By Prerna Munshi
Rains were adamant.
Rains scared me.
The sky like the one outstretched always left me with an ominous impression.
The curtain relentlessly fluttered as if it struggled for its last few breaths, beating its lungs, struggling against its death.
I never realized when this unsettling force of my thoughts sank me into this fancy Ottoman chair.
Sucked in the vortex of my own thoughts when the phone rang,
‘Have you arrived? I am sorry I am late.’, the voice spoke. 'Never mind. I am in Room Three-Not-Three.'
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was him. ‘Vikram’, he extended a hand.
‘Aaliya. They call me Aaliya.’
A man in his late thirties, from a well to do background, stout bodied, gaunt featured handsome faced stood in front of me. One of those men that still held his appeal in younger and older women alike.
There was something strikingly unique about him. He did not hurry unlike others.
‘Isn’t that your real name?’
‘No. Such fancy names are one of the many grants of the Agency.’ He laughed.
‘How old are you?’ '24’
‘How long are you into this?’ ‘3 years’
I started to ready myself for the ensuing when Vikram asked me to keep sitting.
'Do you mind if you could sit a while?' 'Not until you pay.'
'Thank you. I will.' , he hesitantly smiled.
I was mindlessly looking at the things around, sneaking at my watch every now and then.
'Do you have other engagements?', Vikram asked concernedly. 'No'
'Where do you stay?'
'We do not divulge personal details.'
A long silence followed. Without a pause, in its complete verbosity. I was more unsettled with this than sleeping with this stranger.
He coughed. The sound broke the uneasy insulation of the silence. He began to leave.
'Is it your first time?' 'Yes'.
'That’s why the nervousness. I have a cure for that', I ridiculed. 'No. Thank you.'
He handed over the money.
'Can I meet you some other time?'
'Depends on the Agency', I bagged the money.
'Well. Excuse me', I intervened, ' I hope you are not one of those hopeless romantics who believe in ‘knowing their escorts’ before proceeding? Or are you?'
'Yes', he shut the door behind.
A few days later, the Agency fixed my appointment with him. Vikram called me.
‘Can we not meet at the venue given by your Agency?’, he requested.
I grew a little anxious. I thought may be he was trying to act smart, dodging the possibilities of being ‘found out’.
‘I cannot meet you except at the given venue.’
‘You have nothing to fear about. You will be safe.’, Vikram assured. ‘For a coffee?’, he insisted.
‘Are you willing to take me to such expensive a coffee?’, I laughed. ‘I hope you are not enamored with me, are you?’
‘No’, he disconnected.
I met him at a coffee shop. It was for the first time, in these years I had met a client not in the preset venue.
Flipping through the menu, I humored ‘I hope you know how much this coffee costs’
‘Depends on how long it lasts’, he smiled.
‘Why are you into this?’, he suddenly became interrogative. ‘Sorry!’, I exclaimed.
‘Why are you into this?’, he emphasized.
‘Are you some human rights activist in the garb of a client who has agreed to pay a handsome sum for all this lecture on why I shouldn't be here etc. etc. etc.?’
‘No. Plain interest. Don’t say if you don’t wish to. Oh yes, you are abiding by your Agency’s directives of not divulging personal details’
‘Tell me about yourself first. I wish to know my clientele before I divulge mine. Why an escort?’
‘Because I can afford to.’, his answer neat quite like his ways.
‘You are studying? How often do you serve as an escort?’
‘Yes. This forms the corpus for my higher education. I am not a regular. When I am scarce on funds, I ask the Agency to set for an appointment.’
‘Nobody to look after?’, he concernedly asked.
‘Mom committed suicide. Dad, a month later. I was 18 then.’ His eyes melted. ‘Who suggested you this?’
‘No one. Parents had savings that lasted for sometime and then I began making the money.’
‘Does it affect you?’
‘It does, however, the intensity is neither great nor grave. After three years of being into this, I see my body as a service provider, as a prosthetic.’
Being reminded of all that that you had left far behind, that too by a client was not all that inviting. I waded through forgotten memories. One by one: of an abused childhood, of growing up in that, cantankerous parents, suicide one after the other, both on rainy days. The feeling of suicide, its stench, its reek of helplessness, of delirium, of the incalculability of its possibility. I was pulled by a train of thoughts.
Vikram coughed, meanwhile.
