Parvati (Part One)

              Parvati (Part One) - a true story of a Prostitute
           
Not far from the Church gate station in Bombay, at the corner where the boundary ended and an iron-fence along the railway track started, a row of tarpaulin-roofed makeshift huts of the vagrants started and stretched up to well over a kilometer. In front of them was a two-way road, nearly always teeming with honking and blowing vehicles. Rarely was there any other time besides 1.00 to 3.00 a.m. when the road would be empty.
Along the main road, there ran a stone-paved pavement on both sides of the road. Instead of proving a help to the pedestrians, the pavement would give a good place to street vendors and beggars. The pedestrians had to jostle against one another in the peak hours. The buses, overloaded with sweating and remonstrative passengers, would pass by the pavement, emitting clouds of block smoke, leaving soot on the faces of the people living on the pavement. They were the so-called pavement-dwellers, quite habitual to smoke and dust, accustomed to rain and heat, ever quiet in response to the reproaches by the angry passers by, unbent while getting canes and slaps from the policemen who collected weekly rent from those ill-fated souls, at the clemencies of weather. Earlier, local musclemen used to take Rs.10 per week from an individual who wanted to have a place to sleep on the pavement, but the local policemen, perhaps, tired of waiting for promotion, or restless because of no other source of income in consequence of the govt.'s stern actions against corruption, had decided to exploit the people who had pavement as their only home.
On this very footpath, there lived a young girl, about eighteen, with her old humpback father. Parvati and her father Jaman Prasad, though mostly called Jamaiya, had accepted the fact that the pavement was their home. In the name of clothes, she had only one worn out sari, that too without a blouse, which, in spite of her best efforts to cover her body, revealed the portions of her breasts, with tiny black nipples protruding under that tightly wrapped sari. Though having biscuit complexion, Parvati's facial features and curves of the waist attracted the people who passed by that pavement hut. The office-goers, waiting for taxis or buses, could not resist themselves from stealing a tantalizing glimpse of her luring body.
Her father often told her about her mother and his home in Neer Garh village near Pune. His lines, "I had a small house. Your mother was a very beautiful woman. I used to work at construction sites. I was a mason. The earthquake destroyed everything. Your mother was killed. I could not live there. You were two years old at that time. We came to Bombay. I bought this cart (hand cart like a tumbrel). I work hard but not enough money to give you a good life. You are my darling, my Parvati. I will find a bride-groom for you. You will go to your husband's house. Your old father will die, here on this footpath. Never come here after your marriage....I...will..." had been heard hundreds of times by Parvati in the evenings when he would be drunk after the day's hard work. She would give her shy smile to her father, sitting inside that oil lamp lit hut. Their belongings- an old tin box, a stove, two old blankets, a faded sheet, two dinner plates and an old soiled picture of her mother simply presented their meek disapproval of what Jamaiya used to say about Parvati's marriage and a better life.
She knew that the day's hard labor, which resulted in seven or eight rupees, could never bring her all that her father often promised.
She had a few friends, mostly those children who shared the same footpath. They were the boys who shouted at one another and their salutation also included one or two abuses. Some of them worked for the local muscle men, and the rest did whatever came their way- transporting locally brewed liquor, posing as pimps to the prostitutes in the area, stealing from the departmental stores, gambling, and what not. Nighttime street fights and police-arrests were quite common. Black-marketing of cinema tickets was as if an acquired virtue for them. They were never deterred by the police-arrests. Going to jail and coming back to their huts was like visiting some places for pleasure and homecoming. Everything seemed normal after a few days' absence.
Parvati would often think whether lives of those people would change. Sometimes, she would fix her stare on the women, girls and neatly dressed ladies who would walk with their heads held high, with an air of superiority, chatting in their tingling restrained voices, unlike the voices of the down-trodden people on the pavement. She would imagine herself to be one among them, going to office, in a light green sari, with a shoulder-bag, etc. Suddenly, her reverie would be broken by a sharp horn from one of the passing cars.
"What do they do in those offices?"Asked Parvati one day.
Her neighbor Janakibai replied indifferently, "Who knows? May be Mohan can tell you. He has passed big exam." High-school test was what they referred to as big exam.
How much Parvati wished that she could peep into the lives of those dwelling in tall rich buildings. She wanted to see how the rich parents cared for their daughters, what they did at school, how they started their marriage life, what things they ate, what they talked about, what made them so rich, why they always looked neat and clean, how their daughters did their make up and how they succeeded to get rich boy friends, and so forth. She could give the whole world for this privilege of direct vision into the lifestyle of the middle-class and rich people.
For Parvati, a festival meant a special dish of goat-meat. When the children of the wealthy people walked by, with their jeans and clean shirts on, carrying packets of sweets, crackers, flowers, etc., on the occasion of Deepawali ( the festival of lights ), she would muse over her fate, nursing a sense of vain expectation that one day she would also be one of them. Day was not difficult to pass, but as the darkness descended, She experienced uneasiness, for her father would come back home, with a bottle of locally brewed liquor. He would drink till late into night and talk loudly with himself. Parvati would be long asleep before he, finally, collapsed, having licked even the last drop.
