Ajay Vishwanathan

A j a y   V i s h w a n a t h a n

For The Times We Squandered

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These people, these are the people who took the shawl away, one that concealed my once innocent bosom.

Don’t believe me, ask that man next door, ask that man up the hill.

Remarkable how old Hindi songs, now playing on that rickety radio in the chai stall down the street, often echo my thoughts as I sit in my six-by-six room, walls thin as cardboard.

Sita will soon be here in mufti, trying to walk in like a paying customer casually nodding at beseeching whores, some crouched along hallways smoking beedis, some leaning against rococo walls, all cleavage-ready, with coal-rimmed eyes. Sita’s plan, we suspect, will be to head straight to room G5 to the whore she has reserved. She’ll somehow get to Dada next door, one of our pimps who arrived in town only yesterday, wanted for pending extortion cases.

My eyes fall outside on the rusted gate that Sita will come through. I haven’t seen her since my escape eight years ago, those lasting images of her lying in dirt holding the leg that I had shot using her gun; they remind me of our childhood when we played Holi hurling colors at each other, her older legs carrying her faster than mine. We ran till we flopped in the muck, our giggling faces now brown like masks, stains so stubborn our mother had to scrub us all afternoon using Father’s stash of country liquor.

The gate groans open, she steps in, that familiar gait, and I step away from the window, then peek again. A little heavier, hair tied differently, she seems too dignified for someone visiting this vice-pit. Surprisingly, she hasn’t done her homework, and it’s not just her looks; most people here seem to know she’s a cop and is here for Dada. They will willingly lead her to room G5 and soon, that hooker Sita has reserved, the bloody lesbo, will drill a bullet through my sister’s heart.

In life’s journey, times we squander don’t return, people we desert don’t come back.

Sita doesn’t know I’m here, having burgeoned into one of the influential partners; my whores don’t know I’m Sita’s sister, so no one stops me as I tiptoe towards G5 and stand outside listening to muffled voices. I check the silencer on my gun.

It won’t be too messy to shoot the hooker in G5, roll her body under the bed, grab Sita, pretending to take her to her death, and then whisk her out to some place safe. She might arrest me then, but at least Mother would have approved; she always wanted me to do something meaningful in life, like her dutiful Sita.

I step closer to the door, and pull my gun out, then feel a sudden blow. I am now on the ground, head spinning, and eyes blurring, but clear enough to see Dada bending over my face, grinning, and Sita placing a congratulatory hand on his shoulder, that smug cop look in her eyes.