35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘NO LIKE A-FEESH?’
industry, but doing nothing for the booze biz. No one even had a
glass. I waved for what I thought to be a fat old waitress. It turned
out to be a hidjra, a eunuch, dressed in a style somewhere between
Vedic rishi and seventies glamrock, an imported cigarette leaning
from its lips like a fishing pole.
‘Accha, swami,’ a husky voice said.
‘Are you serving drinks? Paani ne?’
It shook a coil of hair that had fallen like a vine from the turret
above, saying, ‘What d’you think I am, darling – the staff? How
about a nice little bibi? Three thousand rupees, sweetie – she’s intact.
Only thirteen, just got her in from Mysore. A little oil, sweetie, and
she’ll squeeze the juice right out of your kebab.’
‘How about a drink first?’
It tossed its head loftily, hissing, ‘Men!’ and trotting back to the
far and darker end on curiously small feet shod in wedge-heeled
slip-ons. Where there were hidjras, girls were close at hand.
No waiter or waitress appeared. But suddenly the band broke up
its huddle over an especially recalcitrant amp, a man resembling
Buddy Miles tripping over the snakes’ nest of cable writhing across
the stage and starting to tap a stand-up mike – the way bands used to
at the dawn of rock. He was joined at another mike by a slob who
looked as if his day job were inconveniencing Indian Airlines
customers.
‘Tobleewah-wayoorall,’ Buddy appeared to say. ‘Ah-furrypleez
trooduss Frayyy Trayyy!’ He swung down an arm like a haunch of
beef, producing a noise resembling several tons of rocks dropping
into a grand piano.
Everyone stopped while a neuron-searing whine had half the
customers stuffing fingers in their ears and howling back.
I’d gathered the band was called Freight Train, because it said so
beneath the untidy asterisk of gaffer tape holding a bass drum
together.
The drummer, a gaunt, skeletal figure, unlike his colleagues,
clambered around his spinney of cymbals to peer closely and
professionally at the amp’s rear. Then he stood, delivered a mighty
kick to its side with shoes the shape of plasterers’ trowels. The Death
Vibe ceased, and Freight Train began their set.
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