YOU REALIZE THAT THERE IS NO NEED FOR CLOTHES. Not for you, or the other girls in Bundel House. No matter how hot or cold Delhi gets, there will never be any requirement for clothes after 8 pm. Why couldn’t Deva and Girija Madam just let you and the girls stand naked and let the men choose who they want, based on what they see? The rates could be negotiated after. It would be so much easier than to wear these absurd saris, encrusted with cheap plastic jewels and haggle with men who never seemed to want to pay enough.
Under a moonless sky, when you and Deva sit smoking and talking about air-conditioned malls, you tell him about this idea of yours. He stares at you before chuckling, and then promptly chokes on the smoke. “Stupid bitch,” he says under his breath and follows it up with a retch. You turn your attention towards the small glass tumbler in your hand, half-full of sweet, milky tea. It is your day off and an impromptu one, because Tuesdays are usually reserved for the Doctor, and he hadn’t shown up. Girija Madam let you off, because she could be unpredictable. But also because Tuesdays were never busy and she has a soft spot for the Doctor.
You think you like the Doctor. He is kind, heavy, with his enormous belly hanging out precariously over his spindly legs. You hate that he tires early and slumps on you with his full weight, for four whole minutes before rolling off. But he smokes after and never fails to offer you one. He also talks to you in English and tells you stories about medical conferences in New York. He tells you about an app called Tinder and how he’s looking forward to meeting a thirty-four-year-old woman that he’s been texting over the last couple of weeks. He shows you her photos. You don’t think they will ever meet.
You say nothing as he bends over with a big grunt and picks up your clothes. He doesn’t have to, but he does. You feel a little bad for him. His wife is small and grey and his adult son lives in some country, the name of which you can’t pronounce. You know where his chamber is. You have walked past it numerous times and you have thought of going in. But you shudder to think of what Deva would do if he knew you were thinking of doing that.
“How many people work in your chamber?” you ask, halting between words to make sure you were saying them the way he had taught you to say them.
“About five,” the Doctor replied.
“Who?”
“Well…uh, there is a receptionist, two nurses, an accounts guy and a maid of sorts.”
“Re-cep-tion-tis?”
“Re-cep-tion-ist. Yes.”
You want him to say more, but he’s struggling to tie his shoe-laces. You sit on the floor next to his feet and help him. The flaky, concrete floor is cold and stings your unclothed bottom.
“A receptionist is someone who welcomes people as they come, gives them information, tells them what to do and where to go.”
“Like Girija Madam?” you ask, in surprise.
The big, walrus of a man bursts out laughing. Amidst all the belly-shaking guffaws and wheezes, he wipes the sweat off his forehead and says, “Why, yes! Like Girija Madam. Maybe a little different.”
“I don’t like him,” Deva tells you. You are not surprised. Deva only liked those that tip him on the way out of the Bundel House. “He only wants you because you look twelve.” He rubs out a cigarette butt with his loafers and walks away. You remember when the Doctor first came to Girija Madam and asked for a girl with small breasts and minimal body hair. You wonder if you remind him of his grand-daughter. You wonder if he has a grand-daughter. If you didn’t have small breasts and bony shoulders, would he still have spotted you sitting on the ratty old sofa with a half-empty tumbler of chai between your fingers, when he came in through the main door, almost five years ago?
“Can I be..rec-ep…receptionist?” you ask him one evening. He has not even started sweating yet. The hair on his chest that roll down in a line to his navel and goes further below, are dry and wave slightly under the air stirred up by the ceiling fan. His face goes a little stiff. But he still doesn’t look unkind. He dismounts you.
“Do you want to?” he asks.
You sit up straight on the bed and a small pang of trepidation appears. You can feel it hanging in the air, behind you, waiting for you to speak. It breathes down the back of your neck. The words are stuck at the back of your throat and every second that you stay silent, the fear grows an inch. The mother who died when you were born, grows, the uncle who left you in front of the chai stall at the edge of G.B. Road, grows. Deva and Girija Madam grow. The Doctor in front of you, waiting for an answer, grows. Every one of them grows bigger with every second of your silence. But you swallow and lay back down. The Doctor leaves after twenty minutes, and you get dressed to go find Deva.
For the next four months, you wonder if the Doctor has died. Maybe the heart disease had finally taken its toll. But you’re wrong. You see him one evening trundling in, with his leather attaché and a grey coat draped over his forearm. He asks for you. You are surprised at the relief you feel when he makes you stand on the bed naked and tousles your hair playfully. He hands you an orange envelope. It contains a general quota train ticket to Noida and a piece of paper with the name “Dr. Parth Sarathi Patel” printed on it, along with an address and a phone number of a clinic. The ticket, you realize, is for a date and time two afternoons away. The Doctor smiles and says, “My friend will take care of you. He also has a chamber.”
You don’t mind the weight when he lowers himself on you. Your mind is both far away and present. And spinning like a dervish. The last time you felt like this was when you went shopping with two other girls from Bundel House. You had bought several bottles of nail polish and had treated the girls to several green ice-lollies. You turn your head to the right and glance at the envelope that he’d tucked under a few folded pieces of clothes on a plastic chair.
“Now, you make sure to be quiet and quick,” the Doctor whispers into your ear. His voice raspy and breathing strained. “And you know not to talk to anyone about this.” His hands on either side of you are trying to hold him up with immense effort. You nod. His grunts fill the room soon after. But they stop as quickly as they started. With a quiet shudder, his arms give way and his body noiselessly collapses on you. You wait for him to roll off. You wait.
AMRITA CHOWDHURY is a British-Indian book designer who splits her time between London and Kolkata. Her pieces have appeared in The Writing Cooperative, The Bangalore Mirror, The Nottingham Post, Lonely Planet, Hippocampus (forthcoming) and TechinAsia. She’s always hungry for pizza and you can catch her at amritac.com.
Photo by Kevin Fernandez on Unsplash
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