The rich drink to mark off an occasion, or to support, or rather strengthen their notions, but her father, like millions of poor , drank to get a momentary relief from his misery, which stayed away while pulling the cart but came back as the work stopped and evening drew near.
Once or twice a week, Parvati worked as a laborer at a construction site. The money, thirty rupees a week, she mostly spent on eating different things sold by the street vendors. Sometimes, with her neighbor, Jamunabai, she afforded the luxury of going to the tea shop at the corner of the street to eat cakes and sandwiches with tea served in cups. But more from the habit than to cool the tea, Parvati would pour the tea in the saucer and drink it with loud sips.
When she was well over eighteen, Jamunabai suggested to Parvati to buy an old blouse from the market where stolen goods were sold. She spent twenty rupees and bought the blouse of light green color, the color of her dreams. In her hut, she tried the blouse on. However she tried, the big rounded breasts could not be forced into the cup-shaped space in the blouse provided for accommodating the two heights in a woman's body. Somehow she squeezed then inside and hooked the blouse; still, some brown parts of the rounds could be seen from the curve of the neck and the gaps between two hooks in the front portion of the blouse.
The effect was instant. The green tinge had added to her beauty. To make everything look proper, she had neatly combed her hair and tied them in a knot, with the hairclip she had kept for a long time in her tin box. Some of the local boys began to flock around her. They realized that she had grown up to be in what they called business. Innocent Parvati never doubted the sincerity of the friendly invitations to movies, to teashops, or for a taxi ride. She would never go against the will of her father who often told her to stay away from those boys.
One evening, at about 8 O'clock, while Parvati was waiting for her father to return with his cart and the provisions for the night, a taxi stopped by the side of the curb. To her surprise, Jamaiya stepped out.
"Parvati! Parvati! Come, look the master has invited us to dinner," he shouted and pulled her hand. Parvati could smell the spirit in his breath. She sensed something fishy, but she kept quiet and got on the taxi, without any demur. Jamaiya kept a piece of tin-sheet in front of the opening of the hut, and it served as the door. He entered the taxi and locked the door. After a few moments, the taxi stopped in front of a building. Jamaiya paid the driver and led Parvati to an apartment on the third floor. The door was ajar, and without any hesitation, he pushed the door in and told Parvati to go inside. She knew Kanaiyalal, a local pimp, sitting on a sofa, in front of which there were two glasses with a bottle of English whiskey and some cashew nuts in a plate. He offered some to Parvati and she, before taking some, looked in the direction of her father. He nodded and smiled. Kanaiyalal motioned Parvati to sit near him on the sofa. He gave five hundred rupees to Jamaiya.
"Go into the bathroom and take a bath," Kanaiyalal said to Parvati. But she did not move. He got up and pulled her by her hand. It was a nice tiled bathroom with a shower. He handed Parvati a new sari to wear and told to come out soon. Parvati, as if hypnotized, could not go against his commands.
She didn't even know why she had been told to take a bath. She was too simple to understand the meaning of being a young woman. She was rather confused why Kanaiyalal had given money to her father. While standing under the shower and looking at her fully developed body in the wall mirror in the bathroom, she began to imagine how she would look in that new sari which was gifted to her. She applied soap vigorously all over her voluptuous body. She felt a tingling sensation when the cake of soap reached under her waist. For a moment, she believed that her father's promise of getting her married to a handsome bridegroom was going to be fulfilled.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, wearing the red sari, she looked an absolutely different Parvati. She entered the room where she had left her father with Kanaiyalal. But, she was shocked, for a while, not to find her father there.
"Where is my father?" she was very nervous.
"What work does he have here now? Come, sit by me. You are mine now. Sit with me,"Kanaiyalal spoke softly and directed her to the sofa.
"This is your house?" said Parvati hesitantly, looking at the wallpaper.
"Yes, my dear," laughed he, putting his right arm on her shoulder. Parvati was too innocent to mind that. He offered her a drink which she accepted rather timidly.
"It's bitter!" coughed Parvati, just having taken a sip of the whiskey.
"Drink it up quickly! It will taste better after a while," said Kanaiyalal, supporting her glass from the bottom and pushing it to her mouth.
The whiskey having entered her bloodstream, Parvati felt wonderful. Her eyes had developed a kind of glitter, and they looked dreamy. He looked handsome to her. His touch seemed to be very comforting. He made her drink again and gave her some snacks to eat.
After a while, she found herself in a large bed in the adjoining room. It was like a dream, in that soft velvety cushioned bed. Kanaiyalal was all over her body. He was kissing her very passionately. He began to remove her clothes very delicately. His lips enclosed her nipple of the right breast. She felt ecstasy unknown to her and she shrieked with pleasure. Parvati made no attempt to stop Kanaiyalal. The poor girl never realized that she had been sold to that beast for a few hundred rupees, and in the morning she would have to go back to the realistic world of the pavement.
................to be continued.......... Raja Sir.