The Collected Novels by Khushwant Singh

Author:Khushwant Singh [Singh, Khushwant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351181323
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Bhagmati

She sits cross-legged in my armchair turning over the pages of a book. Her left hand is clenched into a fist with a cigarette sticking out of her fingers. She sucks noisily at the cigarette and flicks the ash on my carpet. Her hair is heavily oiled and arranged in serried waves fixed by celluloid clips shaped like butterflies. She wears a pink sari of glossy, artificial silk with a dark blue blouse of the same material. A pair of white slippers with ribbon bow-ties on their toes lie in front of the chair. Bhagmati is the worst-dressed whore in Delhi.

The light of the table-lamp reveals a layer of powder and rouge on her face. It does not lighten the colour of her black skin or hide the spots left by small-pox. The kohl in her eyes has run down and smudged her cheek-bones. Her lips are painted crimson. Her teeth are stained with betel-leaf. Bhagmati is the plainest-looking whore in Delhi.

‘Ajee! You are back from vilayat!’ she exclaims as I enter. And without giving me the chance to say yes, continues, ‘What kind of books do you keep? They have no pictures.’ She waggles her head with every sentence and gesticulates with her hands in the manner of hijdas. ‘No pictures, only black letters like dead flies.’ She changes the subject. ‘Did you ever think of your poor Bhagmati when you were riding those white mares in London?’ Bhagmati is the coarsest whore in Delhi.

Bhagmati is not a woman like other women. She’s told me something of her past life; I’ve discovered the rest myself.

Bhagmati was born in the Victoria Zenana Hospital near Jamia Masjid. When her father asked the doctor, ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ the doctor replied, ‘I am not sure.’ Her parents already had three boys. So they gave their fourth child a girl’s name, Bhagmati. When a troupe of hijdas came to their home to sing and dance and said, ‘Show us your child. We want to see if it is a boy or a girl, or one of us,’ her father abused them and drove them away without giving them any money. The hijdas gave her parents no peace. Whenever they came to the locality to sing or dance at births or weddings they would turn up at their doorstep and say, ‘Show us your last born. If it is one of us, let us take it away.’

Bhagmati’s mother had two more chldren—both girls. Both times her father had taken Bhagmati with him to the hospital and asked the doctor to examine her and say whether she was a boy or a girl. Both times the doctor had looked at her genitals and said, ‘I am not sure; it is a bit of both.’ Bhagmati was then four years old. When the troupe of hijdas visited them after the birth of their last child, her father gave them twenty-one rupees and said, ‘Now I have three sons and two daughters, you can take this one.

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