Endings are overrated. There’s only one true, certain end – everything else a load of bullshit, or how you call it, bakwaas. Beginnings, though. Beginnings are everywhere. It all began with that midnight-colored saree, thick with dark-blue sequins, its endless sea of shimmering dots stitched by hands that must have cracked and bled over the months of needle in and out of taut cloth in some dingy, godforsaken hole in one of Mumbai’s stinking alleyways.
The saree, draped well below Tara’s navel, scratched against her skin. The low-necked silver blouse scraped her shoulders, but she tried not to think about any of this, or the sweat trickling down her back while she maneuvered through the crush of bodies.
It had rained that afternoon, cooling the air, but not enough for the wide, dark shawl Tara had worn as per instructions. It was never cold enough in Mumbai for shawls. Especially not on a platform at Borivali Station during rush hour, which swarmed thicker than ants on a dead beetle. The voices of hundreds of men and women rose around her, red uniformed porters yelling at everyone to stand back, squalling children, announcements of all the trains departing from or arriving in India’s city of dreams.
To reach the end of the platform, Tara elbowed her way through the milling passengers. Many regional languages. Body odour. Perfumes. She pushed back against the women, stepping aside for the children and the men who hustled toward her in their rush to leave the platform. If she didn’t give way to the men, they’d shove her at the shoulder if she was lucky; lower, if she wasn’t.
She reached the finish line, where she could step no farther without falling off the platform. A little stretch of emptiness in a cramped city. In the distance stood slums with their tinand-tarpaulin roofs. Towering above them, shiny billboards advertising refrigerators and televisions, with posters featuring building-sized faces of film stars, the drunken-eyed Shah Rukh Khan, dewy Aishwarya Rai, and the tall, lean figure of the heartthrob all girls swooned over, the sweet, baby-faced Karan Virani.
At 17, Tara had learned enough not to swoon over a man, not even Arnav, the police constable who made her heart beat faster these days. She dismissed the posters and did as asked. Stood facing the tracks as if poised to jump down and sprint after departing trains through scattered debris.
When she’d been brought to Mumbai on one of those trains four years ago, the stench of the city had overwhelmed her: a mix of rotting vegetation, frankincense, urine, perfume, frying fish, and the hopes and despair of more people than she’d ever seen gathered in one place. She didn’t notice it anymore. Just like she took for granted her own changed smell – talcum powder and flowery perfume borrowed from the other bar girls. She could never leave, she thought, nor did she want to.
She dug in her heels instead, the expensive, pointy-toed ssilver shoes paired with her blue outfit, and ignored the passengers stepping off the train and navigating their way out of the mob of others waiting to board. A black-coated ticket checker gave her a quick once-over but continued his frenzied rush, sticking charts beside each of the compartment doors.
Tara shifted her weight from one heel to another. She got lost in crowds. Most men and even a few women towered over her. Not anymore. She felt tall, and these were absolutely the most glamorous clothes she’d worn, despite the whiff of dry cleaning each time she received them. She’d never looked
better. Pity she wasn’t allowed to wear these when gyrating at the bar, where they’d have fetched her a shower of hundred rupee notes.
Her boss never explained why he paid nearly as much for each of these weird trips to the railway station as she made in a month dancing to lewd Bollywood numbers. Sometimes she wished for more of these trips in a week. Don’t be greedy, Tara, she scolded herself, the way her mother used to, in another life.
The vibrating phone felt like a live thing in her hand. Shetty, the hefty, dark-skinned owner of the bar, had given it to her a month ago, saying she must take care not to lose this toy with its cracked screen and tiny beetle buttons, or else. She pressed the green button he’d showed her, raised the phone to her ear, and said a shaky hayylo into it. Now, said a voice at the other end. She didn’t recognise the speaker but knew what to do.
Dropping her shawl, she posed as per Shetty’s instructions, and counted off the seconds for the phone to buzz again. She donned her I-don’t-give-a-damn look, while all the male passengers, vendors, and policemen noted the drape of her blue saree, the way it left most of her slim midriff exposed, called attention to her breasts. She paid no mind to the breeze at her back, bare but for the two silver strings that held her blouse together. Her breath steady, the same as before going onstage, she longed for the swig of alcohol that helped her through the first part of each evening’s catcalls and groping.
Several low-throated lewd comments and snatches of Bollywood songs followed, but she bit back her litany of swear words. She focused on the rail tracks as if another train were on its way, one she alone knew about. When the phone shivered in her sweaty palm, she didn’t let her relief show, nor pick up the call. Instead, as instructed, she snatched up the shawl without wearing it, and headed for the stairs leading up to the bridge. An ebb in the crowd after a mass exit of passengers allowed her to make good time. She’d practiced running in these heels.
Breathing hard, she stumbled once at a crack in the platform pavement before she took the stairs as fast as the crowd and her saree would allow her. The slanting afternoon sun caught the sequins, lighting her up. Blind to all but the gaps she slipped through, and the bodies she must kick or elbow past while not losing her balance, she kept up her pace.
She must exit the station in precisely three minutes. Her boss had never told her what might happen if she didn’t. Forgetting her resolve to give up on prayers, she sent one up to Ma Kaali and raced on.
From the sixth-floor window of a nearby high-rise, a pair of binoculars stalked her progress as she ran.
Excerpted with permission from The Blue Bar, Damyanti Biswas, Thomas & Mercer.
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