An excerpt from Kunal Basu’s ‘Kalkatta’.
Read Devjani Bodepudi’s review of Kalkatta, or click here for an interview with Kunal Basu.
Clients came to Champaka to have their hair done or toenails painted. Some of them asked for herbal beauty treatment afterwards, complete with a full body exfoliating bath and massage. Those who wanted Plus and Plus Plus treatment became our ‘parties’ and Rani called for me if a party was already my treatment, or if someone wished to try out a new masseur—a male. The client would have the fragrance of jasmine in the room, or choose any other smell from citrus, frangipani, African violey and vanilla and sip herbal tea while waiting for towels to be laid out on the massage bed. It’s good to talk to one’s party before one starts, I’d learnt quickly, making her comfortable by asking the same questions I’d asked her before and answering hers as well like why I’d shaved off my beard that looked so good, or if I was planning to take a holiday over Christmas.
Rani didn’t care about what happened between me and my party inside the room, provided there wasn’t any scene afterwards or too much noise that disturbed other parties taking their treatments in other rooms. Like Saxena, she sat glued to her computer all day, watching action films. None of the girls dared raise their voice against her. If she said come early or stay late, they obeyed without a fuss; she’d cut daily pay by half if she caught someone stealing shampoo. Making a rude comment about her shaved face or bleached blonde hair or old-fashioned nose ring could get you abused like you’d never heard before. Like the other employees—Ratna, Lilly, Pom and me—she had her fixed parties too who came regularly for her treatment, like Justice Sen and Mr Lim, the owner of China Garden which supplied us with takeaways. Ratna, who was the same age as me, teased Rani over ‘her lover Lim!’ The two always chatted about food, especially rare Chinese delicacies that were hard to find in Kalkatta like python soup. The poor man had cancer of the cruellest kind between the legs.
Rani was not one to give you a lecture like Ani. In my early days at Champaka, she had spoken her mind only after I’d asked her to explain the difference between clients and parties.
“You’ll know who comes for real massage and who just to sleep inside a sweet-smelling room. Some come here to dream, to run away from whoever they’re living with. Others want to feel the breath of someone around them, to know that they’re still alive. Just think of Mr Sen. In his mind he’s still a Justice when he’s now a nobody. Paying 1,000 rupees makes him feel like a tiger! And then there are our ‘parties’, those who come here because they have been wronged.”
“Wronged?”
“Their husbands have neglected them because they’ve become fat or someone else—a secretary or bar girl—has taken their place. Their bodies are still hungry. Like brides, they come here to be with their grooms on their flower bed.”
Rani was right. There were parties who wanted to be my wife. Like Mrs S, at least by the one she wanted me to call her. She became jealous if I couldn’t give her time, thought I was with another woman, another wife, and became upset. “You are mine! You are only mine…” in her mid-forties and fair, she was still a thissa—‘a pretty girl’—as we say in our line. Like a wife, she took time to undress, making faces in the mirror while turning the knobs of her earrings. Took my help in fastening and unfastening the straps, combing down her hair afterwards. It took her a lot of time the first time, a lot of talk.
“Have you ever been hurt by someone? I mean hurt hurt.” She’d draw a line across my heart with her nail, pressing down just to leave a mark. “You’ll know it’s serious when it stops bleeding, when there’s no more blood left, just pain.”
I thought she was behaving like Justice Sen, happy to talk while paying for a massage. “You need to make up stories to keep your party happy,” Rani had advised me. “If she is sad, tell her your sad story. If she wants to ask you what naughty things you do with other parties, make up the naughtiest story you can. Talk will make her hot, even if she was cold when she entered the room.”
I told Mrs S about Afreen, Hing Mastan’s young aunty. Who’d come up to the roof of Number 14 to watch me fly kites whenever she visited from Delhi where she was BA honours student. We had kissed behind the water tank. She used to send me notes with Urdu shayari that I was afraid to show others. I used to dream about her like my friends dreamt about film stars. I didn’t want to do dirty things, just kiss and gaze at her face, smell her attar.
“You’re making me fall in love, Jamshed!” Mrs S stroked my face.
Afreen would be married soon, Ammi told us one day. Proposals had started to come to her sister Humera from Agra and Lucknow, even England. She was special. Stood first in exams, spoke English like a convent-school girl.
“Why didn’t your mother press her friend for you?”
How could she, even after a decade at Number 14, we were still called refugees. Ammi was just a zari girl, and Abbu struggling to become a successful pencil-wallah. Plus who’d select a langri for a sister-in-law?
“Did the two of you ever…”
I’d shaken my head.
“Oh, Jamshed!”
Then we had sex—like Afreen and Jamshed, not like Mrs S and her gigolo. It felt like we were hiding behind the water tank on the roof. My hands all over her, chikan kameez damp with sweat, her salwar dropped down from her hips. Smelling her attar, the azan in our throats.
