Free Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars by Sonia Faleiro Page B

broadcast!’
    Apsara gnawed through a grumpy pause. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘this girl here vomited and my mister shoved her face into her vomit and wouldn’t let go until she ate everything, until she ate every bit of her own vomit. What was it now let me think? Bread-omelette, hahn Leela? Now I can’t remember, but just you imagine it! Imagine eating that! How I suffered watching her, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I said to myself, “God, wouldn’t it be best to fling your humble servant under a truck? That would be kinder, no?” But Leela’s room was empty. Where was Leela? First I thought maybe she’d gone out to play. After all, remember beti, she was only a child then, in small-small chaddis , not even a woman.’
    ‘My mother is very simple,’ said Leela grimly. ‘Play?’ she glared at Apsara. ‘Play? After Manohar started sending me to those maderchods who would play with me? Who would talk to me? “Dirty girl! Dirty girl! Dirty girl!” That’s all I heard in Meerut mummy and you know it as well as I do—play, it seems! Someone has played a trick on you! Someone has snatched your brains!’
    Apsara’s bottom lip trembled. ‘What do I know? I’m an illiterate village woman. Did I even see your father’s face before I married him?’
    ‘I told you one hundred times not to call him my father. He’s a rakshas!’
    ‘When his parents came to my parents’ home,’ Apsara turned to me, ‘the first thing they asked for, even before they asked for tea, was to see my father’s tractor. To check if it was good enough for their field. They even went into the kitchen to inspect our utensils, the cooking oil. My grandmother was cutting “wedgetables”. They showed her no respect. They looked above her, at the spices. They looked behind her, at our kerosene stove.They looked top to bottom, at the big-big pots in which we had stored our rice and dal and atta. But they didn’t look at her. Later my mother-in-law, God bless her soul, she took me aside, to counsel me, I thought. What did she say? “After marriage if we discover you aren’t a kunwari ladki, a virgin, jaan ki kasam ,” she said to me, “I will cut your breasts off with the same knife I use to cut the stems of the potato flowers and I will feed them, piece by meat piece to the crows.”’
    Leela exhaled with frustration, ‘Good story mummy.’
    ‘Don’t talk,’ snapped Apsara. ‘If I drop one stitch I’ll have to start all over again.’
    ‘Accha, you know Sheila?’ she turned to me.
    I shook my head.
    ‘Our neighbour, that one who lives there?’ she pointed abstractedly. ‘Short little thing. Wears too big-big gold earrings. Face like a little boy’s. No, wait, face like a rat! She’s a rat face! Have you met her? Have you met rat face?’ Apsara giggled gnomishly.
    She had managed to move on to an entirely new topic. This too, I would learn, was a standard Apsara dodge.
    ‘You don’t know her?’ she said, sounding frustrated. ‘ Ajeeb si ladki hai tu . What an odd girl you are. Anyway, Sheila’s third daughter—what did she eat to have three daughters?—she just had a baby. Another girl, imagine it! I said, “Okay, okay, don’t take tension, I’ll make clothes for her.” That way at least they won’t have to buy any. Everything is so expensive these days and babies don’t stay small-small na ? Now look at Leela, how big she is! When she was small do you think one banana would have satisfied her? Or one cheeku ? Never! Everything had to be two-two, three-three. Banana two-two, cheeku two-two, even egg-fry two-two! What a healthy eater she was by God’s grace!’
    Apsara sniffed and wiped her face on her sleeve.
    Leela rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ she said to me with a short laugh. ‘Mama’s simple, I told you. Next time for sure she’ll ask if you know her mother—who died of tuberculosisbefore I was born. You just say, “Of course Apsaraji, her kadhi chawal is mast