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

‘NO LIKE A-FEESH?’
‘What?’ his friend replied, drawing the word out. ‘That is like
screwing cow, man!’
They roared with laughter, heading over to a table near the stage.
They owned garages or car agencies, I guessed, and were major
players in black market activities. In the West they’d have impressive
criminal records by now, but in Bangalore they probably enjoyed
holidays with the chief of police, and took local judges out to dinner,
and probably to somewhere like here afterward, too.
‘What’s up there?’ I asked the hidjra; who’d been eyeing me warily,
writing sky notes with her busy cigarette.
‘Go!’ it said nonchalantly, waving at the door.
Beyond this door rose a flight of stairs, another bead curtain at
the top. Behind that was a dimly lit room full of obese plastic sofas,
with a corridor leading off it lined with flimsy doors. A crapulent
headmaster of a man sat on one sofa, with a woman twice his weight
sitting on his lap. They both giggled, ignoring me. No one else was
visible. I sat down as far from the headmaster as possible, smoking a
cigarette. The room smelled of condom rubber, stale pee, ten-cent
perfume, curry, and – unmistakably – sex.
A clerkly man quickly hurried from a room in the corridor past
me and down the stairs, beads clacking in his wake. Some seconds
later, a pretty little girl of maybe fifteen at the most shuffled out of
the same room. Her torn cotton robe hung open, showing a tidy
little body, with broad hips, and breasts you could have covered
with skullcaps. Her hair hung loose in tangled oily waves. Anklets
jingled faintly above the hiss of her bare feet.
‘Namask . . .’ she mumbled, wiping purple lipstick smudged all
over her jaw.
‘Namaskaram,’ I replied.
‘Feringhee?’
‘Accha.’
‘No ingliss me . . .’ She looked woefully apologetic.
‘Kannada?’
She shook her head sadly, asking, ‘Malayal ne?’
She spoke Malayalam, the language of Kerala.
‘Hindi . . . yaar?’
No, she only spoke her native dialect – unintelligible to most
people in Bangalore, probably. She must be lonely, I realised.
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