think when it was demeaning, it was so because I was too haughty and narcissistic. Finally after you are done with the 5 stages of grief you quietly grow up into someone who is okay with being as promiscuous as you are. There is nothing wrong with it; except you’re worse; there is no money. Money does make it better. I am the rich’s unpaid ‘escort’.
There are a lot of takers, faces all covered, even when they all know each other by the car numbers and the jewellery their wives wear and discard and talk about.
I am better than them. Am I? I’ll never be taken as one perhaps. But I can fall in love a million times, get my heart broken a million times and it wouldn’t make a difference. I always wanted to be a prostitute. It takes effort for god’s sake.
No one gets it. They think it is situations and circumstances, but mostly it is the love of the trade. Love of one’s own self. Look at the perks. I mean, there are chances you might get raped but the time has long passed when I was afraid of force and brutality. I do not pay heed to it. It comes and goes and like a bottom feeder; I suck onto the ocean floor and survive the whirlpool.
I am no object of ‘civilised’ desire anymore. I can be vile and filthy and filled with stench but people will let me be. Glares, stares, jabs won’t upset me. They will not tingle my skin or ride up the back of my neck with sliding beads of sweat. Evil they might be, but all cities, all towns, that I went to; even to sleep for a day, the air had a smell; of blood, of sweat, of underground rats, of rotting ideas.
Watch me dying, my friend and revel in the same ecstasy that might come to you of knowing I am at peace. Do not disturb my dreams now, you can’t. You will have to stand outside and knock the entire night and even then I might not open it. The soul of this city diluted, dissolved itself in the tasteless sugar, salt and spice of love.
Thank you but fuck you; I am not the tool of your stupid, unreasonable fountain of sentiments. The bonfire of your weekly sins: the dirty secrets of confessions. Redeemable somehow, all of them; every single one.
They took away my rain. But they can’t take away my ghungroos and lock them up. The only bit of drama in my life are my old Hindi songs and my eyes. Old, battered black and white movie posters and noisy renditions of their songs on the radio. ‘Yaad kiya dil ne kahan ho tum… pyaar se pukaarlo jahan ho tum. The only bit of honesty in me, this prayer that moves me. Moves me to act out my bit. ‘Matlabi jahan meherbaan ho tum,, pyaar se pukaar lo jahan ho tum’.
Like a Namazi kneeling five times a day, this spirit in my voice is hidden by a series of perfectly rehearsed moves, maneuvered moves. But like this black of my clothes, I am the truth. And I speak it too, in more than two dozen languages.
there and back
Amongst scorpions and wild berry-strewn fields, when power used to fail our little village, we used to love lying down and star gazing.
Finding the Orion with its belt of three stars - the magnificent hunter and more magnificent stories - stories that spanned lifetimes and trickled down generations in honey dipped words… or maybe jaggery dipped words.
We watched the Saptarishi (the seven sages), the big dipper. The sixth star had a tiny little companion - Rishi Agastya and his wife. What is it about love that keeps you inebriated not just in death but in life as well.
The last star pointed towards the ‘Dhruba tara’, the pole star, the immovable one. He guides people towards their mirages. I could tell the wind then to come and run with me. Run and swirl under my skirt, raising the hint of soft brown hair on my skin.
Run like the wind, driver Saab, told me. He drove the bus to the city and came back every two days. Each time it came back it was more restless for me. The unrest grew like a vine. A vine that doesn’t flower or creep on walls. It wrinkled with the thousand memories of mine dying every day. Or maybe they were just asleep. Tired from all the running; tired from running away.
And I would try to fly, try to break the strings of the kite, the blood stained strings of nubile pubescent innocent little girls with calves that had the most intricate pink and blue net of veins.
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