Lullabies of a Prostitute - II

That was not expected at least her reaction said so, and then there goes the rest of the awkwardness from the thin air. Now there was me and she and the partition made of old sari, nothing else not even my wayward thoughts.

We started talking and talked about everything, she has opinion about politics, and about neighborhood. We talked about religion and sex in one breath and family and her hourly charge in another. She mocked over my virginity and I enquired about her numbers. I hungrily accepted her invitation for late lunch and had my appetite satisfied, with slightly over cooked Bhindi and two chapattis. She laughed on me for hours by saying that she will tell her friends regarding a Sardar client who got cold feet and paid for just talking.

And then she stopped laughing, just smiled, “Talking is difficult Sahib, that’s for you people for us lesser read people its stomach which talks and play tunes.” The laughter lush eyebrows suddenly squeezed to frown and it seems that those overly decorated lipstick-stained lips had never smiled in ages. And then once again an unaccustomed blanket of silence spread over both of us. All things felt discussed and all words uttered. It felt like decades old well which has never been used from years suddenly stretched between us.

And then a cry came, an unexpected sound from other half of the room, a lone thrown stone in the same old well. And by the moment I noticed her absence, she came from other side of the sari-partition of the room, with a bundle of clothes held delicately in her hands and sat in front of me. She lifted a piece of cloth and showed me her infant’s face and ponders her with innumerable kisses and equal number of name calling. With no hesitation she unhooked her blouse and pulled out one of her supple breast from brassier and put it into the baby’s mouth. After than only the silence restored, but this time it sooth.

Calmness shadowed the twirling lashes of the infant and cheeks went fluffed. It’s a boy, she announced may be in the pursuit of taking my attention towards her face than her breast sucking infant. He has grabbed it with both of the hands and was taking in all the love, all the unadulterated remains of a prostitute mother. And there went his appetite satisfied, with one tiny drop of milk resting on his baby lips. She covered her breast, first placed her lips on baby’s cheek and then the baby in the make-shift cradle of her petticoat. I suddenly felt weariness and bit tired. The Journey started from a single drop of sweat at her cleavage to solitary droplet of motherhood at her baby’s lips, had took a toll on me.

This time it was my time to place my hands on the knees and take their support to up stand. I was not defeated of the purpose for which I had come. She was all wrong about charging me. I stirred up my pockets and collected a fistful of notes and forwarded over to her. She looked at me and laughed and asked for what I am paying her. I didn’t had sex with her so why this payment. I looked at her baby and nodded. A time to time basis requirement melted on her forehead in the form of perspiration, and then she took it, and nodded back.

I never looked back to that alley again. But one thing which never left my side till this day is a simple inner fulfilling hope of a desperate mother. While leaving I just asked her about his husband.

“No one wants a prostitute wife, Sahib” she replied

“So, his father?” I looked in her infant son’s direction.

“Bastard” she looked away from me. Is that guilt, which I just witnessed? I asked myself.

“I will send him to school and make him a Sahib” she said with watery eyes and a brave face.

At that moment I wanted to tell her a thousand things, things that she probably will not like. But, at that very moment, I saw someone more vulnerable and deterred than me, someone who came from dark to the present of darkness and is still hoping for the tunnel to end. With those moments reverberating inside my head, I sat on my bike and headed outside mine end of tunnel, which now seems long over.