‘Forgotten memories, some?’, he read my mind.
‘You are surprising me. You stripped off a chest of forgotten memories.’ He laughed: a forgotten gentleness pealed in it.
The next time, we met, was not through the Agency.
‘I was clean bowled. Could not get a chance to sneak into your secrets’, I whispered, dodging the librarian’s stern gaze.
‘What do you want to know?’ , as he flipped a journal. ‘Married?’
‘Was.’
‘I am sorry.’ ‘She is alive.’
I broke into a laughter. ‘Divorced?’
‘On paper, no. Off paper, yes.’
‘What is an OFF PAPER DIVORCE?’, I was suddenly interested. ‘One that is not a public proclamation yet.’
‘Who suggested you for an escort?’
‘I make my own mind.’, he was incorrigibly neat. There was a long pause.
‘Are we not going to have it the obvious way?’, I asked ‘Isn’t that too mainstream?’, he laughed.
‘So, what else do you expect of a sex vendor? Conversations?’, I joked.
I gave him a sharp gaze and continued, ‘You are paying me for what I am not selling.’
Vikram smiled, ‘You are being paid for your time.’
‘You are miserably alone, Mr. Vikram. You need associations.’
‘I tried it that way too. I do not seem to fit in in companionship. I devised this method of making associations : Buying it’
‘Interesting’
‘Ananya’, as I began to move out of the library.
‘That is not as fanciful as Aaliya but describes you better’, he tried handing me the money.
I returned the money back, ‘This is not an appointment but an agreed upon meeting. It is good to know you.’
I left.
The next time, he took me to his place. A quaint house in the city suburbs. The house opened to an ornate hall. He took me upstairs to his room. The house seemed to have no one.
There were some photographs hung on the wall. Of Vikram and probably his wife.
‘They are lies. Lies of apparently happy families’, his voice sardonic. ‘Why do you still put them up?’
‘It is harder to undo them. I hardly know that they are put up. They are as indistinct , as rooted, as the wall.’, he answered.
‘Listen Ananya. Wait for sometime. I am coming.’ ‘Where are you going?’
‘In a while’, he left.
I sank on his bed, looking at the wall hung pictures. They appeared to be happy. Him and his wife. The wife who was. The man had mysterious ways and I was drawn to him particularly because of this vagueness that trailed behind him. I waited for him, whiling away in the balcony, overlooking the rain washed street, hoping that he might be somewhere on the way.
I noticed that he had left his cell phone behind. I couldn’t ring him either. It was getting late enough to be worried. I once again stepped into the balcony and looked down. Except for a drenched street dog that was lying down miserably near the gate, there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. Rain water had puddled under the lamp post. A breeze ruffled the mango tree in the courtyard and a few twigs fell down and broke. Thunder
rumbled in the distance. Did I hear a soft knock at the door? I turned back, a little startled for I had assumed no one to be in the house. I opened the door.
A woman in her mid thirties asked, ‘Do you want anything?’
It was the woman from the photographs. Vikram’s wife. The wife who was.
I tried forcing a smile.
‘I am your friend’s wife.’, she cordially said. ‘I am Ananya.’
‘Yes, I know. Vikram has lately been going to you.’ I was overwhelmed by an embarrassment.
‘Relax. I know you can’t. Still’, she tried easing. ‘I tho..I thought…you guys stayed separated.’ ‘We do. Under the same roof.’, she clarified. ‘Don’t be wary, Ananya.’
‘It is not everyday that an escort meets her client’s wife. I hope you know what an escort is.’
‘I know’, she said.
‘I guess Vikram is here.’, as a car halted to a screech in front of the main entrance.
He came upstairs.
‘She is my wife -Nivedita. Meet Ananya’, he said warmly. ‘We just met.’, Nivedita said
Vikram sensed my discomfort. ‘You might not have preempted this?’ ‘Who does?’, I was clueless. ‘Strangely, I feel ridiculed.’
Vikram took Nivedita out of the room. I followed them to the room adjacent.
‘Why this sham of a fidelity when we have so much fallen apart? Why are we not free of each other yet?’, she defiantly asked.
‘We are slaves to each other. Our slaveries, founded on a lost something.’ , he answered.
I looked at them, their unhealed blisters and left in the rain. Perhaps, the rain too served a sentence to a thirsty earth.
By Prerna Munshi