Misc. Erotica Swati's Downfall (Original Story)

[S Darko]

Ramesh sees Prakash and Nawaz weaving erratically but talking animatedly as they leave the chawl and hail an auto. They don't so much hail an auto, as go and sit in the one that is usually parked at the end of their street. The driver is usually snoozing inside, and that solves the problem of going out to the Main Street and finding an auto that will tale them wherever thy need to go. 

People are walking up and down the street, cycles, motorcycles and scooters go up and down, hawkers hawk and naked children play by the gutters. It’s a commonplace scene that Ramesh is used to. 


Ramesh takes one last puff from his beedi and chucks it into the gutter, where it joins countless others. He wonders what is going on. Prakash is not simply poor, but also cheap. He will always take a bus when he can. Nawaz is more erratic, something that comes of an irregular income from the whorehouse he supposes. If Prakash is taking an auto, it must be something significant. And if they’re going off together, that is something even more significant. 

He watches the auto start up, then turn the corner and disappear from view. 

Ramesh climbs up the rickety stairs to the chawl room and looks about for clues. It isn’t a large room by any means, and the main furniture comprises three narrow pallets with thin cotton mattresses on them and empty floor space in the middle. The money plant that he has placed by the lone window has grown to be quite large and the leaves as big as the palm of his hand. That however is the only other living thing in the room. 

He scans the room, the three beds, two unmade, and his with a sheet tightly spread over it, as good as any hospital. There are a few discarded clothes on Nawaz’ and Prakash’s beds—their lungis and vests. The trapdoor in the far corner of the room is the cleanest part of the floor. Above him, hanging from a crossbeam in the ceiling, is a slowly whirling fan. 

He looks under his own bed and pulls out the metal trunk he came to Delhi with. It is small, but it contains all his worldly possessions. The small lock on it seems intact. He pulls out the key that is tied to his sacred thread, his janeyu, and opens the trunk. The contents seem to be all there. Including the automatic gun that he brought from the village. 

This one is a Ruger, not the country pistol he had been caught with ages ago. It is used, old, but in good condition. He hasn’t used it yet, but it has a full magazine that holds eighteen bullets and one in the chamber. He inspects it, then wraps it back up in the dirty looking old banian that he used to wear when he was a kid and puts it back in the bottom of the trunk. 

There are a couple of glasses, one half filled with foul smelling country liquor and the other empty. An empty packet of peanuts and an equally empty dish with a few crumbs of salt sticking to it’s bottom. There are two small stools, one of which is overturned. He doesn’t need to be Byomkesh Bakshi to figure out what has been going on. That too in the daytime. Prakash usually never starts drinking before seven or eight in the evening. It’s just half past five and there are two empties on the floor. 

Ramesh cleans up and wonders if today is the day. Will it be just Nawaz and Prakash, or are there going to be other participants? He had planned to go watch a movie with some of his pehelwan friends, but nor decides to stay around and keep vigil.

Rather than stay in the room, he decides to walk down to the street and watch the entrance to the chawl from the tea shop that is a few doors down and will afford him an unobtrusive view while remaining hidden behind the awning. He orders a cup of tea from the elderly '. proprietor and sits on a bench. 

Fifteen minutes later, a fat man appears at the end of the street, carrying a backpack, one of the carrying straps looped over his shoulder, the other flapping free. He is sweating profusely from the unaccustomed exercise, but looks happy nevertheless. 

Ramesh watches as Inder looks at the piece of paper in his hand, identifies the building, or more specifically, the chawl where they, Ramesh, Nawaz and Prakash live, on the second floor. The first floor houses a few more immigrant workers, people like himself. The second floor has been constructed without the benefit of permits and therefore is not legal. Which explains why there is a staircase with a trapdoor as the only entrance to the room he shares with Nawaz and Prakash. 

Ramesh has never even seen the owner of the property, dealing only with the middle man who collects the rent money every month without fail. For all he knows, the fat man may be the actual owner of the tenement.

Ramesh watches Inder mop his face with a handkerchief that he retrieves from his pocket as he waits. 

He clearly doesn’t know where to go beyond the address. He spends a few minutes looking for something, perhaps the mailbox, but there isn’t one. Finally, he pulls out his cellphone and makes a call. He shakes his head with frustration and looks at his phone as though it will provide clues as to why the other party won’t answer. After a while, he puts his phone away. 

He pulls a bar of chocolate from his backpack and starts to eat.